Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Urban Transport in China: Geographical Characteristics and Future Challenges

Abstract

This paper estimates and analyzes the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from urban passenger transport in China from 1990 to 2012 at three spatial scales: the national level, the provincial level and 'the Belt and Road' level. At the national level, road transport was found to be the leading source of passenger transport CO2 emissions, followed by air transport, whereas the CO2 emissions from rail and water transport remained at relatively low and stable levels. At the provincial level, CO2 emissions from passenger transport were the highest in the eastern region, followed by the central region, and the lowest in the western region. The increasing coefficients of variation (CV) over the past two decades indicate that transport CO2 emissions tended to be more concentrated in the eastern provinces, such as Guangdong, Jiangsu, Shandong, and Zhejiang. At the 'the Belt and Road' level, most major cities along 'the Silk Road Economic Belt' (i.e. 'the Belt') showed relatively low transport CO2 emissions, whereas the cities along 'the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road' (i.e. 'the Road') had relatively high transport CO2 emissions. Nonetheless, road transport already dominated the transport CO2 emissions in all these cities. Following the national development strategy, more travel demand will be generated by the economic development and infrastructure construction in these cities. This can pose a great challenge to the target of low-carbon emissions in China. Apart from managing travel demand, it is necessary to encourage a modal shift from road transport towards more sustainable transport modes, i.e., rail and public transport.

圍繞全國、省市和“一帶一路”三個空間層面,對1990-2012年中國客運交通的碳排放進行了估算和分析。研究表明：① 在全國層面上,公路是碳排放總量最大的運輸方式,其次是航空,而鐵路和水運的碳排放較低且保持穩定;② 在省市層面上,交通碳排放呈現出從東部向中、西部遞減的趨勢,並且空間分佈越來越集中在東部省份;③ “一帶一路”的主要城市中,“絲綢之路經濟帶”（簡稱“一帶”）的沿線城市表現出較低的交通碳排放,而“21世紀海上絲綢之路”（簡稱“一路”）沿線的港口城市的交通碳排放較高,而且都以公路碳排放為主。未來在滿足和控制交通需求的同時,有必要發展以鐵路和公共交通為主的低碳交通模式,替代目前以公路為主的交通模式。