The effects of household consumption pattern on regional development: A case study of Shanghai

With the rapid economic development and urbanization, household consumption has played an important role in energy consumption and carbon emissions. This study selects the front-runner developed city Shanghai as a case study to investigate the effects of household consumption pattern on its energy consumption and carbon emissions by employing a CGE (Computable General Equilibrium) model. The results show that Shanghai's historical carbon emissions related to household consumption present an increasing trend for years of 2002, 2005 and 2007. Moreover, the indirect carbon emissions from household consumption are higher than the direct emissions. The CGE simulation shows that the household consumption, energy consumption, carbon emissions, output of industry, Shanghai's foreign trade would continue to increase until 2030, and the low-carbon oriented household consumption would save 65 million ton of coal equivalent (or 39%) energy and 39.4 million ton (or 40%) of carbon emissions compared to the high-carbon scenario. Furthermore, due to the pattern change of household consumption, resource patterns embedded in Shanghai's foreign trade would present net import in the future.