ABSTRACT
The Yangtze River Delta Region (YRDR), China’s most developed region (GDP was 22.1% of the nation’s total, NBSC 2015), is now in the middle and later periods of industrialization, possessing energy-intensive and capital-intensive features. The rapid urbanization and industrialization are still escalating YRDR’s rigid demand of energies. At the moment, enhancing energy security, maintaining economic growth and reducing greenhouse gas emission are becoming the major issues that challenge the future of the region. Therefore, we estimated the past and the present energy supply and CO2 emissions in the YRDR by applying the IEA and IPCC-recommended approaches and projected the future trends of energy demand and CO2 emissions based on China’s Medium and Long Term Energy Strategy and 2011-2020 regional planning for the YRDR. According to the results, we have put forward a sustainable development
1 INTRODUCTION
For a century, both carbon intensity and global temperature have been on the rise. Furthermore, at the same time, human society has gradually become aware of the consequences of climate change due to the “greenhouse effect”, especially of carbon dioxide emissions, making it one of the crucial international political issues at present. Energy, which accounts for two-thirds of today’s greenhouse gas emissions, is at the heart of the problem and therefore must form the core of the solution (IEA 2015). In recent years, the famous international institutions such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Energy Agency (IEA), World Bank (WB) and the Energy Department of Germany, England and America have issued energy reports periodically in order to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The detailed inventory of energy and future projections in light of the recent economic and policy developments come from these institutions, and other institutions and countries are
project for the YRDR’s future energy planning and policy making, which may provide some general insights into the effectiveness of regional-level energy conservation and GHG reduction for other regions as well.
