Large inter-city inequality in consumption-based CO2 emissions for China's pearl river basin cities

Yukun Qian, Heran Zheng*, Jing Meng*, Yuli Shan, Ya Zhou, Dabo Guan

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

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Abstract

Cities are leading carbon mitigation but are heterogeneous in their mitigation policies due to different socioeconomic backgrounds. Given that cities are increasingly inextricably linked, formulating mitigation policies of different cities cannot be easily achieved without comprehensive carbon inventories, who taking the inter-city supply chains into account. The Pearl River Basin is one of the important economic zones in China, with huge disparity in its cities, but very limited information is available on their consumption-based CO2 emissions. To fill this gap, we compiled a consumption-based inventory of 47 cities in the Basin for 2012. We found that the total consumption-based emissions of 47 cities was 933.8 Mt, accounting for 13.1% of China's emissions. There were huge differences in the consumption-based emissions, ranging from 3.6 Mt (Heyuan City) to 153.1 Mt (Shenzhen City). The consumption-based emissions were highly concentrated in the largest seven cities, which accounted for 52.8% of the total emissions of the Basin. The consumption-based emissions per capita also varied greatly, from 1.2 to 14.5 tons per capita. Large scale infrastructure was the biggest driving force for most cities, resulting in 42.1% to 75.6% of the emissions. At sector-level, construction, heavy industry and services were leading in emissions, contributing more than 80% of emissions. The major inter-city carbon transfers occurred within upstream cities in the developing regions and downstream cities in the Pearl River Delta respectively, instead of the transfers between upstream and downstream cities. The findings highlight that the regional mitigation strategies could mainly focus on cities in intra-province boundary, rather than inter-province boundary, and also the city-level mitigation strategies should pay attention to the key emission sectors and drivers in respect of the heterogeneity of cities.

Original languageEnglish
Article number105923
Number of pages11
JournalResources, Conservation and Recycling
Volume176
Early online date21 Sept 2021
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2022

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Our study is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China ( 41921005, 72173133 ),the UK Natural Environment Research Council ( NE/P019900/1, NE/V002414/1 ), the Norwegian Research Council ( 287690/F20 ), The Royal Society (IEC\NSFC\191520), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (2020A1515011230). The authors would also like to thank the reviewers for their time and feedback.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2021

Keywords

  • Carbon inequality
  • City-level
  • Consumption-based emissions
  • Multi-regional input-output method
  • Pearl river

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Waste Management and Disposal
  • Economics and Econometrics

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