Impact of population aging and industrial structure on CO2 emissions and emissions trend prediction in China

Abstract

Along with the adoption of the Paris Agreement in 2015 and China's own action target, the emissions reductions in China, as the largest CO2 emission country in the world, become extremely urgent. In terms of the current status of demographic and industrial structure, the impact factors of CO2 emissions are analyzed by the ridge regression method based on an extended STIRPAT model in this study. The results show that population aging, industrial structure and per-capita wealth have a positive impact on CO2 emissions growth, while energy intensity has a weakly negative effect on CO2 emission. Based on the above studies, eight different scenarios are set to analyze the future energy CO2 emissions. In addition, future CO2 emissions in China are also predicted by the Grey System model. It concludes that CO2 emissions will have an upward trend in the future. As a result, speeding up construction of the sanatoria industry as well as adjusting of the energy and industry structures is proposed as effective ways to control CO2 emissions.