Estimating the impacts of urban form on CO2 emission efficiency in the Pearl River Delta, China

Abstract The improvement of CO 2 emission efficiency is of great significance to realizing energy-saving and emission reduction targets and achieving low-carbon development. While it is increasingly recognized that urban form could significantly influence the CO 2 emissions of urban areas, few studies have been able to quantify the implications of urban form in relation to CO 2 emission efficiency. The purpose of this paper is thus to contribute to existing literature by empirically quantifying how urban form influences CO 2 emission efficiency. CO 2 emission efficiency in this study is presented in terms of CO 2 economic efficiency (CEE) and CO 2 social efficiency (CSE). Firstly, we calculated the CEE and CSE of nine cities in the Pearl River Delta (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Jiangmen, Zhaoqing, Huizhou, Dongguan, and Zhongshan) using locally important socioeconomic variables over the period 1990–2013. Then, seven landscape metrics were selected in order to quantify three dimensions of urban form (extension, irregularity, and compactness) using remote sensing data. Finally, panel data models were utilized to estimate the associations between urban form and CO 2 emission efficiency. We identified a negative correlation between urban sprawl and CEE as well as CSE, a finding that indicates that urban growth decreases CO 2 economic efficiency. Further, increasing irregularity in the form of cities was found to decrease both CEE and CSE—a larger degree of irregularity, in other words, results in lower CO 2 emission efficiency. Conversely, urban compactness was identified as having a significant positive influence on both CEE and CSE, indicating that the compact development of cities can actually help to improve CO 2 emission efficiency. The findings of this study hold important implications for building low-carbon cities in China.