LOW-CARBON DEVELOPMENT OF SUPER LARGE CITIES AND MEGACITIES IN CHINA: DILEMMA AND SOLUTION

Under the resource endowment of abundant fossil energy and scarcity of clean energy, China faces the severe challenge of de-carbonation while promoting economic growth. We use the evaluation indicator system as the analytical framework and principal component and cluster as analysis methods based on the database of National Bureau of Statistics of the people's republic of China (PRC), urban construction statistical yearbook of China, urban statistical yearbook and statistical bulletin of economic and social development from the 21 largest cities of China in 2019 to evaluating the current situation. The findings unveil that two thirds of sample cities are unable to overcome the above challenges, but one third of them have emerged from the dilemma. Moreover, the fundamental measure to de-carbonation without sacrificing economic - social development in China is to adjust structures both industrial and energy. We conclude that discovering the path of promoting sustainable economic development while de-carbonization has important practical significance. De-carbonization and economic development can run parallel simultaneously, and the mutual exclusion between both may automatically and gradually eliminate through structure adjustment of energy and industries. The key for Chinese energy structure transformation is to achieve breakthroughs in core energy technical fields. Promoting international cooperation of energy technology can shorten the time of independent innovation and improve efficiency. The contributions of this paper are as follows: pointing out the fundamental factors of affecting and determining the model and level of economic development are structures of energy and industrial, simultaneously adjusting the structures both in industrial and energy is feasible and necessary, and urgently needing to make breakthrough progress in energy core technologies, such as clean energy buildings, clean diesel, clean coal and energy storage, under the current situation of energy resource endowment. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the priorities of de-carbonation and to provide references for policy-making of carbon abatement.