From production to consumption: A multi-city comparative study of cross-regional carbon emissions

Abstract

With the increasing threat of global climate change nowadays, carbon emissions reductions in cities have aroused the concern of the world. Carbon emission is one of profiles that are closely connected to the urban metabolic system. Here, a global environmentally extended multi scale input-output model (EE-MSIO) was employed to track accurately the carbon emissions in the multi scale economic system from production and consumption perspectives. The four municipalities in China for Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing were selected as the case. The findings reveal that final demands in the four Chinese municipalities not only trigger a large amount of carbon emissions within their own jurisdictional boundaries, but also impose emissions to other regions via domestic and international trade. The results evidenced that close to 50% in Chongqing and more than 70% of consumption-based carbon emissions in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin occurred outside the urban geographic boundary. Moreover, North China is the largest carbon producer for Beijing and Tianjin, Central China for Shanghai and Southwestern for Chongqing, while RoW and BRIIAT are the top two international carbon inflow sources for all four municipalities.