Analysis of influencing factors of carbon emissions in China based on the STIRPAT model

Abstract

China, as a major economic power, has been increasing its carbon emissions year after year. Effectively controlling carbon emissions and finding suitable and effective methods to reduce emissions have become the main research themes of current research. The Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology (STIRPAT) model is used in this work to analyze the impact of GDP, population, urbanization, and energy intensity on Chinas carbon emissions from 2003 to 2020. From the output by the SPSS software, it can be illustrated that GDP and energy intensity have more obvious contribution on carbon emission, while urbanization level and population dont. Additionally, as the GDP index increases by a value of one, a 1.220 change will be seen by the carbon emission. Similarly, every one unit change for energy intensity is associated with 0.897 change in carbon emission. Therefore, this paper can consider effective ways to conserve energy and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions from these two aspects, and in this way attain the objective of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality.