Urban metabolism and emergy of China’s cities

Unprecedented pace of urbanization and industrialization caused a massive increase in China’s urban metabolic pressure. The trend presents an urgent challenge for detailing the long-term changes and disparities in urban metabolic performances in a wide range of cities. Here, we present empirical evidence of 283 China’s cities from 2000 to 2018 based on emergy analysis indicating that China’s urban metabolic performance gradually becomes worse. For example, the environmental sustainability index decreased by 81.64% between 2000 and 2018. In addition, emergy-based performances among China’s cities show considerable differences. Agricultural cities and light manufacturing cities have better sustainability; energy production cities face high environmental pressure. Scenarios for 2025 show that total emergy use would experience slower growth; and most cities continue their decline in emergy metabolism. To ensure overall progress on urban metabolic performance, heavy manufacturing cities and energy production cities should give more attention in adjusting emergy structure.