An Empirical Research on Evaluation of Low-Carbon Economy in Guangdong Province, China: Based on “Production, Life and Environment”

Abstract

In order to promote the development of Low-carbon economy (LCE), it is important to establish a scientific LCE quantitative evaluation system. Based on the concept of “life, production and environment”, this paper builds the decomposition models of carbon emission influencing factors from these three aspects and inductively analyzes the factors influencing LCE development. According to these factors, this paper correspondingly builds a quantitative evaluation index system of LCE, which makes up the deficiency in selection index in theory. The evaluation of LCE in Guangdong Province is carried out by applying the analytic hierarchy process, entropy method and composite index method. Results showed that the development of LCE in Guangdong was on the decline during the period of 2000-2012 and the rapid economic growth in Guangdong was achieved at the expense of the environment. Therefore, this paper puts forward some suggestions that Guangdong should improve the utilization of clean energy, pay attention to the optimization of energy mix from household and productive sector, and attach equal importance to the structure optimization when enlarging its foreign trade scale. In addition, with limited land resources, Guangdong should take into account the common development of production, life and environment in land planning.