A Research on Driving Factors of Carbon Emissions of Road Transportation Industry in Six Asia-Pacific Countries Based on the LMDI Decomposition Method

Changzheng Zhu,Wenbo Du

doi:10.3390/en12214152

Abstract

The transportation industry is the second largest industry of carbon emissions in the world, and the road transportation industry accounts for a large proportion of this in the global transportation industry. The carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in six Asia-Pacific countries (Australia, Canada, China, India, Russia, and the United States) accounts for more than 50% of this in the global transportation industry. Therefore, it is of great significance to study driving factors of carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in six Asia-Pacific countries for controlling global carbon emissions. In this paper, the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition method is adopted to analyze driving factors on carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in six Asia-Pacific countries from 1990 to 2016. The results show that carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in these six Asia-Pacific countries was 2961.37 million tons in 2016, with an increase of 84.43% compared with those in 1990. The economic output effect and the population size effect have positive driving influences on carbon emissions of the road transportation industry, in which the economic output effect is still the most important driving factor. The energy intensity effect and the transportation intensity effect have different influences on driving carbon emissions of the road transportation industry for these six Asia-Pacific Countries. Furthermore, the carbon emissions coefficient effect has a relatively small influence. Hence, in order to effectively control carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in these six Asia-Pacific countries, it is necessary to control the impact of economic developments on the environment, to reduce energy intensity by promoting the conversion of road transportation to rail and water transportation, and to lower the carbon emissions coefficient by continuously improving vehicle emission standards and fuel quality.

Highlights

Global warming has become one of the most important challenges for human beings, and the essential cause is excess emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, etc
The results indicate that the economic output effects of China, Australia, and the United States have greater influences on carbon emissions of the road transportation industry than other countries
This paper uses the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition model to analyze the carbon emissions and driving factors of the road transportation industry for six Asia-Pacific countries. It comes to the following main conclusion that an overall rise is seen in the carbon emissions of the road transportation industry of the six Asia-Pacific countries from 1990 to 2016

Summary

Introduction

Global warming has become one of the most important challenges for human beings, and the essential cause is excess emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, etc. 23.96% of the 32.5804 billion tons of global carbon dioxide emissions in 2017, making it the second largest industry of carbon emissions. According to a rough calculation in this paper, the carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in six Asia-Pacific countries (Australia, Canada, China, India, Russia, and the United States) are about 50.81% of the global total volumes of that industry. Energies 2019, 12, 4152 significance to study the driving factors of carbon emissions of the road transportation industry in these six Asia-Pacific countries for controlling global carbon emissions. In terms of the relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth, Grossman et al [1] firstly proposed an inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental quality and economic development based on Kuznets Curve (Kuznets [2])

Methods

Results

Conclusion