Examining the relationships between carbon emissions and land supply in China

Abstract

China's CO2 reduction is crucial in mitigating global and regional climate change. Land resources used by industrial enterprises in China come from official land transactions, which indirectly affects carbon emissions. The quantitative examination of the relationship between land supply and carbon emissions can provide potential pathways and strategies for regional carbon emission reduction. For this purpose, we innovatively integrated land transaction data from China's industrial enterprise and carbon emission databases. Using this integrated database, we estimated the carbon emission changes from land transactions from 2006 to 2013, focusing on the transformation of agricultural land into industrial land in China's 331 cities. The results showed that land transactions could cause high carbon emissions in China. The industry with the largest land transaction area during the study period was the production and supply of electric power, steam, and hot water, and the one with the highest increase in carbon emissions from land transactions was the smelting and pressing of ferrous metals. By further examining the typology of the relationships between land transactions and carbon emissions for these cities, a scientific reference for pathways for reducing carbon emissions in cities was generated. Specifically, the results showed that cities with high land supply and carbon emissions were mainly resource-based or economic priority cities for development. For these cities, the entry threshold of energy-intensive industries must be raised, and the supply of land for clean energy enterprises should be increased. In contrast, cities with low land supply but high emissions primarily had depleting resources, high ecological and environmental pressure, and relatively lagging economic development. Correspondingly, the government should use the land supply to guide industries to reduce their dependence on traditional fossil energy. Regardless of the type of city in terms of relationships between carbon emissions and land transactions, indicators of carbon emission intensity should be included and carefully considered in land use planning and land transaction processes in the future.