Investigating Low-Carbon City: Empirical Study of Shanghai

A low-carbon economy is an inevitable choice for achieving economic and ecological sustainable development. It is of significant importance to analyze a city’s low-carbon economy development level scientifically and reasonably. In order to achieve this goal, we propose an urban low-carbon economic development level evaluation model based on the matter-element extension method. First, we select some indicators from the existing indicator system based on past research and experience. Then, a matter-element model is established on the basis of weight to evaluate the level of a city’s low-carbon, the critical value of each index is determined through the classical domain and the section domain, calculating the correlation degree of a single index and a comprehensive index. Finally, we analyze the low-carbon economy development status and future development trends according to the analysis results. In this study, we select Shanghai as an empirical study—the results show that Shanghai is a city with a low-carbon level and there is a trend of further improvement in Shanghai’s low-carbon economy. But its low carbon construction and low carbon technology investment are relatively low. In summary, this method can provide another angle for evaluating a city’s low-carbon economy