Abstract. As increasing urbanization has become a national policy priority for economic growth in China, cities have become important players in efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, their efforts have been hampered by the lack of specific and comparable carbon emission inventories. Comprehensive carbon emission inventories, which present both a relatively current snapshot and also show how emissions have changed over the past several years, of twelve Chinese cities were developed using bottom-up approach. Carbon emissions in most of Chinese cities rose along with economic growth from 2004 to 2008. Yet per capita carbon emissions varied between the highest and lowest emitting cities by a factor of nearly 7. Average per capita carbon emissions varied across sectors, including industrial energy consumption (64.3%), industrial processes (10.2%), transportation (10.6%), household energy consumption (8.0%), commercial energy consumption (4.3%) and waste processing (2.5%). The levels of per capita carbon emissions in China's cities were higher than we anticipated before comparing them with the average of global cities. This is mainly due to the major contribution of industry sector encompassing industrial energy consumption and industrial processes to the total carbon emissions of Chinese cities.
Economic implications of reducing carbon emissions from energy use and industrial processes in Brazil
