ABSTRACT
This chapter scales up the learnings of the residential CO2 emission of different lifestyles to national level, measuring in kton/year, to depict the extent of climate impacts of the ongoing changes in demographic profiles and average lifestyles in China.
The potential impacts of urbanization and aging populations on residential CO2 emissions in China are examined. Under the influence of urbanization, the annual residential CO2 emission from 2018 to 2050 exhibited an inverted U-shape, with emission levels due to peak around 2025 before gradually declining. In 2050, the projected emission levels were 632.5 to 648.8 million tons. For aging population, it also exhibited the same inverted U-shape as urbanization for both the 2008 and 2018 time-use lifestyle, but with a much smaller magnitude. Emission levels increased continuously and peaked at 533.8 million tons in 2025 for the 2008 time-use lifestyle and 544.7 million tons in 2030 for the 2018 time-use lifestyle, followed by a more rapid decline due to shrinking population in those age groups between 15 and 74 years old.
Time-use measures are also explored to what extent these alternative measures can serve climate mitigation; and decomposition analysis and sensitive analysis are conducted for the purpose. It disaggregates the difference in residential CO2 emission between 2008 and 2018 into the impacts of time-use pattern and CO2 intensity of activities; and found that time-use have accounted for 5% of the difference. This could be converted into more than 35 million tons of CO2 emission, which is higher than total CO2 emission of countries like Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden. Encouraging the involvement of low carbon-intensive outdoor activities were also reported to have a great contribution to climate mitigation, reducing 32.5 to 70.2 million tons CO2/year.
