An Empirical Research on Measuring Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Urban Tourism: A Case Study of Shenzhen

Measuring carbon dioxide emissions from tourism is the starting point for the realization of industrial energy saving goals and the basis for the formulation of governmental reduction policies.However,it has also become a big problem due to the current situation of tourism in the country and the lack of energy consumption data.Case studies on CO2 emissions from urban tourism are rare,though city remains the most important space vector for tourism development.Based on the theory of carbon dioxide emissions and the consumption structure of tourists,the paper proposes the calculation model of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions.Taking Shenzhen City for example,this paper calculates and analyses energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions from Shenzhen′s urban tourism in 2008.The result shows that:1)the descending order of carbon dioxide emissions of tourism′s component is transportation,food,tour,housing,shopping,entertainment,which indicates that GHG emission from urban tourism cannot be ignored;2) travel size and travel transport choices are two key factors affecting energy consumption and CO2 emissions from urban tourism;3)though growing fast,urban tourism is facing dual pressure from energy consumption,increase in emissions and mitigation.The paper also makes suggestions on the improvement of the calculating model for energy consumption,the identification of energy parameters,and the future directions along line.