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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp016q182p51f
Title: REDUCING TRANSPORT AND BUILDING ENERGY DEMAND IN CHINESE CITIES: CO-BENEFITS FOR CLIMATE, AIR QUALITY, AND HUMAN HEALTH
Authors: Fu, Xiangwen
Advisors: Mauzerall, Denise L
Contributors: Public and International Affairs Department
Subjects: Environmental studies
Issue Date: 2024
Publisher: Princeton, NJ : Princeton University
Abstract: To combat climate change and air pollution, China has pledged to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. These ambitious targets require implementing various strategies that supply clean energy and reduce energy consumption. Cities are emission hotspots and central to decarbonization, and they provide great opportunities to reduce energy use and emissions through sustainable urbanization. My dissertation focuses on strategies to reducing transport and building energy demand and its climate and air quality co-benefits in Chinese cities. It includes three analytical chapters.Chapter 2 analyzes the impacts of population, city wealth, urban typology, the built environment, and fuel price on urban transport in China. I find the relationships between urban transport and its drivers extracted from intra-city variations over time differ from those derived from inter-city variations by pooling data of multiple cities, suggesting heterogeneous development patterns across cities. To reduce private car ownership, enhancing land use diversity, increasing rail transit, and expanding taxi fleets are more effective than increasing density in Chinese cities. Chapter 3 evaluates the impacts of compact urban development (CUD) on climate, energy, air quality, and health in 2050 China under various scenarios of alternative energy vehicle (AEV) deployment and power decarbonization. I find CUD benefits vary with different rates of AEV deployment and power decarbonization. Under conservative AEV and clean power policies, CUD offers huge climate, air quality, and health co-benefits. With AEVs fully deployed and powered by clean energy, CUD provides negligible carbon mitigation, modest air quality and health co-benefits, and considerable energy savings. Chapter 4 investigates the implications of climate, demographic, and socioeconomic changes for building heating and cooling energy demand in Chinese cities between 2020-2060. I find China’s urban building stock will keep growing due to continued urbanization and rising floor area per capita without policy interventions. I find strong inter-city heterogeneities in building floor area and energy intensity. A warming climate will result in a net 10% increase in building energy demand in 2060. Compact development can curb floor area and energy demand growth and have larger impacts than enhanced building energy efficiency in most cities.
URI: http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp016q182p51f
Type of Material: Academic dissertations (Ph.D.)
Language: en
Appears in Collections:Public and International Affairs

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