For more holistic inventory estimation, this paper uses a hybrid approach to access the carbon footprint of Xiamen City in 2009. Besides carbon emissions from the end-use sector activities (called Scope 1þ2 by WRI/WBCSD) in normal research, carbon emissions from the cross-boundary traffic and the embodied energy of key urban imported materials (namely Scope 3) were also included. The results are as follow:(1) Carbon emissions within Scope 1þ2 only take up 66.14% of total carbon footprint, while emissions within Scope 3 which have usually been ignored account for 33.84%. (2) Industry is the most carbon-intensive end use sector which contributes 32.74% of the total carbon footprint and 55.13% of energy use emissions in Scope 1þ2. (3) The per capita carbon footprint of Xiamen is just about one-third of that in Denver. (4) Comparing with Denver, the proportion of embodied emissions in Xiamen was 10.60% higher than Denver. Overall, Xiamen is relatively a low-carbon city with characters of industrial carbon-intensive and high embodied emissions. Further analysis indicates that the urbanization and indus-trialization in Xiamen might cause more material consumption and industrial emissions. These highlight the importance of management for Scope 3 emissions in the developing cities.
