Neighborhood form and CO2 emission: evidence from 23 neighborhoods in Jinan, China

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Abstract

To understand the household CO2 emission level in China, as well as how much the neighborhoods’ socio-economic or design factors could influence the CO2 emission, 23 neighborhoods in Jinan were investigated in 2009 and 2010. These neighborhoods fall into four different types: superblock, enclave, grid and traditional. The household CO2 emission includes sources of both inhome energy use and passenger transportation. The average CO2 emission per household is 7.66 t·a-1, including 6.87 t in-home operational emission and 792 kg transportation emission. The household CO2 emission by neighborhood categories is 10.97, 5.65, 6.49, 5.40 t·household−1·a−1 for superblock, enclave, grid and traditional respectively. Superblock has the highest average emission and also the highest percent (more than 25%) of transportation emission among four different types of neighborhoods. The residential CO2 emission of superblock neighborhoods in Jinan has already reached the level in developed countries nearly ten years ago. It is predictable that more superblock neighborhoods would be built in China with the fast urbanization. How to avoid the rapid household CO2 emission growth in the future would be a systematic issue. The study also found that in addition to income and apartment area, household density, land use mix and accessibility to public transportation are three primary factors which have significant impacts on CO2 emission. High density, mixed land use and convenient accessibility to public transportation tend to reduce household CO2 emission.

Keywords

CO2 emission neighborhood type transportation household energy China 
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Copyright information

© Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, School of EnvironmentTsinghua UniversityBeijingChina
  2. 2.The Energy FoundationBeijingChina
  3. 3.School of ArchitectureTsinghua UniversityBeijingChina

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