Forecasting Carbon Emissions with Dynamic Model Averaging Approach: Time-Varying Evidence from China

An analysis of the driving forces of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions in China’s industrial sector

Decoupling economic growth from carbon dioxide emissions in China: A sectoral factor decomposition analysis

Carbon emission reduction has become a worldwide concern on account of global sustainability issues. Many existing studies have focused on the various socioeconomic influencing factors of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and the corresponding transmission mechanisms, while very few models have unified the scale effect, structure effect, and technique effect in the context of China. This paper attempted to analyze the impact of economic growth, industrial transition, and energy intensity on CO2 emissions in China by constructing an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model. The results showed that there are long-term cointegration relationships between the three factors mentioned above and CO2 emissions. There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions, which not only verifies the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis, but also upholds the scale effect. In addition, the proportion of added value of secondary industry and energy intensity has significant positive impacts on CO2 emissions. On one hand, this confirms the structure effect and technique effect; on the other hand, it implies that the reduction effect is the dominant effect in the case of China, instead of the rebound effect. This paper is expected to make a valuable contribution to research in the field of sustainable development by providing both theoretical support and implementation of path choice for CO2 reduction in China.

Research on the impact of COVID-19 on the spatiotemporal distribution of carbon dioxide emissions in China

Dynamic analysis of carbon dioxide emissions in China's petroleum refining and coking industry

With accelerating urbanization, building sector has been becoming more important source of China’s total carbon emission. In this paper, we try to calculate the life-cycle carbon emission, analyze influencing factors of carbon emission, and assess the delinking index of carbon emission in China’s building sector. The results show: (i) Total carbon emission in China’s building industry increase from 984.69 million tons of CO2 in 2005 to 3753.98 million tons of CO2 in 2013. The average annual growth rate is 18.21% per year. Indirect carbon emission from building material consumption accounted to 96–99% of total carbon emission. (ii) The indirect emission intensity effect was leading contributor to change of carbon emission. The following was economic output effects, which always contributed to increase in carbon emission. Energy intensity effect and energy structure effect took negligible role to offset carbon emission. (iii) Delinking index show the status between carbon emission and economic output in China’s building industry during 2005–2006 and 2007–2008 was weak decoupling; during 2006–2007 and during 2008–2010 was expansive decoupling; and during 2010–2013 was expansive negative decoupling.

Assessing CO2 emissions in China’s iron and steel industry: A dynamic vector autoregression model

Purpose: China is confronting with tremendous pressure in carbon emission reduction. While logistics industry seriously relies on fossil fuel, and emits greenhouse gas, especially carbon dioxide. The aim of this article is to estimate the carbon dioxide emission in China ’ s logistics sector, and analyze the causes for the change of carbon dioxide emission, and identify the critical factors which mainly drive the change in carbon dioxide emissions of China ’ s logistics industry . Design/methodology/approach: The logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) method has often been used to analyze decomposition of energy consumption and carbon emission due to its theoretical foundation, adaptability, ease of use and result interpretation. So we use the LMDI method to analyze the changes in carbon dioxide emission in China ’ s logistics industry in this paper . Findings: By analyzing carbon dioxide emission of China ’ s logistics, the results show that the carbon dioxide emission of logistics in China has increased by 21.5 times, from 45.1 million tons to 1014.1 million tons in the research period. The highway transport is the main contributor to carbon dioxide emission in logistics industry. The energy intensity and carbon dioxide emission factors were contributing to the reduction of carbon dioxide emission in China ’ s logistics industry in overall study period. Originality/value: Although there are a lot of literature analyzed carbon dioxide emission in many industry sectors, for example manufacturing, iron and steel , pulp and paper, cement, glass industry, and so on. However, few scholars researched on carbon dioxide emission in logistics industry. This the first study is in the context of carbon dioxide emission of China ’ s logistics industry.

Transportation is an important source of carbon emissions in China. Reduction in carbon emissions in the transportation sector plays a key role in the success of China’s energy conservation and emissions reduction. This paper, for the first time, analyzes the drivers of carbon emissions in China’s transportation sector from 2000 to 2015 using the Generalized Divisia Index Method (GDIM). Based on this analysis, we use the improved Tapio model to estimate the decoupling elasticity between the development of China’s transportation industry and carbon emissions. The results show that: (1) the added value of transportation, energy consumption and per capita carbon emissions in transportation have always been major contributors to China’s carbon emissions from transportation. Energy carbon emission intensity is a key factor in reducing carbon emissions in transportation. The carbon intensity of the added value and the energy intensity have a continuous effect on carbon emissions in transportation; (2) compared with the increasing factors, the decreasing factors have a limited effect on inhibiting the increase in carbon emissions in China’s transportation industry; (3) compared with the total carbon emissions decoupling state, the per capita decoupling state can more accurately reflect the relationship between transportation and carbon emissions in China. The state of decoupling between the development of the transportation industry and carbon emissions in China is relatively poor, with a worsening trend after a short period of improvement; (4) the decoupling of transportation and carbon emissions has made energy-saving elasticity more important than the per capita emissions reduction elasticity effect. Based on the conclusions of this study, this paper puts forward some policy suggestions for reducing carbon emissions in the transportation industry.

This study analyzed the spatiotemporal differences and driving factors of carbon emission in China’s prefecture-level cities for the period 2003–2019. In doing so, we investigated the spatiotemporal differences of carbon emission using spatial correlation analysis, standard deviation ellipse, and Dagum Gini coefficient and identified the main drivers using the geographical detector model. The results demonstrated that 1) on the whole, carbon emission between 2003 and 2019 was still high, with an average of 100.97 Mt. Temporally, carbon emission in national China increased by 12% and the western region enjoyed the fastest growth rate (15.50%), followed by the central (14.20%) and eastern region (12.17%), while the northeastern region was the slowest (11.10%). Spatially, the carbon emission was characterized by a spatial distribution of “higher in the east and lower in the midwest,” spreading along the “northeast–southwest” direction. 2) The carbon emission portrayed a strong positive spatial correlation with an imbalance polarization trend of “east-hot and west-cold”. 3) The overall differences of carbon emission appeared in a slow downward trend during the study period, and the interregional difference was the largest contributor. 4) Transportation infrastructure, economic development level, informatization level, population density, and trade openness were the dominant determinants affecting carbon emission, while the impacts significantly varied by region. In addition, interactions between any two factors exerted greater influence on carbon emission than any one alone. The findings from this study provide novel insights into the spatiotemporal differences of carbon emission in urban China, revealing the potential driving factors, and thus differentiated and targeted policies should be formulated to curb climate change.

Insights into the efficiency of China's green energy policies

This paper expanded the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) model through the introduction of urbanization, residents’ consumption, and other factors, and decomposed carbon emission changes in China into carbon emission factor effect, energy intensity effect, consumption inhibitory factor effect, urbanization effect, residents’ consumption effect, and population scale effect, and then explored contribution rates and action mechanisms of the above six factors on change in carbon emissions in China. Then, the effect of population structure change on carbon emission was analyzed by taking 2003–2012 as a sample period, and combining this with the panel data of 30 provinces in China. Results showed that in 2003–2012, total carbon emission increased by 4.2117 billion tons in China. The consumption inhibitory factor effect, urbanization effect, residents’ consumption effect, and population scale effect promoted the increase in carbon emissions, and their contribution ratios were 27.44%, 12.700%, 74.96%, and 5.90%, respectively. However, the influence of carbon emission factor effect (−2.54%) and energy intensity effect (−18.46%) on carbon emissions were negative. Population urbanization has become the main population factor which affects carbon emission in China. The “Eastern aggregation” phenomenon caused the population scale effect in the eastern area to be significantly higher than in the central and western regions, but the contribution rate of its energy intensity effect (−11.10 million tons) was significantly smaller than in the central (−21.61 million tons) and western regions (−13.29 million tons), and the carbon emission factor effect in the central area (−3.33 million tons) was significantly higher than that in the eastern (−2.00 million tons) and western regions (−1.08 million tons). During the sample period, the change in population age structure, population education structure, and population occupation structure relieved growth of carbon emissions in China, but the effects of change of population, urban and rural structure, regional economic level, and population size generated increases in carbon emissions. Finally, the change of population sex structure had no significant influence on changes in carbon emissions.

Elucidating the complex mechanism between urbanization, economic growth, carbon dioxide emissions is fundamental necessary to inform effective strategies on energy saving and emission reduction in China. Based on a balanced panel data of 31 provinces in China over the period 1997–2010, this study empirically examines the relationships among urbanization, economic growth and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions at the national and regional levels using panel cointegration and vector error correction model and Granger causality tests. Results showed that urbanization, economic growth and CO2 emissions are integrated of order one. Urbanization contributes to economic growth, both of which increase CO2 emissions in China and its eastern, central and western regions. The impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions in the western region was larger than that in the eastern and central regions. But economic growth had a larger impact on CO2 emissions in the eastern region than that in the central and western regions. Panel causality analysis revealed a bidirectional long-run causal relationship among urbanization, economic growth and CO2 emissions, indicating that in the long run, urbanization does have a causal effect on economic growth in China, both of which have causal effect on CO2 emissions. At the regional level, we also found a bidirectional long-run causality between land urbanization and economic growth in eastern and central China. These results demonstrated that it might be difficult for China to pursue carbon emissions reduction policy and to control urban expansion without impeding economic growth in the long run. In the short-run, we observed a unidirectional causation running from land urbanization to CO2 emissions and from economic growth to CO2 emissions in the eastern and central regions. Further investigations revealed an inverted N-shaped relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth in China, not supporting the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis. Our empirical findings have an important reference value for policy-makers in formulating effective energy saving and emission reduction strategies for China.

In order to study the changing rule of carbon dioxide emissions in China, this paper systematically focused on their current situation, influencing factors, and future trends. Firstly, the current situations of global carbon dioxide emissions and China’s carbon dioxide emissions were presented via a visualization method and their characteristics were analyzed; secondly, the random forest regression model was used to screen the main factors affecting China’s carbon emissions. Considering the different aspects of carbon emissions, 29 influencing factors were determined and 6 main influencing factors were determined according to the results of the random forest regression model. Then, a prediction model for carbon emissions in China was established. The BP neural network model, multi-factor LSTM time series model, and CNN-LSTM model were compared on the test set and all of them passed the test. However, the goodness of fit of the CNN-LSTM model was about 0.01~0.02 higher than the other two models and the MAE and RMSE of the CNN-LSTM model were about 0.01~0.03 lower than those of the other two models. Thus, it was selected to predict China’s carbon dioxide emissions. The predicted results showed that the peak of China’s carbon emissions will be around 2027 and the peak of these emissions will be between 12.9 billion tons and 13.2 billion tons. Overall, the paper puts forward reasonable suggestions for China’s low-carbon development and provides a reference for an adjustment plan of energy structure.

Commercial department assumes the vital part in energy conservation and carbon dioxide emission mitigation of China. This paper applies the time-series data covering 2001-2015 and introduces the STIRPAT method to research the factors of commercial department's carbon dioxide emissions in China. The combination of STIRPAT method and ridge regression is first adopted to research carbon dioxide emissions of commercial department in China. Potential influencing factors of carbon dioxide emission, including economic growth, level of urbanization, aggregate population, energy intensity, energy structure and foreign direct investment, are selected to establish the extended stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence and technology (STIRPAT) model, where ridge regression is adopted to eliminate multicollinearity. The estimation consequences show that all forces were positively related to carbon dioxide emissions in China's commercial department except for energy structure. Energy structure is the only negative factor and aggregate population is the maximal influencing factor of carbon dioxide emissions. The economic growth, urbanization level, energy intensity and foreign direct investment all positively contribute to carbon dioxide emissions of commercial department. The findings have significant implications for policy-makers to enact emission reduction policies in commercial sector. Therefore, the paper ought to take into full consideration these different impacts of above influencing factors to abate carbon dioxide emissions of commercial sector.