Research on the sustainable development process of low-carbon pilot cities: the case study of Guiyang, a low-carbon pilot city in south-west China

China plans to pursue low-carbon development in its low-carbon pilot cities to control greenhouse gas emissions. The low-carbon city development is an important method to achieve sustainable development strategy, while it is also a new city development mode to promote natural ecology, low-carbon economy and social happiness. However, the evaluation process of the low-carbon city is a multiple objective and decision problem. A single indicator cannot comprehensively and objectively evaluate a city’s low-carbon development level, so a comprehensive evaluation index system should be established. So taking Guiyang as a case study, this article constructs 35 evaluating indicators that are based on the basic urban development level and low-carbon urban development level to analyse the economic development, social progress and environmental quality transmutation comprehensively by using the entropy method. The results show that in the whole process of sustainable development, the economic development, social progress and the environmental quality have been greatly improved, but the low-carbon level had been on the low side from 2003 to 2016 in Guiyang. Therefore, Guiyang still has a long way to go to become a low-carbon city, and concrete policies and countermeasures should be taken to promote the low-carbon level. In particular, Guiyang has to strengthen the dual constraint of carbon emission intensity and total carbon emissions, adhere to the development path characterized by low carbon and strive to achieve leapfrog development.