City-level emission peak and drivers in China

Yuli Shan, Yuru Guan, Ye Hang, Heran Zheng, Yanxian Li, Dabo Guan*, Jiashuo Li, Ya Zhou, Li Li, Klaus Hubacek

*Corresponding author for this work

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Abstract

China is playing an increasing role in global climate change mitigation, and local authorities need more city-specific information on the emissions trends and patterns when designing low-carbon policies. This study provides the most comprehensive CO2 emission inventories of 287 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2019. The emission inventories are compiled for 47 economic sectors and include energy-related emissions for 17 types of fossil fuels and process-related emissions from cement production. We further investigate the state of the emission peak in each city and reveal hidden driving forces. The results show that 38 cities have proactively peaked their emissions for at least five years and another 21 cities also have emission decline, but passively. The 38 proactively peaked cities achieved emission decline mainly by efficiency improvements and structural changes in energy use, while the 21 passively emission declined cities reduced emissions at the cost of economic recession or population loss. We propose that those passively emission declined cities need to face up to the reasons that caused the emission to decline, and fully exploit the opportunities provided by industrial innovation and green investment brought by low-carbon targets to achieve economic recovery and carbon mitigation goals. Proactively peaked cities need to seek strategies to maintain the downward trend in emissions and avoid an emission rebound and thus provide successful models for cities with still growing emissions to achieve an emission peak.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1910-1920
Number of pages11
JournalScience Bulletin
Volume67
Issue number18
Early online date24 Aug 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Sept 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72140001 and 41921005), Shandong Provincial Science Fund for Excellent Youth Scholars (ZR2021YQ27), the National Social Science Fund of China (21ZDA065), and the Natural Environment Research Council (2021GRIP02COP-AQ). We thank the data contribution from over 190 participants to the Summer School organised by the Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets for Emerging Economies (CEADs) at Nanjing Normal University (2017) and Tsinghua University (2018 & 2019). Supplementary material have been uploaded to CEADs–Carbon Emission Accounts and Datasets for emerging economies (www.ceads.net) for free download. Yuli Shan led the study and drafted the manuscript with inputs from Dabo Guan and Klaus Hubacek. Yuru Guan and Yuli Shan prepared the data (emission inventories of cities) with inputs from Jiashuo Li, Ya Zhou, and Li Li. Ye Hang, Heran Zheng, and Yanxian Li revised the draft.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Science China Press

Keywords

  • City
  • Climate Change
  • CO Emissions
  • Drivers
  • Emission Peak

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General

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