Research On Low Carbon City Indicator System From The Integrated Perspective Of Process Guidance And Result Evaluation

Since the industrial revolution,urban development with high carbon emissions has brought about “urban diseases”,such as air pollution and ecological damage.Urban development with high carbon emissions is also the main causes of climate change,which has brought great challenges to the sustainable development of human beings.The development of low carbon city is an important strategy to solve urban diseases and cope with climate change.This study aims to establish a set of low carbon city indicator system,which is suitable for Chinese cities from the integrated perspective of process guidance and results evaluation.The findings could provide reference for guiding the development of low carbon city in China.First,this study analyzes the implication of low carbon city and sorts out the relevant theories of low carbon city.Based on the analysis of the practice of low carbon cities at home and abroad,a database of low carbon city candidate indicators is constructed from three channels: literature research,government documents,and field surveys.Second,this study quantifies the degree of process guidance and results evaluation for various low carbon city indicators.Considering evaluation opinions of eleven experts on low carbon city,the experts' scoring opinions are processed according to fuzzy set theory.Then,Low Carbon City Indicator System(LCCIS)integrating process guidance and result evaluation is constructed.LCCIS includes six primary indicators,namely,energy,construction,transportation,industry,carbon sink,and management system,and nineteen secondary indicators,such as energy consumption per unit of GDP.Meanwhile,this study determines the relative weights of the nineteen indicators by using the method of Analytic Hierarchy Process(AHP).Finally,this study respectively tests the guidance effectiveness and evaluation effectiveness of LCCIS.In this study,thirty sample cities are selected to test the guidance effectiveness of LCCIS.Using the method of text mining,the guidance effectiveness of LCCIS is tested by analyzing the application frequency of LCCIS indicators in sample cities.At the same time,twenty-three sample cities are selected to test the evaluation effectiveness of LCCIS.Using the method of comprehensive evaluation,the evaluation effectiveness of LCCIS is tested by comparing the evaluation results of LCCIS with the evaluation results of the Institute of Urban Development and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.The test results show that the constructed LCCIS is able to fulfill the function of process guidance and results evaluation.Low Carbon City Indicator System(LCCIS)integrating process guidance and results evaluation established in this study provides guidance to Chinese cities on low carbon development,and is able to evaluate the results of low carbon city construction.The evaluation results by using LCCIS can not only reflect the low carbon level of a city,but can also reflect the efforts that a city has made in energy conservation and emission reduction.Utilization of LCCIS can stimulate Chinese cities to pursure low carbon development and accelerate China to achieve the international commitment on reducing carbon emissions.