Transition to a low-carbon city: lessons learned from Suzhou in China

doi:10.1007/s11783-011-0338-y

Front Envir Sci Eng

0, Vol.

Issue () : 373-386 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11783-011-0338-y

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Transition to a low-carbon city: lessons learned from Suzhou in China

Wenling LIU^1,2, Can WANG¹(

), Xi XIE³, Arthur P. J. MOL², Jining CHEN¹

1. School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China; 2. Environmental Policy Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen 6706 KN, the Netherlands; 3. The Administrative Centre for China’s Agenda 21, Beijing 100038, China

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Abstract

Climate change has become one of the most serious challenges facing humanity; developing a low-carbon economy provides new opportunities for addressing this issue. Building a low-carbon city has been pursued by people with a high degree of enthusiasm in China. Different from actions at the national level and distinct from practices of developed countries, low-carbon development in Chinese cities should be placed on diverse concerns. Taking Suzhou of Jiangsu Province of China as a case city, this paper adopts a scenario analysis approach to explore strategic focal points in the transition to a low-carbon city. Within this transition, we mainly focus on the different contributions from two factors–economic restructuring and technological upgrading. Scenario analysis results show that 1) in the case of no breakthrough technologies, it is difficult to achieve absolute emission reductions; 2) technologies involved in optimizing energy structure and improving energy efficiency of basic service sectors should be highly emphasized in local planning; 3) in comparison with technological upgrading, economic structural adjustment could be a stronger contributor to mitigation, which is one of the main differences from developed countries. However, the key issue of economic restructuring is to promote the growth of emerging low-carbon industries, which requires not only a strategic choice of new industries but also an introduction of advanced low-carbon technologies.

It is also found that establishing a local carbon emissions accounting system is a prerequisite and the first priority for realizing a low-carbon transition and government capacity buildings should be strengthened accordingly.

Keywords low-carbon city economic restructuring technology upgrading

Corresponding Author(s): WANG Can,Email:canwang@tsinghua.edu.cn

Issue Date: 01 June 2012

Cite this article:

Wenling LIU,Can WANG,Xi XIE, et al. Transition to a low-carbon city: lessons learned from Suzhou in China[J]. Front Envir Sci Eng, 0, (): 373-386.

URL:

https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/10.1007/s11783-011-0338-y
https://academic.hep.com.cn/fese/EN/Y0/V/I/373

Tab.1 Examples of low-carbon city practices in developed countries

Fig.1 Framework and process of the scenario analysis

Tab.2 Energy intensity of four types of urban building operation

Tab.3 Vehicle classification and value of each parameter

Fig.2 Analytical framework of technical progress in a typical sector

Tab.4 Assumed value of each parameter in scenario setting

Fig.3 CO emissions from main industrial sectors in 2007

policies focus	sectors involved	specific contents
which mainly focus on economic structural adjustment	industrial restructuring (2007)	electronic and communication equipment, computer and office equipment, pharmaceutical, medical equipment and instrumentation manufacturing industries	increasing the proportion of high-tech industry by 1-2 percentage points per year during the “Eleventh Five-Year” period
	“Eleventh Five-year” state-owned economic structural adjustment and development planning (2007)	transportation, service industry, cultural media industries	developing modern services, cultural media industries; increasing investments on urban transport, water supply and other infrastructure; developing the environmental protection technology industries; developing tourist industry
	action plan to promote economic restructuring and changing the growth mode (2007)	high-tech industries	increasing contribution of the high-tech industry to gross industrial output value by 40 percent by 2010
	to strengthen energy conservation efforts (2007)to adjust and eliminate backward production techniques, equipments and products (2006)	information technology, bio-pharmaceutical industries; energy intensive industries	increasing the proportion of information technology and bio-pharmaceutical industries by 5 percent and reducing the proportion of energy intensive industries such as chemical sectors by 5 percent per year during the “eleventh five-year” period
	to speed up the process of new industrialization (2007)	high-tech industries; energy intensive industries	developing industries including electronic information, integrated circuits, precision machinery, bio-medicine, motor vehicles, new materials, and software, etc. eliminating backward techniques and equipment in chemical, metallurgy, electroplating, cement, printing and dyeing, and other industries

which mainly focus on technological improvement in some sectors	scientific and technological development “Eleventh Five-Year” Plan and 2020 Long-Term Goals (2006)	electronic information, modern equipment, automotive key parts, new materials, biotechnology and new energy industries	emphasizing 10 key science and technology projects and 16 important techniques
	industry-oriented catalog (2007)	electronic information industry, pharmaceutical manufacturing, automobile manufacturing, steel, nonferrous metals, oil and gas	giving directories of encouraged, restricted, prohibited and eliminated sub-sectors
	wall materials innovation and building energy-saving “Eleventh Five-Year” plan (2006)	residential energy consumption	popularizing energy-saving wall materials and building construction products, reducing building energy consumption, and improving building life
	to adjust and eliminate backward production techniques, equipments and products (2006)	iron and steel, cement, printing and dyeing, chemical and electroplating industries	providing guidance on eliminating backward production techniques, equipment and products in each sector

Tab.5 Low carbon development related policies and planning

Fig.4 CO emissions in each scenario

Fig.5 CO emissions—a comparison of high scenarios

Fig.6 CO emissions of typical sectors in high scenario MET

Fig.7 CO emission reduction potential of each sector in High Scenario MET compared to the reference baseline in 2020

Tab.6 Potential decline of CO emission intensity per unit GDP in each scenario/%

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