Emission reduction mode of China's provincial transportation sector: Based on “Energy+” carbon efficiency evaluation

Abstract

Because the transportation sector relies heavily on fossil energy, especially petroleum, this sector has become one of the most challenging regarding a reduction of carbon emissions. However, because of the variability of regional development, the emission reduction pathways in the transportation sector vary from region to region. This study develops two sets of methods that consider only the energy factor and multiple other factors including energy (energy +), to evaluate and analyse the carbon reduction performance of China's provincial transportation sector, identify the provincial patterns of reducing carbon emissions and propose targeted pathways. The results show that there are obvious differences in energy-based and energy + -based carbon efficiency values across provinces, indicating that energy is an important element of carbon emission reduction in China's transportation sector, but factors such as the economic development level and structure and level of transportation infrastructure also have an important impact on carbon emission reduction. Both the “energy+“-based carbon efficiency and shadow price in the developed eastern provinces are higher than that of the central, western and north-eastern provinces. Considering the regional carbon shadow price and carbon efficiency, we found four different carbon peaking patterns for China's provincial transportation sector.