The Greenness of China:

Household Carbon Emissions and Urban Development

  • In China, households generate less than 20% of total carbon emissions in the country, while it is 40% in the US. When China transfer from a manufacturing economy to a service economy, this percentage will increase.

  • Numerous research studies have shown evidence that the spatial distribution of people, temperature, income levels, heating systems, and urban form all have an impact on carbon emissions per household.

  • Therefore, China’s urban development policies could have large potential impacts on global carbon emissions.

  • Today, per capita carbon emissions in the United States are about 5 times that of China. If China’s per capita greenhouse gas emissions rose to US levels, then global carbon emissions would increase by more than 50%

By estimating the carbon dioxide emissions of a standardized household, we are able to answer: 

“If a household moved from city A to city B, would total carbon emissions rise or fall?”

We calculated the total carbon emissions in 74 cities in China
(please refer to the paper for the detailed estimation methods).

Our results indicate that the ‘cleanest’ cities based are Huaian and Suqian while the ‘dirtiest’ cities are Daqing and Mudanjiang. Even in the dirtiest city (Daqing), a standardized household only produces one-fifth of the emissions produced in America’s cleanest city (San Diego).

 

We find that richer cities have significantly higher household carbon emissions. One possible explanation is that richer cities may have invested more in infrastructure that encourages energy use. In China, carbon emissions are particularly high in places during cold January's, possibly because of government-provided centralized home heating.

The cross-city relationship between winter temperature and household carbon emissions.

Unlike the US, China’s government pursues a well-defined set of regional development strategies. If successful, these efforts will impact carbon emissions of the targeted regions and the whole country.


The potential consequences of China’s regional development programs

As an initial attempt to assess the carbon production consequences of China's regional development programs, we calculated regional household carbon emissions factors by taking population-weighted averages of our urban household carbon production measures.

Survey structure and group decompositions

We also predicted per-household carbon emissions in 2026.

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On average, per-household carbon emission will grow by a mere 26% from 2006 to 2026. Combined with the projected 40% increase in urban population, a richer China in 2026 will have a modest 76% increase in its GHG emissions from urban households (assuming constant average household size and the same infrastructure and urban form from 2006).

Team

Siqi Zheng

MIT Sustainable Urbanization Lab, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, 

Center for Real Estate

Rui Wang

Luskin School of Public Affairs, University of California, Los Angeles 

Edward Glaeser

Department of Economics, Harvard University

Matthew Kahn

Johns Hopkins University and NBER

 

Publications

Zheng, S., Wang, R., Glaeser, E. L., & Kahn, M. E. (2010). The greenness of China: household carbon dioxide emissions and urban development. Journal of Economic Geography, 11(5), 761-792.

Yang, Z., Fan, Y., & Zheng, S. (2016). Determinants of household carbon emissions: Pathway toward eco-community in Beijing. Habitat International, 57, 175-186.

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