Realizing a Local Low-Carbon Society Through Urban-Rural Linkage

The urban area is always the hot spot of academic research relating to low-carbon cities. However, because the energy consumed is mainly fossil fuels and the stock of natural resources is limited in the urban areas, even though the renewable energy resources are exhausted, the potential of local CO2 emissions is marginal. In addition, the urban area usually has higher energy demand density than the rural area which is mainly dominated by the residential demands. On the other hand, from the viewpoint of supply side, the energy infrastructures are well maintained and can be enhanced even more in the urban area, while in the rural area, a large amount of distributed renewable energy resources (e.g., biomass, wind, solar energy) with less or no carbon emissions are not well explored. Therefore, in order to construct a low-carbon city, especially for the cities with relatively low urbanization ratio, it may be beneficial to develop a cooperative framework between the urban and rural areas.