A holistic overview of the progress of China's low-carbon city pilots

Since 2010 China has launched three batches of low-carbon pilot cities to explore feasible local policies or actions that can be replicated on a larger scale. Based on their official self-assessment reports, this study investigates the progress of 32 pilot sites from the initial two batches. Indicators of progress include: establishing a comprehensive governance system to guarantee the implementation of low-carbon strategies, plans and actions; implementing a carbon emission statistics system; carrying out low-carbon actions covering the majority of emission sectors and having produced positive consequences for local low-carbon development; exploring new policies and institutions including legislation, emissions control, carbon certification and green credit schemes, that lead to the formulation of national policies. Despite some defects in the experiments, the progress from these pilot sites has laid an important foundation for the advancement of national low-carbon development. Based on this analysis, this study provides recommendations for policy diffusion: to integrate more constraints and incentives into low-carbon pilot sites; to establish a policy assessment system to identify effective local experiments; and to summarize and share these best practices across the country.