ACP Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics ACP 1680-7324 Copernicus GmbH Göttingen, Germany 10.5194/acp-12-6197-2012 The carbon emissions of Chinese cities Wang H. 1 2 Zhang R. 1 Liu M. 1 Bi J. 1 2 State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210046, China Institute for Climate and Global Change Research, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210046, China 18 07 2012 12 14 6197 6206 This is an open-access article ditributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. This article is available from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/6197/2012/acp-12-6197-2012.html The full text article is available as a PDF file from http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/6197/2012/acp-12-6197-2012.pdf

As increasing urbanization has become a national policy priority for economic growth in China, cities have become important players in efforts to reduce carbon emissions. However, their efforts have been hampered by the lack of specific and comparable carbon emission inventories. Comprehensive carbon emission inventories for twelve Chinese cities, which present both a relatively current snapshot and also show how emissions have changed over the past several years, were developed using a bottom-up approach. Carbon emissions in most Chinese cities rose along with economic growth from 2004 to 2008. Yet per capita carbon emissions varied between the highest and lowest emitting cities by a factor of nearly 7. Average contributions of sectors to per capita emissions for all Chinese cities were 65.1% for industrial energy consumption, 10.1% for industrial processes, 10.4% for transportation, 7.7% for household energy consumption, 4.2% for commercial energy consumption and 2.5% for waste processing. However, these shares are characterized by considerable variability due to city-specific factors. The levels of per capita carbon emissions in China's cities were higher than we anticipated before comparing them with the average of ten cities in other parts of the world. This is mainly due to the major contribution of the industry sector in Chinese cities.

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