China's pilot low-carbon city initiative: A comparative assessment of national goals and local plans
Introduction
The Chinese government has started to emphasize greenhouse gas and particularly carbon emission mitigation as part of its national strategy for development in recent years. In 2007, China issued its National Climate Change Program (NDRC, 2007); in 2008, a White Paper on China's actions and strategy on climate change was published (State Council, 2008); in 2009, the State Council announced a target of reducing the carbon intensity of its GDP by 40–45% by 2020 compared to the 2005 level (State Council, 2009). This emissions mitigation target was incorporated into the national 12th Five Year Plan (FYP) for the very first time with the setting of a binding target of 17% reduction in CO2 emissions per unit of GDP from 2011 to 2015 (National People's Congress, 2011).
As the centers of population, industry, transport and infrastructure, cities have a profound impact on global carbon emissions. Cities and urban areas are estimated to use 75% of the world's energy and produce up to 80% of its greenhouse gas emissions (Williams, 2007). China has been undergoing fast urbanization, with the annual migration of approximately 13 million people from rural areas to urban centers. The number of cities1 in China has also increased from 193 in 1978 to 657 in 2010. By the end of 2011, China's urbanization rate, or the share of urban population, reached a record 51.3%, and is expected to further rise to 75% by 2050. Because urban energy use per capita is estimated to be three times higher than that of rural areas (excluding non-commercial energy sources such as biomass), and indirect energy use (i.e., embodied energy use) through infrastructure and urban consumption of goods is even higher, the development of low-carbon cities is crucial to mitigating the growth of carbon emissions in China.
At the beginning of 2008, Shanghai and Baoding became the first cities to join a new World Wildlife Fund (WWF) initiative to explore low carbon development strategies for China's urban areas. Domestically, the National Development Reform Commission (NDRC) – China's top planning agency responsible for formulating and implementing national economic and social development strategies – initiated a low carbon pilot province and city program in July of 2010, including five provinces and eight cities across the country. The eight low carbon pilot cities are located across the country and include the municipalities of Tianjin, Baoding, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Nanchang, Guiyang, Xiamen and Shenzhen and the five low carbon pilot provinces include Yunnan, Guangdong, Hubei, Shaanxi, and Liaoning provinces (NDRC, 2010).
As low carbon urban development – and particularly the idea of low carbon cities – is receiving greater attention from Chinese policymakers, an increasing amount of literature has started to look at the theoretical concepts, tools and methods and case studies of low-carbon city development in China. For example, Yang and Li (2013) discusses the motivation and concept of low carbon cities and propose possible actions in different sectors for building a low-carbon city, while Li et al. (2012) reviews the development of low-carbon towns in China. Another group of recent literature has focused on tools and methods for helping cities to plan and evaluate its low carbon development actions, including Price et al. (2013) and Cao and Li (2011). There has also been increasing number of case studies on individual cities’ efforts in promoting low-carbon development, with Feng and Zhang (2012), Bi, Zhang, Wang, Liu, and Wu (2011), Lehman (2012) and Lehmann (2013) focusing on the emissions implications for major cities including Beijing, Nanjing and Shanghai on the path of its low-carbon development. However, because low carbon development is a relatively new concept and policies have only been introduced within the last few years, there is very little academic literature evaluating the policy-driven low carbon urban development efforts being implemented in China and the strategies and plans being considered and adopted by multiple cities in order to achieve the national goals of becoming low carbon cities. Moreover, while there is ample literature on the theory and motivation behind low carbon cities, existing literature has very limited analysis of the actual progress and challenges facing Chinese cities seeking a path of low carbon urban development.
This paper addresses these gaps by specifically evaluating the targets, plans and strategies being adopted by the eight low-carbon pilot cities under the NDRC's pilot program. As part of a program established by China's top policymaking agency, the experiences of the eight low carbon pilot cities will likely serve as important models for the future development of low carbon cities in China. This paper thus first reviews the historical development and context for the pilot low-carbon cities and related eco-city initiatives in China as strategies for addressing urbanization challenges. An ex-ante assessment of China's pilot low-carbon cities is then conducted through comparative desk research and review of the low-carbon development plans and supporting measures formulated for each pilot city. These plans are compared and evaluated in terms of the policy scope, targets and focus areas as well as supporting local policy measures, strategies and tools already put in place to date. A case study of the pilot city of Hangzhou's planning and implementation process is used to illustrate progress in implementing low carbon plans. The paper ends with key findings from the evaluation of the pilot city plans and discussion and conclusions on implications of these findings for the future development of low carbon cities and the broader context of the future role of cities in China's CO2 emissions mitigation efforts.
Section snippets
Overview of low carbon and eco-city development programs in China
In addition to the low carbon pilot program launched by the NDRC, parallel programs have also been initiated at both central and local government levels in recent years. By February 2011, 230 of 287 prefecture-and-above level cities have proposed plans to develop new “eco-cities”, while 133 of these cities have gone a step further by setting targets to become “low-carbon cities.” In addition, China currently has 11 major indicator systems for low-carbon and eco-city development. Zhou, He, and
Assessment of NDRC low carbon pilot city plans
Besides the eco-city programs introduced in Section 2, China's NDRC introduced its pilot program on low carbon development for 5 pilot provinces and 8 pilot cities in 2010. These pilot cities and provinces were selected based on geographic, social and economic diversity and representativeness, existing foundation and/or preparation work in low carbon development and demonstrated interest by the local regions to be a pilot location (NDRC, 2010). Fig. 1 shows the geographic distribution of the
Case study: Hangzhou's low carbon city planning process
While all eight pilot cities have adopted low carbon city development plans, very few have provided details on the process through which the plan was developed and the framework and processes for implementing the measures and targets in the plan. One exception is the city of Hangzhou, which was one of the earliest cities to propose a low carbon city plan to the NDRC and has already formed a comprehensive top-down framework for low carbon planning. Hangzhou provides a good case study of how
Key findings and discussion
Although the multiplicity of domestic and international low carbon and eco-city programs in China creates duplicative efforts and may not be the most efficient approach, it nevertheless allows China to try different approaches rather than adopt a single program for promoting low carbon urban development. Along the same lines, NDRC's low carbon city pilot program also allows local governments to experiment with and develop tailored local pathways of low carbon urban development rather than
Acknowledgments
This work was supported through the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231. We are grateful to He Gang of LBNL for reviewing an earlier draft of this paper, and to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback and suggestions.
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