Abstract
Many challenges are faced in the process of urban sustainable development, including the continuous growth in energy demand and rapid increase in CO2 and air pollutant emissions. This study focuses on the costs of measures to address these issues and establishes a multi-objective comprehensive assessment model for energy saving, CO2, and pollutant emission (MCEE). Taking Guangzhou as an example, the sustainable development measures are divided into three categories, energy-saving, demand-optimization, and environmental-protection. Five scenarios are set to quantitatively evaluate the costs when these measures are implemented alone or coordinately for the period 2015–2035. Conclusions are as follows: (1) Measures of energy-saving and demand-optimization have the best synergistic effect on energy saving and emission reduction. The synergistic benefits include an 80% and 84% increase in energy savings and CO2 reductions, respectively, and more than 50% increase in pollutant reductions. (2) Measures of demand-optimization and energy-saving have the best synergistic effect on cost saving, which reduces the unit technical improvement costs of energy saving and CO2 reduction by 49.5% and 54.9%, respectively, and the unit end-of-pipe costs of four pollutants by 59.15%, 54.43%, 61.15%, and 51.96, respectively. (3) Environmental-protection measures have remarkable synergistic effects in reducing the cost of health loss and labor loss. At the price of a 5% increase in technical improvement cost and 9% in end-of-pipe treatment cost, health loss, labor loss, and total social cost will be reduced by 18%, 19%, and 3%, respectively. The above conclusions provide support for cities of the same type to coordinate various measures, reduce resistance and barriers to their implementation, compensate for the market deficiency of high costs of some measures, and achieve the goal of sustainable development.
Highlights
Urbanization is the result of a game between humans and nature, and sustainable urban development is the long-term equilibrium of this game
Greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollutant emissions caused by rapid urban development are three of the main concerns for sustainable urban development [7,8,9]
Based on the above background, this paper focuses on the synergistic effects of energy saving, CO2 reduction, and pollutant reduction measures in sustainable urban development, and Guangzhou, one of the fastest growing cities in China and the core city of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, is taken as an example
Summary
Urbanization is the result of a game between humans and nature, and sustainable urban development is the long-term equilibrium of this game. Over half of the world’s population is currently living in urban areas [1,2]. Cities are the world’s largest consumers of energy, as well as the major emitters of greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions [3,4,5,6]. Sustainable Cities are listed by the United Nations as the eleventh Sustainable Development. Greenhouse gas emissions, and air pollutant emissions caused by rapid urban development are three of the main concerns for sustainable urban development [7,8,9]. Energy is a major driver of urban development
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