基于气候政策覆盖度看地方政府低碳策略
工作论文 | 2023年8月 | 3
Context
Cities are the main battleground for China
to meet its climate targets. Cities are centers of
population agglomeration and major contributors to
energy-related carbon emissions. Chinese cities have
shown their climate ambitions. Almost all low-carbon
pilot cities propose to reach carbon peaking before 2030.
Cities need green, low-carbon policy systems
and institutional mechanisms. Currently,
the path of carbon neutrality in Chinese cities is
still unclear, and the trajectories of low-carbon
development are not the same. Tracking developments
and recent trends in city climate policy coverage and
summarize city low-carbon strategies can inspire city
decision-makers to innovate and provide lessons for
other cities.
Existing research lacks attention and
assessment of climate policy at the city level.
Many studies evaluate climate actions and policies from
a global and national perspective, but there are few
research on city climate policies, and their applications
are not widespread, especially the lack of assessment of
climate policy coverage in Chinese cities.
Assessment framework
This study aims to fill the gap in the
assessment of urban climate policies and
promote peer learning between cities. Based on
the framework of the City Clean Energy Scorecard and
the climate policies of 12 sample cities, it proposes an
index system that can be applied to assess city climate
policy coverage. This system would encourage cities
to enhance their climate ambitions and improve their
capacity toward carbon neutrality as well as help
establish a fair, reasonable, cooperative, and win-win
global climate governance system.
The assessment framework is mainly used to
reflect the comprehensiveness of city climate
policy coverage. The assessment framework
covers the areas of the City Clean Energy Scorecard,
including community-wide initiatives, building
policy, transportation policy, energy and water
utilities, and local government operations as well
as green finance and waste management. Due to
the impact of climate on cities’ energy structure,
efficiency, and carbon emissions, the distribution of
Chinese cities in climate zones—mainly in temperate
and cold temperate zones—is considered when
selecting sample cities. Considering data availability,
priorities were given to cities from English-speaking
countries and with higher administrative levels
to make the indicators and data collection more
comprehensive.
Conclusion and recommendations
Cities need to optimize tracking of climate
action progress to refine their climate goals
and planning. Cities have different levels of
performance between various fields, and there are
also big gaps in performance levels between cities.
Cities with sound climate policies have clear and
synergized energy-saving and emissions-reduction
targets in each field. Therefore, cities need to optimize
the data collection of the status quo in each field
before they can set goals and measures according to
local conditions, and establish information disclosure
system to implement supervision and contraints on
accountable entities.
Financial instruments are critical to the
low-carbon development of cities and can
contribute to various action areas. From
supporting distributed photovoltaic systems within
the community and investing in building energy-
saving renovation projects to establishing climate
investments and financing project libraries,
municipal governments are actively adopting
incentives such as subsidies, taxes, and investments
to promote their low-carbon transformation. There
is a huge funding gap to address climate change.
Municipalities need to guide diverse sources of funds
and innovative financial products and services as
well as build a sound policy support system and
market environment.
National policies have a driving effect on
cities, but cities generally have stronger
climate ambitions and can promote peer
learning. The policies of higher-level administrative
units contribute partly to a city’s score, but the overall
proportion is relatively low. Cities often set stand-
alone goals and plans, and many city plans go ahead
of national goals and are more stringent than national
standards.