ABSTRACT
In 2005, China’s urbanization rate was 40 per cent, representing 531 million urban dwellers, which is 17 per cent of the world’s urban population (UN 2007). Increasing urbanization is a national policy priority in China, where urbanization has been perceived by decision makers as an element necessary to economic and industrial growth. Accordingly, China’s Eleventh Five-Year Plan aims to increase the urbanization rate to 47 per cent by 2010 (Raufer 2007). UN projections show that urbanization in China will grow rapidly, reaching 73 per cent, or 1.02 billion urban dwellers, in 2050. However, increased urbanization demands greater energy use in a rapidly developing economy, owing to rising household incomes and the continuing concentration of energy-consuming sectors into urban areas. Rising incomes make urban dwellers’ lifestyles more energy-intensive, and the new urban migrants demand greater energy per capita than they did in their rural settlements. Consequently, urban areas will play a greater role than at present in shaping China’s energy demand and CO2 emissions. In effect, in the past three decades government policies in China have created an ‘energy-intensive’ and ‘high carbon’ urban transition through their efforts to increase urbanization and economic growth. However, energy use and carbon emissions per capita are still small in China and, as this chapter demonstrates, efforts to develop ‘low carbon’ urban futures are also emerging.
