Xinlu Sun

Region- and city-level climate change mitigation and sustainable development

School research theme: Sustainability in the built environment
Research supervisor: Dr Zhifu Mi and Prof D'Maris Coffman
Start date: September 2020

Global society is facing a mounting crisis from climate change. Among the various resources causing climate change, the excessive emissions of greenhouse gases have placed both environmental stability and human health at risk. To restrict greenhouse gas emissions and achieve sustainable goals, many countries have established national targets to deliver net-zero emissions in response to the IPCC's proposal. However, this appears to be a challenging goal for the world, as we are still on the way toward reaching peak carbon emissions. 

Subnational actors, including regions and cities, have become increasingly critical in the climate change mitigation process. The Paris Agreement and UNFCCC also pay more attention to non-state actors. This study will focus on regions and cities and tried to find a green and low-carbon pathway sustainable for development transformation, especially for developing countries. Taking China as a case, carbon emissions and climate change mitigation efforts at regional level will be assessed. Then sustainable solutions to motivating better climate actions will be analyzed. For cities, there lakes an effective way to evaluate cities’ carbon footprint. In this study, urban household carbon footprint will be evaluated based on MRIO analysis.