Urban transport and CO2 emissions: some evidence from Chinese cities

Abstract

The work presented below was conducted as part of the World Bank's economic and sector work titled ‘Urban Transport and Climate Change’. It is first a compendium of data—most of it collected as part of the ‘China–GEF–World Bank Urban Transport Partnership Program’—and also provides a preliminary analysis of urban transport characteristics, energy use, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for a diverse set of cities in China. This working paper is not in itself intended to be a strategy for urban transport and climate change in China. It is the view of the authors that this research could be an input toward the development of such a strategy in China and more broadly. Although transport in general, and urban transport in particular, is acknowledged to be an important and growing source of GHG emissions, work still needs to be done to develop robust and standardized datasets and frameworks to support a decision‐making process. The paper is intended as a background document to support ongoing discussions about a climate change strategy and to establish a dataset to be made available as a platform for future studies and further refinement. It is hoped that others will take advantage of the dataset created for this study and use it as a basis for projections, comparative analysis, and to test their own hypothesis. Reviewers of this paper have also raised many specific possibilities and interesting ideas for further work, which are summarized in the conclusions. The authors would particularly like to thank AusAID (the Australian Government's overseas aid program), ESMAP (Energy Sector Management Assistance Program), and GEF (Global Environment Facility) who provided partial financing for this work. The authors would also like to acknowledge the management of the World Bank's Sustainable Development units in East Asia & Pacific Region and Latin American & the Caribbean Region for their support.This article is categorized under: Energy Efficiency > Systems and Infrastructure Energy Infrastructure > Systems and Infrastructure Energy and Climate > Systems and Infrastructure