Carbon implications of China’s urbanization

Abstract

China recently announced a plan to move an unprecedented large number of rural residents to cities over a relative short period of time; i.e., potentially more than 100 million people would move to China’s cities by 2020 potentially leading to large increases in energy consumption and CO <inf>2</inf> emissions. By applying environmentally extended input–output analysis, in this study we estimate the carbon footprint of Chinese urban and rural residents and assess the carbon implications of China’s urban migration plan. Our results show that more than 1 gigaton cumulative additional CO <inf>2</inf> emissions would be induced by moving 100 million rural residents to cities by 2020. Rural–urban migration plans of such scale need to go hand in hand with urban planning and climate policies to mitigate the effects on CO <inf>2</inf> emissions and other environmental issues.