Moving to a Low-carbon Economy under Different Economic Circumstances
One valuable window for understanding a country’s capacity to address climate change is the study of cities, where more than 70 percent of the world’s energy is consumed. The Chinese government is eager to better understand and improve capacity at the provincial and city levels to shift to a low carbon economy and meet the energy efficiency targets stipulated in China’s Climate Change Programme and the carbon efficiency targets that will be issued in China’s 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015).
This project aims to understand China’s capacity to address climate change by scaling up work at the city level. The overall objective of this project is twofold: first, to work with the city governments to develop city low carbon development plans and policy and governance packages to achieve carbon reduction targets; and second, to study how differences in capabilities to respond to climate change at the city level are associated with differences in city size and level of economic development, and how to balance economic development and carbon reduction.
Four Chinese cities facing different economic circumstances are participating in this project. The four cities include medium and small ones (Guiyang and Zunyi) in Guizhou Province in underdeveloped, western China, and large and small cities (Jinan and Dongying) in Shandong Province in richer, coastal China. This project is sponsored by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office and is in collaboration with provincial research institutes and local city governments.
For more information about this research, please contact: jimin.zhao@ouce.ox.ac.uk