The energy requirements and carbon dioxide emissions of tourism industry of Western China: A case of Chengdu city

Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province in western China is the gateway to Tibet. It is also the major habitat for giant panda and the principal city with the largest total tourism economic output in western China. The energy requirement of tourism industry is calculated by combining the 7 energy intensities with tourist consumption data from the Chengdu Domestic Tourist Expenditure Survey in which over 50,000 tourists were involved during 1999–2004. The carbon dioxide emissions of tourism industry are calculated based on the method introduced by IPCC report. Then, decomposition analysis was used to identify key factors causing the change of carbon emission. From 1999 to 2004, the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission of tourism industry in Chengdu increased from 1.8 × 107 GJ to 2.3 × 107 GJ and from 1.7 × 106 tons to 2.1 × 106 tons, respectively. The indirect energy requirements and indirect CO2 emissions dominate the total energy consumptions and total CO2 emissions, with an overwhelming percentage of over 90%. The transportation is the major contributor for energy consumption and carbon emission of tourism industry. The relative importance of the transportation and shopping tends to increase while the food and entertainment tends to decrease. Among the five factors affecting energy consumption and carbon dioxide emission in tourism, energy intensity, expenditure size and the industry size are generally found to be principal drivers of emission growth, whereas energy share and consumption structure are not found to have a sizable influence on the growth of tourism industry emissions. In addition, the energy intensity has a negative effect on the increase of CO2 levels while the expenditure size and the industry size have a positive effect on it.