Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567

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Energy Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol

Urban CO2 emissions in China: Spatial boundary

and performance comparison
Bofeng Cai a, Lixiao Zhang b,n
a
Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing 100012, China
b
State Key Joint Laboratory of Environmental Simulation and Pollution Control, School of Environment, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China

H I G H L I G H T S

Four types of urban boundaries in China were clarified and defined.

Different urban boundaries will induce deviation in CO2 emissions as large as 654%.

The UB4 stands for appropriate urban boundary for urban CO2 emissions analysis.

Gridded data proves to be supplementary tools for urban CO2 emissions accounting.

ar t ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Different names/concepts and therefore different spatial boundaries for cities in China are responsible for
Received 8 June 2013 the conflicting and confusing results associated with urban CO2 emissions accounting. In this study, four
Received in revised form types of urban boundaries, i.e., city administrative boundary (UB1), city district boundary (UB2), city
22 October 2013
built-up area (UB3) and urban proper (UB4), were identified and defined. Tianjin was subsequently
Accepted 29 October 2013
selected as the case city to illustrate the different performances of CO2 emissions with respect to these
Available online 16 November 2013
four boundaries using a 1-km grid dataset built bottom-up by point-emission sources. Different urban
Keywords: boundaries can induce a difference in CO2 emissions as large as 654%. UB1 and UB2 are not the
Urban boundary appropriate proxies for urban boundaries in the analysis of urban CO2 emissions, although UB1 is a
Carbon emissions
widely adopted boundary. UB3 is a good representative of city clusters and urban sprawl in a certain
Gridded dataset
region, whereas UB4 is the appropriate system boundary for such issues as urban CO2 emissions in light
of landscape characteristics and pertinent human activities, as well as the comparability to counterparts
in developed countries. These results provide sound policy implications for the improvement of urban
energy management and carbon emission abatement in China.
& 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Settlements 2011 that urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Direct and indirect CO2 emissions derived from urban con-
sumption have dominated global overall CO2 emissions, and
rapidly increasing urban CO2 emissions constitute one of the
primary reasons for the rapid increase in global CO2 emissions
(Dhakal, 2009; IEA, 2009; Satterthwaite, 2008; UN-Habitat, 2011).
The International Energy Agency (IEA, 2009) stated that urban
energy consumption occupied 67% of the global energy supply,
and related CO2 emissions accounted for 71% of global CO2
emissions in 2006, and this percentage will increase to 76% by
2030. UN-Habitat, 2011 indicated in Global Report on Human
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: þ 86 10 59893229; fax: þ 86 10 58807596.
E-mail addresses: caibofeng@gmail.com (B. Cai),
zhanglixiao@bnu.edu.cn (L. Zhang).
contributed approximately 40–70% of global totals based on
production calculations, and the ratio could be 60–70% based on
consumption calculations. According to the China Sixth Nationwide
Population Census, China's urbanisation rate reached 49.68% in
2010. Urbanisation in China has proceeded very rapidly and
expected to reach approximately 70–75% in 2050 (CCRC, 2009).
With rapid urbanisation and industrialisation in China, the CO2
emissions from cities and their share in regions/country emissions
will certainly increase (Feng et al., 2013). Undoubtedly, the urban
system plays a dominant role in establishing China's energy
consumption profile and would be of great significance for
achieving the country's national carbon emission reduction target
and even achieving the worldwide carbon emission reduction
target (Zhang et al., 2011a).
However, the accurate estimation of CO2 emissions confined to the
urban category is not an easy task in China, and the results are always

0301-4215/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.10.072
558 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567
very confusing and even conflicting. The most challenging issue is the
diversity of names/concepts and therefore different spatial boundaries
for cities in China (Zhang et al., 2011b). In China, there are two ways to
define the so-called city (CSCIEAS, 2011). The first way is by popula-
tion. Cities are human settlements where non-agricultural population
and non-agricultural industries are concentrated. This definition is
much more similar to its counterparts in developed countries but
rarely used in official documents in China. The city proper and city
built-up area correspond to this conception. Another definition of city
is related to administrative hierarchy in China. In such a system, ‘city’ is
one level of administrative region, which includes a large proportion of
non-built-up areas such as agricultural and forest land. As an
independent administrative unit, a city region has its own statistical
system. Unfortunately, data from such statistical systems are adopted
and converted to the urban category when urban issues such as
carbon emissions accounting need to be addressed in China. It is very
important to note that city and urban are defined by the same word in
Chinese.
For example, Li et al. (2010) and Liu et al. (2010) estimated the CO2
emissions of Shanghai in 1995–2006 and 2008, respectively. Chun
et al. (2010) calculated the CO2 emissions of Tianjin in 2000–2007, and
Geng et al. (2011) determined the CO2 emissions of Beijing, Shanghai,
Tianjin and Chongqing. All of these studies used the administrative
boundary to define the cities. Energy consumption and related carbon
emissions associated with the city represent only the region category
rather than urban areas. Thus, CO2 emissions determined for ‘cities’ in
China should not be interpreted as applying to an urban category and
therefore have no comparability with the results obtained for devel-
oped countries under the category of urban areas. Some studies have
encountered the conceptual inconsistencies associated with Chinese
cities when investigating urban issues in China (Zhang et al., 2011b).
Montgomery (2008) indicated that the city proper of Beijing differs
markedly from the Beijing municipality (administrative boundary)
when he studied urban demographic transformation. Dhakal (2009)
regarded city districts as urban boundaries in China when he analysed
the urban energy consumption of China. IEA (2008, 2009) treated
China urban energy consumption separately when modelling global
urban energy consumption and estimated that the urban energy
consumption contributed 75% to primary energy consumption
in China.
In contrast, the urban boundaries in OECD countries are not as
closely related to administrative boundaries as those in China. The
OECD (2006, 2010b) defines city and metropolitan regions based on
the “functional approach”, which established the definition of urban
boundaries based primarily on population density and applies from
Central government
MDUCG Provinces
Prefecture-level
cities
County-
Districts level cities
Counties Districts
Cities
Fig. 1. The structure of administrative divisions in China.
local units to aggregate urban boundaries. This functional approach
could largely make the built-up area dominating the urban area.
The diversified and confusing boundary concepts have already
impeded the accurate understanding and successful communication of
energy consumption as well as carbon dioxide emissions in urban
areas of China. Moreover, it is impossible to estimate the accurate
share of CO2 emissions of urban areas relative to that of a given region
and the country. In this study, four different urban boundaries were
proposed and defined, and Tianjin was taken as the case city to
illustrate the different performances of carbon emission within the
context of the four different definitions of urban boundaries. Such
work could not have been accomplished without the data support of a
1-km gridded CO2 emissions dataset, which was built bottom-up,
primarily by point-emission sources. The rest of this paper is organised
as follows: Section 2 provides a detailed description of the methodol-
ogy. Section 3 presents a description of the gridded dataset. Section 4
presents the results and discussion, and conclusions and policy
implications are presented in Section 5.
2. Methodology
2.1. Basic information about Tianjin
Tianjin is a metropolis of northern China and one of the four
Municipalities Directly Under the Central Government (MDUCG) of
China, with the whole area covering 11,760 km2. Tianjin is the largest
coastal city in northern China. Tianjin borders Hebei Province and
Beijing Municipality, bounded to the east by the Bohai Gulf portion of
the Yellow Sea. In terms of population, Tianjin is the fourth largest city
in China, with 11.15 million permanent residents at the end of 2007,
after Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Tianjin consists of 16 district/
county-level divisions, including 13 districts and three counties. Tianjin
is one of the industrial centres of northern China, with major
industries including petrochemical industries, textiles, car manufactur-
ing, mechanical industries and metalworking.
2.2. The definitions of four urban boundaries
Presented in Fig. 1 is the administrative hierarchy of China,
from which three levels of cities, namely, MDUCG, prefecture-level
cities and county-level cities, can be observed. China increased its
number of cities from 193 to 657 (including 4 MDUCG, 283
prefecture-level cities and 370 county-level cities) between 1978
and 2010. Each of the MDUCG and prefecture-level cities includes
Autonomous Special
Administrative
regions Regions
Autonomous
Regions
Prefecture
County-level Autonomous
cities
Counties
counties
 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567
districts, county-level cities and counties. County-level cities
include only a central town (county seats). This administrative
structure suggests that cities cover most of the land area of China,
especially the areas with intensive economic activity and dense
population, leaving behind the backward areas as non-city regions
(counties or autonomous regions).
Although “city” is used mostly in the context of the political-
administrative hierarchy of China, and officially refers to regions, still
other interpretations of this word denote population concentration, as
mentioned above. Three conceptions associated with urban boundary
are well known and commonly used in China, i.e., city administrative
area, city districts and city built-up area. The first definition is
administrative. The second definition, city districts, includes regions
with a high intensity of economic activity and high density of
population in cities. Both MDUCG and prefecture-level cities have
districts. The second definition is gradually being recognised by the
scientific community for analysis of urban issues and is also adopted as
a city boundary in China City Statistical Yearbook for the statistics of
population, GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and other indicators. The
third definition, city built-up area, is the intuitive understanding of city
by people and distinguished by a unique landscape (concrete or other
hard surfaces) from rural areas.
In addition, a new standard for the definition of urban area
from the perspective of population density was proposed in the
China Fifth Nationwide Population Census (CFNPC) in 2000. Accord-
ing to this new standard, urban boundaries were defined for cities
with districts and without districts (county-level cities). For cities
with districts, the urban area referred to all districts with a
population density of 1500 persons/km2 and above, and the
county seats of those districts/counties with population density
less than 1500 persons/km2. In contrast, the urban area in the
county-level city was only referred to county seats where the
county-level city government headquarters was located (NBS,
1999; CSCIEAS, 2011). This definition of urban area in China by
population density is similar to the definition of OECD countries
and was accepted by OECD (2010a).
Based on the above-mentioned analysis, four urban boundaries,
i.e., city administrative boundary (UB1), city districts boundary
(UB2), urban built-up areas (UB3) and urban proper (UB4), can be
identified and proposed. As mentioned above, UB1 is the city's
administrative boundary and has been used in most research
involving urban CO2 emissions in China. UB2 covers all districts
of the city and is used as the urban boundary by Dhakal (2009).
UB3 refers to all built-up areas of the city, which are not
necessarily physically connected. UB4 is defined by a population
density of 1500 persons/km2 at the district/county level. The area
of UB4 is absolutely smaller than that of UB2 because UB4 excludes
the area of districts with a population density less than 1500 peo-
ple/km2. In the hierarchy of the city system, the four urban
boundaries can be found only in MDUCG and prefecture-level
cities. In county-level cities, UB2 is the same as UB1 because the
county-level city is at the same administrative level as the district.
Applying this framework to Tianjin, the four urban boundaries
can be identified (see Fig. 2). Only six central districts (Heping,
Hedong, Hexi, Nankai, Hongqiao and Hebei) pass the population
density standard (1500 people/km2) and constitute UB4 of Tianjin.
This result is consistent with the traditional impression of the city
of Tianjin or the old urban area. The six central districts held 3.74
million permanent residents in 2007, accounting for 33.54% of the
total population of Tianjin. Its area accounts for only 1.51% of the
total area of Tianjin (TBS, 2008). Actually, there are other urban
areas such as central towns in suburban districts and counties in
terms of the CFNPC urban definition. These other urban areas
could be regarded as satellite cities of UB4.
UB2 could be regarded as the Tianjin metropolitan area as it
includes the core urban area (UB4) and its surrounding satellite
559
cities in UB1. If we discuss Tianjin City or the City of Tianjin, instead
of the Tianjin metropolitan area, we refer to the six central districts
(UB4). There are relatively large built-up areas in the Binhai district
with a population density less than 1500 person/km2. The Binhai
district was newly established in 2009 as an economic and
technological zone in which most of the built-up area is dedicated
to industry and infrastructure. According to the General Strategy of
Tianjin Spatial Development, the Binhai district is expected to form
another core of the bi-centric city pattern, in addition to the inner
city region of the six central districts.
2.3. Scope and calculation of CO2 emissions
There are three scopes for CO2 emissions in cities, including direct
and indirect emissions. Scope 1 includes all direct emissions that occur
within the territorial boundary of the city. Scope 2 includes indirect
emissions that occur outside the city boundary as a result of activities
that occur within the city, which are limited to electricity consump-
tion, district heating, steam and cooling. Scope 3 includes other
indirect emissions and embodied emissions that occur outside the
city boundary as a result of activities of the city, including electrical
transmission and distribution losses, embodied emissions in fuels and
imported goods, etc. (ICLEI and C40, 2012; UNEP et al., 2010).
To date, most international cities consider only the emissions of
Scope 1 and Scope 2 when inventorying their CO2 emissions (Cai,
2011, 2012) with respect to the balance between science and
feasibility. For instance, Scope 3 CO2 emissions were calculated but
not included in the inventory of New York City (CNY, 2010). For similar
reasons and for comparison, only Scope 1 and Scope 2 were con-
sidered in our study. In actuality, Scope 3 or indirect emissions are very
important and account for a substantial share of the total emissions of
cities, especially for the consumption-oriented city. Recently, studies
have explored specific cities' three scopes of carbon emissions
(Hillman and Ramaswami, 2010; Li and Chen, 2013; Li et al., 2013;
Lin et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2013), most of which have obtained
emission intensities using environmentally extended input–output
technology (Chen and Chen, 2010; Chen and Chen, 2011; Li et al.,
2013). However, it was nearly impossible to spatialise Scope 3 emis-
sions as Scope 1 and Scope 2 in this study due to data availability and
calculation complexity. In addition, the emissions from heating and/or
cooling supplies were excluded from Scope 2 because the areas of
cities in China are generally sufficiently large to ensure that cross-city-
border supply rarely occurs, even for UB4 in most of the cities. Carbon
emissions from land use, land-use change and forestry were not
considered in this study.
Scope 1 emissions include emissions both from the combustion
of fuels and industrial processes, as shown in Eq. (1). For CO2
emissions from industrial processes, we considered only clinker
production, limestone calcination and iron and steel production.
Scope 2 emissions cover indirect emissions caused by electricity
transferred from the outside (Eq. (2)). Total CO2 emissions were
calculated by summing the CO2 emissions from Scope 1 and Scope 2
(Eq. (3)).
E1 ¼ ∑M f uel  F f uel þ Ep ð1Þ
E2 ¼ Eelectricity  F electricity ð2Þ
E ¼ E1 þ E2 ð3Þ
where E1 is Scope 1 CO2 emissions, M f uel is the energy use of a
specific fuel, F f uel is the CO2 emission factor for a specific fuel and Ep
represents CO2 emissions from industrial processes. E2 is Scope 2 CO2
emissions, Eelectricity is the electricity transferred from the outside and
F electricity is the emission factor of the regional power grid.
560 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567

Fig. 2. The four urban boundaries of Tianjin defined by the framework proposed in this study. Note: UB1: city administrative area; UB2: city districts; UB3: city built-up area;
UB4: city proper. The population density was adopted from official statistics (TBS, 2008).The central districts include six districts, namely Heping district (23,527 persons/km2),
Hedong district (18,710 persons/km2), Hexi district (19,742 persons/km2), Nankai district (22,762 persons/km2), Hongqiao district (21,555 persons/km2), and Hebei district
(22,925 persons/km2). The data in the brackets are the population densities in 2007. The built-up areas were visually interpreted based on Landsat TM images obtained in
2007.
 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567
3. Data
3.1. Investigation and official statistical data
Data sources include the following: (1) The data for energy
consumption and clinker production, coke and carbonate flux used
in iron and steel production, carbon content in iron and steel, etc.
associated with industrial activities were determined directly from our
utility-level investigation. (2) The energy consumption attributed to
agriculture was obtained from official statistical data such as the
Tianjin Statistical Yearbook. (3) All other emission sources were
grouped into the residential sector, including energy use from hotels,
restaurants, hospitals, schools, household heating and/or cooling and
cooking and transportation. The energy consumption of the residential
sector, except for transportation, was obtained from our district/
county-level investigation. Household energy use was determined by
sampling, and the average level was then multiplied by the population
in the district/county. Transport energy use and CO2 emissions were
directly adopted from our previous work (Cai et al., 2012). All of our
investigated data were verified during every process and compared
with official statistical data.
Detailed information regarding the facilities investigated in Tianjin
is provided in Table A1 in the appendix. The spatial distribution of
industrial point-emission sources with their emission quantities is
shown in Fig. 3. Combined with the official statistical data for
agricultural energy use, we obtained a full picture of primary fossil
fuel consumption in Tianjin in 2007 (see Table A2 in the appendix).
When our investigation data for industry is compared with official
statistical data (TBS, 2008), the data from the official statistics are
observed to approximately 10% higher than our data for total coal
consumption and coke consumption and similar to our data for coal
consumed in power plants. These discrepancies could be explained by
two reasons. First, the official statistical energy data are reported from
the lower government level by level and consist mainly of transacted/
contract data rather than data regarding the energy actually used,
which was investigated by us. Second, the official statistical data
include data from companies outside the Tianjin administrative
boundary but administered by the Tianjin government. One example
is the Tianjin Tiantie Metallurgical Company located in She County in
Hebei Province but owned and operationally controlled by the Tianjin
government, which consumed 1.73 million tons (Mt) of coal in 2007.
We investigated only the companies inside the Tianjin administrative
boundary.
The net amount of electricity transferred from outside Tianjin
in 2007 was 10,756 MkWh, including 10,851 MkWh inward and 95
outward (TBS, 2008). The CO2 emissions from this transferred
electricity constitute the Scope 2 emissions.
3.2. Emission factors
The emission factors were selected by the principle of maximally
reflecting the characteristics of the energy consumption and industrial
activities of the study areas. We preferred to select study case-specific
data as the first choice and used country-specific data when there
were no available data. The literature (NCCCC/NDRC, 2007) provides
the emission factors for the GHG inventory in the Initial National
Communication on Climate Change of China and contains detailed
emission factors for different industries in different regions in terms of
different energy types. Thus, our emission factors were derived mainly
from this literature (NCCCC/NDRC, 2007). In addition, the National
Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) of China published a
guideline for local GHG inventories in 2011 (NDRC, 2011). The emission
factors in this guideline are also valuable, especially for the regional
power grid when determining the emission of electricity transferred
from outside the study area.
561
3.3. Gridded dataset
The object of our research could not be accomplished without the
successful establishment of a gridded CO2 emissions dataset because
urban boundaries (UBs) other than UB1 have no directly related
statistical data on energy consumption and industrial activity. The
study of spatially gridded CO2 emissions is also an important branch of
CO2 emissions research. Extensive work has been conducted to
develop CO2 emissions grids at different resolutions on the global,
country and regional levels (Andres et al., 1996; Doll et al., 2000;
Parrish et al., 2009; Gurney et al., 2009; Alonso et al., 2010; Oda and
Maksyutov, 2010). The work of VandeWeghe and Kennedy (2007)
analysed the spatial characteristics of CO2 emissions in the urban area
and its surrounding areas based on spatialised CO2 emissions data.
The 1-km gridded CO2 emissions of Tianjin were developed for
the estimation and comparison of CO2 emissions among different
urban boundaries. In the CO2 emissions grid, we consider only
direct emissions, or Scope 1 emissions. We classified the emission
sources into three categories, namely, industrial sector, residential
sector and agricultural sector (the detailed structure of the emis-
sion sources is presented in Tables A1 and A2 in the appendix).
Technically, five steps are necessary to construct such a CO2
emissions grid: (1) Create fishnet grids at a 1-km resolution of the
study area. (2) For the point-emission sources in the industrial sector,
create dots based on their coordinates with values of CO2 emissions
calculated from our investigation data, and sum the CO2 emissions of
the dots that fall in every grid. Check the accuracy of the position of
dots by comparing their administrative properties in our investigation
with their coordinate information. (3) For the agricultural sector,
divide the CO2 emissions of the whole study area into each county/
district proportionally to their agricultural population and then
allocate the CO2 emissions of the county/district equally to grids in
that county/district. The CO2 emissions in agriculture were calculated
based on official statistical data. (4) For the residential sector, allocate
the CO2 emissions of the Tianjin administrative area proportionally to
the population grid. (5) Sum the CO2 emissions from the industrial
sector, agricultural sector and residential sector in every grid to
complete the overall grid of direct CO2 emissions.
A population grid dataset is valuable for our analysis. The Data
Sharing Infrastructure of Earth System Science of China produced
1-km gridded population data for China in 2003, which were
widely adopted for research work and proved to be reliable (Wang
et al., 2004; Jiang et al., 2002; Li and Zhuang, 2006; Liu et al.,
2005). To meet the requirements of our study, we updated the
population grid data from 2003 to 2007.
It should be noted that allocation of CO2 emissions from
agricultural and residential sectors based on population distribu-
tion instead of point sources may induce some uncertainties.
However, these uncertainties are within a controllable and accep-
table level due to the following: first, these two emissions
components only account for 14.47% of total Scope 1 emission;
second, the population grid has been proved to be the best proxy
for spatialising the emissions when point-source data are unavail-
able (Andres et al., 1996; Rayner et al., 2010; Raupach et al., 2010).
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Total quantity and spatial distribution of CO2 emissions in
Tianjin
The total CO2 emission (Scope 1þ Scope 2) of Tianjin (UB1) in
2007 was 125.99 Mt, with per capita emission of 11.30 tons. Scope
1 CO2 emissions amounted to 112.59 Mt, accounting for 89.36% of
total emissions, and Scope 2 emissions amounted to 13.40 Mt.
Regarding sources, the CO2 emissions derived from fuel
562 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567

Fig. 3. Industrial point CO2 emission sources in Tianjin.

combustion amounted to 109.99 Mt, accounting for 97.69% and gas were responsible for 71.64%, 24.17% and 4.19% respectively. The
87.70% of Scope 1 emissions and total emissions, respectively. CO2 emissions due to industrial activities amounted to 96.29 Mt,
Among CO2 emissions from fuel combustion, coal, oil and natural accounting for 85.53% and 76.43% of Scope 1 and total emissions,
 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567 563

Fig. 4. Spatial distribution of Tianjin 1-km gridded CO2 emissions (Scope 1 emissions).

respectively. The predominant share of Scope 1 emissions and the energy intensiveness because Tianjin's economies largely relies on
industrial proportion of total emissions indicate that Tianjin was power generation, petrochemical and cement production, as well
still in the process of urbanisation and industrialisation in 2007. In as mechanical and metalworking manufacture. A high level of
particular, the industrial structure of Tianjin is characterised by primary energy consumption and a large amount of direct CO2
564 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567

emissions are two of the main features of this industrial structure.
For instance, 90.81% of total coal was consumed by industry.
The available results for energy-related CO2 emissions for
Tianjin reported by Chun et al. (2010) and Yang et al. (2011), i.e.,
130.94 Mt in 2007 and 124.59 Mt in 2008, respectively, are higher
than ours. The main reason for the difference may lie in the fact
that these scientists used official statistical energy data. The
difference between the statistical data and our data has been
discussed above.
The spatial distribution of CO2 emissions in Tianjin (UB1) shows
clusters hotspots. Several hotspots of CO2 emissions exist within
Tianjin, the largest one coincident with UB4, whereas other small
ones are located in the central towns of districts/counties. The
grids in UB4 have the highest average CO2 emissions, greater than
50,000 tons per grid. The CO2 emissions in the 1-km grids could be
roughly classified into four categories based on the values of the
grids. UB4 shaped the first category of UB1. The grids surrounding
UB4 and the central towns (county seats) of suburban districts/
counties constitute the secondary category of emission areas, with
their emissions ranging from roughly 5000 to 50,000 tons. The
districts of Beichen, Dongli, Jinnan and Wuqing constitute the
tertiary category of emission areas with an emission range of 500–
5000 tons. The rest of the areas, largely made up of agricultural
and forest land, are the quaternary category of emission areas with
very low average grid emissions.
Overall, the spatial distribution of CO2 emissions in UB1 of
Tianjin is characterised by being concentrated in hotspots and
gradually decreasing outward. As shown in Fig. 4, UB2 does not
show any distinct spatial borderline for CO2 emissions, which
implies that UB2 is still an administrative region with emission
centres and large areas of low emissions. UB3 matches well with
the hotspots of CO2 emissions, except in the Binhai district. The
Binhai district has large amounts of built-up areas, but the
intensive CO2 emissions occur only in four hotspots, mainly
because the Binhai district was a newly established industrial
district directed by a centralised industrial development strategy.
Most built-up areas in the Binhai district are therefore infrastruc-
(11.05 tCO2/person) district are due to their energy-intensive
industrial activities. In UB4, the per capita emissions of Heping
(4.65 tCO2/person), Hedong (5.59 tCO2/person), Hexi (5.48 tCO2/
person), Nankai (4.48 tCO2/person), Hongqiao (4.53 tCO2/person)
and Hebei (3.35 tCO2/person) are all relatively lower. The CO2
emissions as well as other features of the four urban boundaries
are listed in Table 1. As mentioned above, UB1 and UB2 are more
similar to regions or states rather than urban areas, exhibiting a
low proportion of built-up area. UB3 is an absolutely built-up but
spatially dispersed area. UB3 is notably similar to an urban cluster
that includes many urban areas. UB4 is more similar to urban areas
in developed countries in terms of it spatial morphology (spatially
connected), built-up area proportion and high density of popula-
tion compared with surrounding areas.
A comparison of CO2 emissions associated with the four urban
boundaries is presented in Fig. 5, from which large differences in
total CO2 emissions and per capita CO2 emissions among the four
UBs can be observed. The CO2 emissions of UB4 account for only
13.26% of those of UB1. The CO2 emissions of UB2 and UB3
represent 82.69% and 53.60% of those of UB1, respectively.
The total and per capita emissions of UB1 are 7.54 and 2.53
times those of UB4, respectively. The selection of urban boundaries
will induce a deviation as large as 654% in CO2 emissions. Due to
population density and affluence, UB4 shows far higher values
than the other three UBs on both axes (see Fig. 6). UB1 and UB2
show a close proximity to one another in Fig. 6, which implies that
their geographical and demographic features are similar. UB3 is
located between UB4 and either UB1 or UB2, indicating that it is
neither similar to a region nor similar to a city centre. Indeed, UB3
is a cluster of urban areas.
A histogram of CO2 emissions in grids associated with the
urban boundaries is shown in Fig. 7, from which the differences
12
140
Total emissions
120 Per capita emission 10
100

Per capita emission(t)

Total emissions(Mt)

ture and industrial land. 8

The scattered emission centres and large amounts of low- 80
emission areas between emission centres imply that UB1 and 6
UB2 are actually regions and UB3 and UB4 are the corresponding 60
emission centres. 4
40
2
20
4.2. CO2 emission analysis for the four urban boundaries
0 0
UB1 UB2 UB3 UB4
With respect to the district/county level, the high per capita
CO2 emissions in the Dongli (43.85 tCO2/person) and Beichen Fig. 5. Comparison of CO2 emissions among the four urban boundaries.

Table 1
CO2 emissions in four selected urban boundaries.

Items UB1 UB2 UB3 UB4

Geographical boundary Administrative area All 13 districts All built-up areas Including six central districts
Area (km2) 11,762 7397 1396 177
Built-up area proportion 11.87% 19.10% 100.00% 100.00%
Population(104) 1115 956 785 374
Population density (persons/km2) 948 1292 5623 21,132
GDP (108 CNY) 5050 4609 3555 2029
Per capita GDP (104 CNY) 4.53 4.82 4.98 5.43
Scope 1 emissions (104 ton) 11,258.76 9268.93 5809.00 1221.33
Scope 2 emissions (104 ton) 1340.20 1149.09 943.55 449.54
Total emissions (104 ton) 12,598.96 10,418.01 6752.55 1670.87
Scope 1 emission share in total emissions 89.36% 88.97% 86.03% 73.10%
Per capita emissions 11.30 10.90 8.60 4.47

Note: the per capita GDP in UB3 is calculated as the average value of per capita GDP in UB1 and UB4, and the GDP in UB3 is calculated by multiplying the per capita GDP by
population.
 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567 565

between the four UBs are very clear. There are two peaks in the
histogram distributions of UB1 and UB2. The formation of the first
peak is due to the large quantity of low-value grids. This distribu-
tion pattern reflects the inner uneven distribution and large gaps
in CO2 emissions in the grids of both UB1 and UB2 because there
were large numbers of grids of non-built-up areas, such as
agriculture and forest lands. The lognormal distribution of CO2
emissions in grids in UB3 and UB4 shows that the emission sources
are much more similar and evenly distributed.
Scope1 emissions
5.4
Per capita GDP(104 CNY)
To obtain an in-depth understanding of carbon dioxide emis-
sion performance, the industrial structure of the UBs was also
analysed and compared. The numbers of services and industry
enterprises in each district/county are shown in Fig. 8. The districts
in UB4 encompassed many more service enterprises and much
fewer industrial enterprises than other districts/counties. With
respect to the three counties, the situation was the opposite, with
many industrial enterprises and relatively few service enterprises.
UB1 and UB2 should therefore be regarded as regions instead of
urban areas, and UB3 and UB4 are close to the urban category with
respect to landscape characteristics and pertinent human activ-
ities. These key factors account for the varied results obtained for
Scope2 emissions CO2 emissions under different UBs. If UB1 were taken as an urban
boundary, the per capita CO2 emissions of Tianjin would be

UB4 11.30 tons, approximately 1.79 times the per capita CO2 emissions
(Scope 1 þScope 2 emissions) of New York City (CNY, 2010). It is
UB2
5 very important to note that the accounting boundary of New York
City conforms quite well to the UB4 concept proposed in our study,
UB3
i.e., clustered built-up areas with dense population and intensive
4.6 economic activities. If such a result were applied, then Tianjin
would rank among the cities with the highest CO2 emissions in the
UB1 world. In fact, this result is not comparable with that of New York
4.2 City because UB1 is not the most appropriate representation of the
0 10000 20000 urban area of Tianjin. If UB4 was selected as the urban boundary,
Population density(person/km2) the per capita CO2 emissions of Tianjin would be 4.47 tons, which
Fig. 6. Features under the four urban boundaries of Tianjin. Note: the size of the is lower than but similar to the value of 6.32 tons for New York
bubble represents the amount of CO2 emissions. City. Moreover, the Scope 1 emissions' share of total emissions

2500 Average=9394 Average=9394

Standard Deviation=200679 1250 Standard Deviation=200679

2000
1000
Number of grids

Number of grids

1500
750

1000
500

500 250

0 0
-1 0 1 10 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 -1 0 1 10 102 103 104 105 106 107 108
Log(CO2 emissions/t) Log(CO2 emissions/t)

Average=56395 Average=65775

Standard Deviation=498618 Standard Deviation=138041

125 125

100 100
Number of grids

Number of grids

75 75

50 50

25 25

0 0
0 1 10 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 -1 0 1 10 102 103 104 105 106 107
Log(CO2 emissions/t) Log(CO2 emissions/t)

Fig. 7. Histogram statistics for CO2 emissions in grids associated with the four urban boundaries.
566
Number of enterpises in industryr
UB
Number of enterprises in services
Fig. 8. Numbers of service and industrial enterprises in each district/county.
under this urban definition would be 73.10%, much lower than that
in UB1, which is 89.36%. The Scope 1 emissions of most megacities
in developed countries usually occupy a relatively low share of
total emissions compared with the region or country level because
their main emissions are induced by electricity use and heating/
cooling supply rather than industrial activities (Carney et al., 2009;
Kennedy et al., 2009).
UB1 can therefore be regarded as the Tianjin region, UB2 as the
Tianjin metropolitan area, UB3 as the cluster of built-up areas and
UB4 as the City of Tianjin. The total emissions of UB1 amounted to
125.99 Mt, with per capita emissions of 11.30 tons. The total
emissions of UB2, UB3 and UB4 were 104.18 Mt, 67.53 Mt and
16.71 Mt, respectively, accounting for 82.69%, 53.60% and 13.26% of
UB1, respectively. Except for UB4, there were other urban areas,
such as central towns. All of these urban areas covered UB3 and
were covered by UB2. UB2 covered all of the areas with high
economic intensity and high population density. Therefore, the
City of Tianjin contributed only 13.26% to regional total CO2
emissions. The urban CO2 emissions contributed approximately
53.60–82.69% to the total emissions of the Tianjin region in 2007.
5. Conclusion and policy implications
The determination of urban CO2 emissions in China suffers from
the confusion generated by the various definitions of ‘city’ and the
corresponding urban boundaries in the country. It is not names but
physical and socio-economic attributes that determine the boundary
of a city. In this study, four types of urban boundaries were clarified
and defined. Tianjin was then taken as a case city to illustrate the
different determinations of CO2 emissions with respect to these four
boundaries, based on a 1-km grid dataset built bottom up by point-
emission sources. The results illustrate the large discrepancies in CO2
emissions accounting results pertinent to these four UBs.
The administrative boundary (UB1) and all districts (UB2) of
cities are not the appropriate system boundaries to be adopted in
research on urban CO2 emissions. UB1 and UB2 are actually
concepts related to regions rather than urban areas. Unfortunately,
UB1 and UB2 are currently used in most urban CO2 emissions
estimations and analyses in China. All built-up areas (UB3) in cities
are good representatives of urban clusters in regions, whereas UB4
is the proper representative of the system boundary for urban CO2
emissions analysis, in light of landscape characteristics and
B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567
pertinent human activities as well as comparability to counter-
parts in developed countries. In reality, UB4 represents mostly the
core urban area customarily accepted by city residents. Using such
system boundaries, the spatial features of CO2 emissions in Tianjin
match well with what has been observed in cities of developed
countries (Brown et al., 2009; Hoornweg et al., 2011; VandeWeghe
and Kennedy, 2007; Glaeser and Kahn, 2010; Andrews, 2008;
Ewing and Rong, 2008), i.e., the per capita emissions are always
lower in urban areas than in suburban areas, rural areas and
regions. One very important recommendation is that any inter-
pretation and application of urban CO2 emissions results in China
UB UB must be made cautiously when the urban boundary is not very
clear. A prerequisite for following this recommendation is to first
define the urban spatial boundary in addition to the accounting
scope when studying urban CO2 emission in China.
In practice, for both local and central governments, the issues
surrounding the boundaries of cities deserve sufficient attention
from policy makers with respect to energy consumption and
carbon emission. In any policies designed to benchmark or
evaluate the performance of cities' carbon emissions, the account-
ing boundaries should be explicitly stated to avoid data gaming
and unfair results. In any case, inventorying the CO2 emissions in
UB4 in addition to the inventory of UB1 is the best way to identify
the real characteristics of cities' emissions. These two sets of
inventory should underpin decision makers' and stake holders'
actions with different priorities in regional and urban level. In
addition, the decision makers in China need to adjust and improve
the statistical systems, incorporate key energy consumption sur-
veys and data collection for UB4 in statistical systems. Statistical
capacity building based on UB4 is highly essential for both research
in the area of urban CO2 emissions and the management of the
urban energy system.
Without the help of high-resolution gridded data, CO2 emis-
sions estimation and structural analysis under the four UBs in
Tianjin cannot be completed when the statistical data are confined
only to administrative regions. Considering the socio-economic
cost and time delay associated with the adjustment and improve-
ment of city statistical systems, the spatialisation of CO2 emissions
in cities will be one of the most pivotal and feasible methods for
the study of urban CO2 emission in the near future. Data can be
sourced from the Environmental Protection Bureau (EPB) of cities
in China. EPB provides comprehensive energy consumption data
for point-emission sources, with accurate geographic coordinates.
EPB has made a substantial improvement in the 12th Five-Year Plan
period for determining complete emissions on the enterprise level
by adding several key indicators for emission calculations for
industrial processes, e.g., clinker production, carbon content of
pig iron and crude steel. With data from the EPB of cities, UB1, UB2,
UB3 and UB4 can be calculated following the procedure proposed
in this paper.
As in the case city of Tianjin, the CO2 emissions associated with
UB1, UB2, UB3 and UB4 in 2007 were 125.98 Mt, 104.18 Mt,
67.53 Mt, 16.71 Mt, respectively. The area of the UB4 only accounts
for 1.51% of that of UB1, but UB4 holds 33.54% of the population of
UB1 and contributes 13.26% of the CO2 emissions of UB1. However,
the per capita CO2 emission in UB4 (4.47 tons) is considerably
lower than the per capita CO2 emissions in UB1 (11.3 tons) and UB2
(10.9 tons) in Tianjin. In this case, it can be hypothesised that
urbanisation in China could facilitate the abatement of carbon
dioxide emissions compared with the reference level under the
same population and living conditions, due to the high density of
residential areas, developed public transportation and concen-
trated supply of heating/cooling. Certainly, this hypothesis
deserves more in-depth analysis and has essential policy implica-
tions for the ongoing rapid urbanisation process in China, regard-
less of whether the final result is negative or positive.
 B. Cai, L. Zhang / Energy Policy 66 (2014) 557–567
Acknowledgements
This work was funded by the Project Study on Key Issues of
China City Carbon Emission Inventory (No. 41101500) supported
by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.
Appendix A. Supporting information
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found in
the online version at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2013.10.072.
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