What drives urban low-carbon transition? Findings from China

This paper assesses the city-level performance of low-carbon transition and the contributions of individual attributes to the percentage change of urban low-carbon transition performance. We developed a composite index to evaluate the status quo of low-carbon development and constructed an adjacent Malmquist index to measure the low-carbon transition performance. Then we grafted attribution analysis approach onto the Malmquist index to quantify attributions and applied convergence analysis to reveal characteristics of urban low-carbon transition. We applied the models to the case of 114 Chinese cities over time and found that the performance of urban low-carbon transition had progressed over time. Interestingly, we observed that the top performers were mainly non-pilot cities, even though pilot cities had performed better on average. Attribution analysis showed high heterogeneity over time for both types of cities, but in general, the intensity of technological innovation investment, the level of low-carbon policy system perfection and green space carbon sink were the main drivers. Convergence analysis showed that most cities had moved closer to the frontier of best practice over time and fewer cities were lagging behind their peers.