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Chen, Binkai; Lu, Ming; Zhong, Ninghua In: Global COE Hi-Stat Discussion Paper Series, February 2012 Abstract This paper provides a new explanation for China's extremely low consumption-to-GDP ratio, highlighting the constraints of the "household registration system" (Hukou) on China's household consumption. Our baseline results show that the consumption of migrants without an urban Hukou is 30.7% lower than that of urban residents. Moreover, consumption heterogeneity cannot be explained by migration effects, culture, social norms, habits or some other forms of household heterogeneity. Further studies on the composition of household consumption have shown that the gaps are largest in areas such as education and culture, durable goods and health. As both the number and income level of migrants are rising, the constraining effects of Hukou on household consumption will continue to increase.

With rapid economy growth, building energy consumption in China has been gradually increased. The energy consumption and indoor environmental quality of 51 office buildings in Hainan Province, a hot and humid area, were studied through collection of verified data in site visits and field tests. The result revealed that, electricity accounted for 99.79% of the total energy consumption, natural gas 0.17%, and diesel 0.04%. The air conditioning dominated the energy use with a share of 43.18%, equipment in the particular areas 26.90%, equipment in the office rooms 11.95%, lighting system 8.67%, general service system 7.57%, and miscellaneous items 1.73%. Statistical method including six indicators obtained the energy consumption benchmark with upper limit of 98.31 kW·h/m2 and lower limit of 55.26 kW·h/m2. According to ASHRAE standard (comfortable standard) and GB/T 18883-2002 (acceptable standard), the indoor environmental quality of 51 sampled office buildings was classified into three ranks: good, normal and bad. With benchmark of building energy consumption combined with indoor environmental quality, it was found that only 3.92% of sampled buildings can be identified as the best performance buildings with low energy consumption and advanced indoor environmental quality, and the buildings classified into normal level accounted for the maximum ratio.

DOI : http://dx.doi.org.gate3.inist.fr/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.05.080 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Nyakundi M. Michieka, Jerald J. Fletcher Paru dans : Energy Policy, Available online 22 June 2012 Abstract This paper investigates the causal relationship between urban population, real GDP, electricity production and coal consumption in China for the period 1971-2009. Using a vector autoregression framework and a modified version of the Granger (1969) causality test proposed by Toda and Yamamoto (J. Econ. 66 (1995) 225), the results suggest that there is causality running from GDP to coal consumption. The variance decomposition analysis report that urban population and coal affect electricity production variability over the forecast period. We also find that increasing urban population may negatively affect China's GDP over time. Policy measures aimed at influencing GDP could ultimately affect coal consumption. Highlights ► We find Granger Causality running from GDP to coal consumption. ► China can mitigate the adverse environmental effects of coal by altering GDP path. ► We find Granger Causality running from urbanization to electricity production. ► China needs to find other sources of energy to cater for growing electricity demand. ► Increasing urban population may slow economic growth due to overcrowding in cities.

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Guiwen Liu, Zezhou Wu, Mingming Hu Paru dans : Energy Procedia, Volume 14, 2012, Pages 1925-1930 Abstract Around 30% of the national energy consumption in China can be attributed to buildings, of which one-fifth is consumed within public buildings. In recent time, public buildings have been reckoned as the dominant objects for conducting energy efficient management. In order to obtain valuable information for the assessment of energy consumption status, an investigation was conducted in Chongqing - the youngest, largest and most dynamic municipal in China. A number of public buildings, including 28 governmental office buildings, 15 emporiums and 5 hotels, were selected for the investigation from the aspect of energy cost. Based on the collected data of electricity, water and gas, the characteristics of the energy consumption in each type of the public buildings are discussed, and the energy management in each type of public buildings is compared. 2011 2nd International Conference on Advances in Energy Engineering (ICAEE)

Xuefei Ren's work on the high-end of the building boom in China brings together the sociology of globalization with the study of architecture and the built environment. Building Globalization treats architectural production as crucial to the material and symbolic ways in which global cities are made. Based on Ren's doctoral research at the University of Chicago, the book draws on fieldwork conducted in Beijing and Shanghai between 2004 and 2008, covering the bull years leading up to the Beijing Olympics. China is now taken to exemplify the geo-demographic shift that has seen developing countries lead current processes of urbanisation. However the Chinese government's attitude towards quanqiuhua chengshi (global cities) and its support for rapid urban growth from the mid-late 1990s represented a striking reversal of official policy which had been to limit the growth of large cities and promote instead the development of small-medium centres (p.11). The re-scaling of state power to metropolitan level in the interests of enhancing urban competitiveness has been an international trend in recent decades. In China this has proved particularly effective in driving urban growth, given state ownership of land and government control over household registration, urban planning and development decisions. Metropolitan governments in China have the kind of ownership and discretionary powers of which the most boosterist western city mayors can only dream. Ren argues convincingly that the processes shaping these cities are increasingly transnational; in particular, the forces that make buildings 'operate beyond national boundaries, as seen in the circulation of investment capital, the movements of built-environment professionals, and the diffusion of new technologies' (p.6). However, while Chinese economic growth may have destabilized a global balance of power dominated by the triad of the USA, the European Union and Japan, Ren's analysis suggests that older core-peripher

Residential energy consumption (REC) is the second largest energy use category (10%) in China and urban residents account for 63% of the REC.

The rapid growth of the Chinese economy has resulted in great pressure on energy consumption, especially the energy intensive sector - the industrial sector. To achieve sustainable development, China has to consider how to promote energy efficiency to meet the demand of Chinese rapid economic growth, as the energy efficiency of China is relatively low. Meanwhile, the appeal of energy saving and emission reduction has been made by the Chinese central government. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the energy efficiency of industrial sector in China and to assess efficiency development probabilities. The framework of total factor energy efficiency index is adopted to determine the discrepancy of energy efficiency in Chinese industrial sector based on the provincial statistical data of industrial enterprises above designated size in 30 provinces from 2005 to 2009, with gross industrial output as the output value and energy consumption, average remaining balance of capital assets and average amount of working force as the input values. Besides, in considerate of the regional divide of China, namely eastern, central, and western, and economic development differences in each region, energy efficiency of each region is also analysed in this paper. The results show that there is room for China to improve its energy efficiency, especially western provinces which have large amount of energy input excess. Generally speaking, insufficient technological investment and fail of reaching best scale of manufacture are two factors preventing China from energy efficiency promotion. Based on our findings, some policy implications on the improvement of energy efficiency, particularly for economically underdeveloped regions in China, are also discussed.

In common with other major economic centres in China, Shanghai's energy consumption has been increasing rapidly to support the high growth rate of its economy. To achieve rational, efficient and clean use of energy, together with improved environmental quality within the city, the Shanghai municipal government has decided to expand the supply and utilization of natural gas. Shanghai plans to increase the share of natural gas in its primary energy mix to 7 per cent by 2010, up from 3 per cent in 2005. This increase in natural gas demand has to be matched with a corresponding increase in supply. To date, the Shanghai region has relied on offshore extracted natural gas but this supply is limited due to the size of the reserves. Since 2005, the West-East pipeline has provided an alternative for Shanghai but demands from other regions could reduce the potential for expanding supplies from that source. Since domestic production will not be sufficient to meet demand in the near future, Shanghai is building a liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification terminal at the Yangshan deep-water port that would allow an additional supply of more than 3 billion cubic meters per year of natural gas. Malaysia has already committed to supply LNG to the Shanghai terminal at a price that is significantly higher than the wholesale "city-gate" price for natural gas transported via pipeline, but still lower than the gas price to end-use consumers. The presence of both an LNG terminal and a transmission pipeline that connects Shanghai to domestic gas-producing regions will create gas-on-gas competition. This study assesses the benefits of introducing such competition to one of China's most advanced cities under various scenarios for demand growth. In this paper, the impact of imported LNG on market concentration in Shanghai's gas market will be analysed using the Herfindahl-Hirschmann index (HHI) and the residual supply index (RSI). Our results show that Shanghai remains a supply-constrained

Abstract This paper investigates the process of tourism-driven urbanization as a local strategy of town development in China. Existing literature has highlighted the role of industrialization in the urbanization process of China's small towns, but here it is suggested that tourism - a development initiative based on the creation of space for consumption, rather than production - can also foster significant expansion of urbanized built environment and remarkable transformation of local socio-economic structures. The case study suggests that, in contrast to the recent process of industrialization-based urbanization in China's small towns, tourism urbanization in Zhapo Town, Guangdong Province has been a highly localized development initiative characterized by the absence of foreign capital investment. Tourism-driven urbanization in Zhapo has involved several processes whose joint effect has reproduced the local socio-spatial organization: the rapid of expansion of urbanized built environment; a unique pattern of land use and land development; the booming of tertiary economic sectors; and the emergence of a flexible regime of labor force. In the meantime, the research also contests Mullins' (1991) classical theorization of tourism urbanization, and suggests that recent tourism-driven urbanization process in Zhapo Town is not the product of the post-modernization of urban cultural manifestations, but is situated within the context-specific space of China's modernity and is based on relatively standardized provision of tourism-related service and the mass consumption of nature. Highlights ► The research investigates town development in China with the perspective of tourism urbanization. ► Tourism in Zhapo town has triggered significant changes in urbanized built environment. ► Tourism urbanization is accompanied with local socio-economic restructuring. ► Tourism urbanization in Zhapo is situated within the space of China's modernization.

[ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Shuxiao Wang, Jiming Hao Paru dans : Journal of Environmental Sciences, Volume 24, Issue 1, January 2012, Pages 2-13 Abstract This article analyzed the control progress and current status of air quality, identified the major air pollution issues and challenges in future, proposed the long-term air pollution control targets, and suggested the options for better air quality in China. With the continuing growth of economy in the next 10-15 years, China will face a more severe situation of energy consumption, electricity generation and vehicle population leading to increase in multiple pollutant emissions. Controlling regional air pollution especially fine particles and ozone, as well as lowering carbon emissions from fossil fuel consumption will be a big challenge for the country. To protect public health and the eco-system, the ambient air quality in all Chinese cities shall attain the national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) and ambient air quality guideline values set by the World Health Organization (WHO). To achieve the air quality targets, the emissions of SO2, NOx, PM10, and volatile organic compounds (VOC) should decrease by 60%, 40%, 50%, and 40%, respectively, on the basis of that in 2005. A comprehensive control policy focusing on multiple pollutants and emission sources at both the local and regional levels was proposed to mitigate the regional air pollution issue in China. The options include development of clean energy resources, promotion of clean and efficient coal use, enhancement of vehicle pollution control, implementation of synchronous control of multiple pollutants including SO2, NOx, VOC, and PM emissions, joint prevention and control of regional air pollution, and application of climate friendly air pollution control measures.

Posted by Kate Mackenzie on Aug 30 14:09. In our first post in this series, we examined the widely-held belief that China's steel demand will continue to rise at a rapid rate. FT Alphaville, along with others, contend that such forecasts are on shaky ground. This is, in part, because of the dubiousness of one of the underlying assumptions: that China will rapidly urbanise more of its population. (Here's a very recent example of this argument, from Stephen Roach.) The proportion Chinese living in urban areas just passed the 50 per cent mark in the past year but, the story goes, there is more to come. This will in turn mean more industrialisation, more modernisation, a bigger and consuming middle class and of course more GDP growth. In other words: [...] farmers who once led simple, subsistence-level lives now become factory and service workers in the city, reside in apartments furnished with appliances, occasionally eat out, and perhaps even send their kids to college. In the process, self-sufficient rural households are transformed into workers receiving higher wages and participating in the commodity economy of consumption. As such, urbanization is as much an economic and social transformation as it is a spatial and demographic process. Sounds great doesn't it? The above quote however comes from a paper by Kam Wing Chan in Eurasian Geography and Economics early this year. Chan is a professor of geography at the University of Washington, and he doesn't agree that this is how things will continue to play out for China.

This article considers the medium- and long-term prospects for residential construction in China and their implications for steel consumption.

Tiered electricity price (TEP) reform is a planning policy for household electricity conservation in China. Based on TEP, several price hierarchies are provided, and additional payment will be charged if the electricity consumptions exceed the upper bound of each hierarchy. Yet, the optimal level of each price tier and the institutions for implementing TEP need further research, which are set on the basis of considering residents' affordability and willingness to pay. Therefore, this paper aims at exploring determinants of public willingness to accept TEP and finding out the acceptable range of premium. A questionnaire survey in four urban cities of China is conducted to collect data, and an ordinary regression model is adopted in our analysis to identify the drivers and barriers to general public's acceptance of TEP. The results show that middle income earners are the groups that are mostly opposed to TEP. Rather than just focusing on economic factors, public environmental awareness should be highlighted during the implementation of TEP, because cost is not a statistically significant determinant in this study. Moreover, the public acceptable rate of premium of TEP in the urban cities, according to our research results, may be below .05 RMB/kW h. Highlights

DOI : http://dx.doi.org.gate3.inist.fr/10.1016/j.proenv.2012.01.113 [ScienceDirect, via Biblio-SHS] Auteur : Gengyuan Liu, Zhifeng Yang, Bin Chen, Meirong Su (State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing) Paru dans : Procedia Environmental Sciences, Volume 13, 2012, Pages 1189-1203, 18th Biennial ISEM Conference on Ecological Modelling for Global Change and Coupled Human and Natural System Abstract In this paper, a dynamic low-carbon model was developed to show a quantitative and consistent future snapshot. This study presents three scenarios for Chongqing's energy consumption and related CO2 emissions up to 2020, which includes basic development scenario, macro-policy control development scenario and low carbon development scenario. It explains the crucial technologies for Chongqing city as it leaves a business-as-usual trajectory and embarks on a low carbon pathway. A major finding from the scenario analysis is that low carbon and energy-saving policies can dramatically improve Chongqing's position. Under the low carbon scenario, several suggestions for policy making are proposed. This dynamic low-carbon model would benefit from the allocation of decision-making powers in the areas of regulation, policy-making and planning for low carbon development.

August 2nd, 2011 Author: Yuhan Zhang, Columbia University Published in: East Asia Forum. Economics, Politics and Public Policy in East Asia and the Pacific [En ligne] Consulté le 23/08/2012 http://www.eastasiaforum.org While many Chinese pundits and scholars are applauding for China's Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) as a milestone for China's green revolution, the country's march to low energy consumption and low carbon economy is not going to be a smooth or straight one. China's five-year plans, albeit strategically sound, are not likely to change the short- and medium-term energy and climate landscapes. Challenges will remain [...]

Feature Story August 14, 2012 The year 2011 was a historic moment in the urbanization of China, as its urban population exceeded its rural population for the first time. About 350 million new urban residents are expected to migrate to cities over the coming 20 years. Urban development on such a scale is both a challenge and an opportunity for urban transport. A challenge, as current trends are unsustainable both at local and national level. Locally, the rapid growth in car ownership has enabled greater personal mobility for many but has also brought traffic congestion, accidents, and air pollution. Slow and congested transport systems are beginning to stifle the efficiency of the urban economy. The construction of new roads to accommodate traffic leads to urban sprawl and accelerated traffic growth and hampers the mobility of those who do not own a car. Nationally, excessive conversion of farmland for urban development consumes scarce land resources and impacts the country's ecological systems. Rising fuel consumption also endangers the nation's long-term energy security, while growing emissions from urban transport render the national objectives of CO2 reduction difficult to achieve. But this rapid urbanization also represents an opportunity, as the recognition of urban transport's spillover effects has led to a new policy emphasis on public transport priority and sustainable urban transport development. [...]

Abstract: Threatened by the huge pressure caused by climate change, low-carbon cities have become an inevitable part of urban evolution. It is essential to evaluate urban low-carbon development levels to smoothly promote the construction of low-carbon cities. This paper proposes an evaluation index system for urban low-carbon development from the points of view of economic development and social progress, energy structure and usage efficiency, living consumption, and development surroundings. A weighted sum model was also established. Selecting 12 typical Chinese cities as cases studies, an integrated evaluation was conducted based on the index system and the assessment model. The development speed and limiting factors of different cities were also analyzed. The 12 cities were ultimately classified into three groups in terms of their low-carbon development patterns by integrating all of the analysis results. Furthermore, suitable regulation and management for different patterns were suggested. This study both aids in assessing the executive effect of low-carbon city construction and helps to determine existing problems and suggest effective solutions.

Zhang Chun Wang Haotong August 03, 2012 China's low-carbon city programmes are doing well on public awareness, but an NGO survey finds little evidence of greener habits. Only a small proportion of people in China's low-carbon pilot cities are living "low-carbon lives" in spite of widespread knowledge of the green agenda, a year-long survey of household energy consumption carried out by Beijing-based NGO Green Beagle suggests. The study of habits in eight Chinese cities identified as green leaders by China's top economic planning body, the National Development and Reform Commission, involved 3,200 questionnaires and interviews with three to five households in different income brackets in each region. The NGO wanted to find out if inhabitants of these places had heard about "low-carbon" lifestyles and whether they were making efforts to reduce their own environmental footprint through their daily choices. Under the "low-carbon" pilot scheme, which launched in 2010, the eight cities - Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Xiamen, Hangzhou, Nanchang, Guiyang and Baoding - are trying to find ways of reducing carbon emissions while continuing to grow economically (Beijing and Shanghai were added to the list in 2011, but are treated as a separate category). Five provinces are charged with the same task: Guangdong, Liaoning, Hubei, Shanxi and Yunnan. If they perform well, they will be treated as an example for the rest of the country.[...]

China's Urban New Area September 7, Wenjin Hotel, Beijing The year 2011 marks a milestone in China's urbanization. For the first time in history, China's urban population surpassed that of rural areas. According to the World Bank, China's urbanization is poised to grow dramatically over the coming two decades. And the increase in the urban population will be the equivalent of more than one Tokyo (over 13 million) each year as the share of urban dwellers in the total population climbs to two-thirds in 2030. The Chinese government has been reiterating that urbanization is a key driver of China's domestic consumption and a long-lasting engine of China' economic powerhouse. How should China continue its urbanization process? How should China cope with challenges rising from political, social, economic and technological fields? What international experiences and local pilot explorations are worth spreading? By hosting the 2012 Annual Forum, the Urban China Initiative hopes to inspire enlightening discussions among participants from public, private and academic sectors to find clues that will help address those above questions.

Abstract This paper links urbanization strategies to changes in land use and associated impacts on rural communities and agro-ecosystems in a rural area of China. Energy, monetary and human time variables as well as information on environmental pressures, have been combined to compare different typologies of households and the metabolism of different patterns of land use from an integrated perspective. The results show that urbanization strategies, aimed at shifting the current land use and at displacing the local population, while increasing the economic efficiency is also associated with an increase in fossil energy consumption and environmental pressure, as well as a reduction of the multifunctional characteristic of the area under investigation. Based on these findings the paper also offers a critical discussion of the Chinese rural development policy arguing that the multifunctionality of rural areas should be taken into account by Chinese policy-makers and planners as a viable strategy to achieve rural development targets. Highlights ► Urbanization strategies in China drive the land use change of rural areas. ► Forced migration decreases rural food self-sufficiency and diversification of risk. ► HEPA patterns have higher economic efficiency and energy intensity than LEPA. ► Rural-urban migrations favor the creation of mono-functional agricultural systems.