Projections of carbon metabolism in 2035 and implications for demand-side controls under various scenarios

Carbon emission contributes significantly to environmental sustainability. There are overwhelming studies of how urbanization contributes to the increase of carbon emissions. However, it has been unclear how emission and economic change within urban systems evolve with social development in a long period. Therefore, feasible emission reduction policy for the near future is desired. Taking Guangdong province as a case study, Dynamic simulation model of carbon emission is developed to assess the stability of a metabolic system and simultaneously, explore potential changes of gross domestic products (GDP) and carbon emissions over a long period from 2000 to 2035, based on comprehensive applications of three-perspective stability and linkage analyses. Furthermore, eight simulated scenarios are developed to assess potential emissions and GDP changes of 2035 under the condition of reducing the final demand of key carbon emission sectors to varying degrees. We find that emission flows experience a remarkable increase during investigated years. Under the premise of minimizing economic losses and reduce emissions per unit GDP, emission reduction policies for final demand should be implemented on domestic products-reliant sectors rather than imported products-reliant sectors.