Driving mechanism and decoupling effect of PM2.5 emissions: Empirical evidence from China’s industrial sector

Abstract

Haze pollution has been a serious environmental issue in China, however, little research has focused on the industrial sector which accounts for a large part of total PM2.5 emissions. This paper aims to disclose the driving mechanism and decoupling effect of industrial PM2.5 emissions. First, this study reveals the spatial-temporal drivers of industrial PM2.5 emissions in China spanning 2000–2014 through geographical detector and logarithmic mean Divisia index decomposition, respectively. Then, the decoupling causal chain of industrial economic growth and PM2.5 emissions is investigated by a refined Laspeyres index method. The empirical results illustrate that: (1) Population distribution is the dominating factor for the spatial heterogeneity of industrial PM2.5 emissions. Different influencing factors show significant synergistic effects. (2) Industrial development effect is the main reason for the increase of industrial PM2.5 emissions, while the reduction in industrial PM2.5 emissions is primarily due to energy intensity effect, followed by coal pollution intensity and energy mix effects. (3) During the study period, the PM2.5-economic growth decoupling undergoes two states, and shows the tendency towards strong decoupling. (4) The PM2.5-coal consumption effect and energy consumption-economic growth effect are important factors influencing the changes of PM2.5-economic growth decoupling indicator, while the impact of the coal consumption-energy consumption effect is quite small. This paper provides important implications for reducing industrial PM2.5 emissions.