Abstract:

The CO₂ emission affecting factors and performance were analyzed on the district/county level in Yangtze River Delta region in 2012, by the methods of partial least squares regression and residual models based on the dataset including direct and indirect emissions, population, GDP and income etc. The results showed that the emissions were clustered, top 40 emitters accounting for 86.59% of the total emissions in this region. Economic activity, population scale and population density have significant impacts on the emissions. The effect of population density is negative, which means that the compact morphology of districts/counties is favorable for low carbon emissions. There were 76 districts/counties and 56 districts/counties in the efficient and inefficient level respectively based on the performance evaluation. Generally, the performance was good when the population size of districts/counties are small (lower than 0.3 million) or very large (larger than 6.0 million), whereas it became complicated and fluctuated among districts/counties when the population size is in the middle level (0.3 million-6.0 million). The policies should focus on the morphology (population density) and population size of the districts/counties when directing the low carbon development in urbanization process of this region in the future.

Key words: Yangtze River Delta region, district/county, CO2 emission, affecting factors, performance