Consequence footprint analysis of benefits of CE scenario for cities - Case study for Beijing and Shanghai

Abstract

To reduce resource use in cities and relieve environmental pressure, circular economy (CE) strategies are widely mentioned and gradually applied. To quantify and evaluate the impacts of CE strategies for urban development in both resource use and CO2 emission perspectives, this study evaluates resource consumption and environmental impacts (focusing on CO2 emissions) with CE strategies and how much they can reduce the CO2 emission for the study cities, Shanghai and Beijing, by scenarios generation (Business-As-Usual (BAU) scenario and Circular Economy (CE) scenario) and MRIO analysis. CE scenarios reduce around 10515 million Euro household expenditure in total for Shanghai and around 20475 million Euro household expenditure for Beijing compared with BAU scenarios. For the environmental impacts, the CO2 emission per capita can be reduced by 37% and the total CO2 emission can be reduced by 34% from 2017 in Beijing. The CO2 emission per capita for Shanghai can be reduced by 28% and the total CO2 emission can be reduced by 26%. It is worth mentioning that compared to Shanghai, the CO2 reduction of the CE scenario in Beijing is substantial on top of the reduction already achieved by the BAU scenario. The results indicate that for the collected targets and plans, the CE strategies are more effective for Beijing to reduce resource consumption and CO2 emission. For Shanghai, the effect on emission reduction is not significant, and more ambitious CE strategies should be considered in the future.