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

Qian, Y; Zheng, H; Meng, J; Shan, Y; Zhou, Y; Guan, D; (2022) Large inter-city inequality in consumption-based CO2 emissions for China's pearl river basin cities. Resources, Conservation and Recycling , 176 , Article 105923. 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105923. Green open access

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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.

Type: Article
Title: Large inter-city inequality in consumption-based CO2 emissions for China's pearl river basin cities
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105923
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2021.105923
Language: English
Additional information: This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Keywords: Carbon inequality; Consumption-based emissions; Pearl river; City-level; Multi-regional input-output method
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10136974
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