Analysis on the carbon emission of tourism industry in Hubei of China

Abstract

Using the bottom-up method and Tapio model, we calculated the tourism energy consumption (EC) and corresponding carbon emission (CE) in Hubei of China, and analyzed the decoupling between the CE and tourism economy. The results showed the tourism CE was 111.84×10⁴ t in 2001, and increased to 376.04×10⁴ t in 2015, with the annual growth amount of 18.87×10⁴t and rate of 9.05%, respectively. This denoted Hubei’s tourism was being thoroughly developed on the whole from 2001 to 2015. Then, the share of tourism transport CE was always not less than 62% during 2001-2015, which indicated tourism transport sector should be paid more attention to and be given more of corresponding mitigation countermeasures. Furthermore, tourism activities’ CE was always becoming larger and larger, with the increases of people’s living standard and leisure time. Thus, it was necessary to study on how to improve the efficiency of energy use, especially in the progress of tourism activities. Last, an overall weak decoupling relationship between tourism economy and the corresponding CE existed within Hubei in 2001-2015. Thus, the economic development mode of Hubei’s tourism industry was transforming to the low-carbon pattern expected by us, but it still needed to be continually strengthened.