Economic growth, industrial structure and nitrogen oxide emissions reduction and prediction in China

Abstract

This paper empirically investigates the impact of economic growth and industrial structure on China's Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) emissions reduction in a comprehensive Kaya-PLS framework. It is found that the influencing coefficients of economic growth and industrial structure are 0.27 and 2.53, respectively. It indicates that economic growth and industrial structure do bring positive effects on China's NOx emissions, and industrial structure plays a much greater role than economic growth in the process of NOx emissions reduction in China. Moreover, we incorporate additional variables involving energy consumption structure, energy intensity, population and cement production to augment the NOx emissions function. In addition, six scenarios are set to calculate China's NOx emissions for 2019–2030. The prediction results show that China's NOx emissions decreased by 9.11% on average during 2019–2030 because of the decline of the proportion of secondary industry. It means that the decrease of proportion of secondary industry would make a significant decrease for China's NOx emissions. What's more, China's NOx emissions in six scenarios in 2020 are not more than 15.74 million tons, indicating that it is realistic to achieve China's reduction target on NOx emissions according to the 13th Five-Year Plan. Therefore, the government should adjust the energy structure and industrial structure as soon as possible to control China's NOx emissions and improve air quality.