An Analysis of Decoupling and Influencing Factors of Carbon Emissions from the Transportation Sector in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Area, China

Xiaoping Zhu,Rongrong Li

doi:10.3390/su9050722

Abstract

The transport sector is the major green-house gas emitter and most rapidly growing sector in terms of consuming energy in China. Understanding the driving forces behind carbon emission is a prerequisite for reducing carbon emissions and finding a balance between economic growth and carbon emissions. The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of the factors which influence the level of carbon emissions from the transportation sector in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) area, China, using decomposition model, combined with a decoupling elasticity index. The results of our study indicate that: (1) changes in the level of carbon emissions from the transportation sector are not always synchronized with changes in economic growth. (2) The decoupling state between the carbon emissions and economic growth of Tianjin and Beijing can be roughly divided into two phases. The first phase was during the 2005 to 2009 period, when the decoupling state was pessimistic. The second phase was from 2009 to 2013, when the decoupling state became better overall and was mainly dominated by weak decoupling. Conversely, the decoupling state of Hebei was mainly weak during this period. (3) Economic growth and population size play positive roles in increasing the levels of transportation-related carbon emissions in BTH. However, the energy structure is a negative force. The effect of energy intensity always plays a negative role in Tianjin and Hebei, but positive in Beijing. The industrial structure effect shows a fluctuating trend, but the cumulative effect value is negative, and negative interaction is prominent. Finally, this paper gives some suggestions on how to develop low-carbon transport in BTH area.

Highlights

Today, the carbon emissions issue has become a bottleneck which is restricting the development of the global economy and society as a whole [1,2,3,4]
Due to the limitations relating to data acquisition, in this paper, the minority conversion coefficients of the 2009 transportation sector GDP Indexes of Tianjin and Hebei are missing
Based on the data relating to energy consumption and economic growth in the transportation sector in BTH from 2005 to 2013, we calculated the carbon emissions and the decoupling degree between carbon emissions and GDP in the transportation sector of these three places

Summary

Introduction

The carbon emissions issue has become a bottleneck which is restricting the development of the global economy and society as a whole [1,2,3,4]. Oil consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the transportation sector account for approximately 50% and 25% of global totals, respectively [6]. In 2002, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicted that the carbon emissions resulting from transport will double by 2020 (compared with 1990 levels) unless appropriate action is taken [7]. As a large consumer of energy, China has committed itself to lowering the carbon intensity of GDP by from 40% to 45% (below 2005 levels) by 2020 [8,9]. This commitment was made at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009. Faced with the pressure of this commitment, China has clearly realized the importance of reducing carbon emissions [10,11,12,13]

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Conclusion