Abstract
Currently, household carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (HCEs) as one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) have drawn notable scholarly concern. Thus, here, taking six provinces in the period of 2000–2017 of Central China as a case, we analyzed the characteristics and the driving factors of HCEs from direct energy consumption and three perspectives: Central China as a whole, urban-rural differences, and inter-provincial comparison. The drivers of direct HCEs were analyzed by the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI). The σ convergence was adopted for analyzing the trend of inter-provincial differences on the HCEs. The key findings are as follows. First, all the direct HCEs from three perspectives had an obvious growth trend. The total direct HCEs grew from 9596.20 × 104 tonnes in 2000 to 30,318.35 × 104 tonnes in 2017, with an increase of 2.16 times. Electricity and coal use were the primary sources. The urban and rural increases of direct HCEs were up 2.57 times and 1.77 times, respectively. The urban-rural gap of direct HCEs narrowed first and then widened. The direct HCEs in the six provinces varied significantly, but the gap was narrowing. Second, as a whole the per capita consumption expenditure and energy demand were the main drivers to the increment of HCEs, with cumulative contribution rates of 118.19% and 59.90%. The energy price effect was mainly responsible for the mitigation of HCEs. Third, the similar drivers’ trend can also be seen from the perspective of inter-provincial comparison. However, from the perspective of urban and rural difference, the population urban-rural structure effect played a reverse influence on both urban and rural areas. Thus, raising the energy prices appropriately, upgrading the residents’ consumption to a sustainable pattern, controlling the growth of population size reasonably, and optimizing the household energy structure might effectively mitigate the growth of HCEs in Central China.
Highlights
Alleviating climate change is one of the key objectives to realize sustainable development
215.94% from 9596.20 × 104 tonnes to 30,318.35 × 104 tonnes during 2000–2017, with an annual growth of 7.00%. It accounted for about 28.72%, 24.19%, and 24.51% of national direct household carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (HCEs) in 2000, 2006, and 2012, respectively (Table 3)
The per capita direct HCEs rose from 0.27 tonnes to 0.77 tonnes, with an average annual increase amount and rate of
Summary
Alleviating climate change is one of the key objectives to realize sustainable development. Human activity was found to have an important effect on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [1]. Reducing the emissions of man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) is one of the fundamental steps to address global climate change [2]. The low-carbon economy has gradually become an important target worldwide [3,4]. China has been by far the biggest energy user and carbon. A series of targets and policies were formulated by China to mitigate emissions under huge pressure. It has aimed to reach CO2 summits around 2030, to strive to reach the peak as early as possible and realize carbon neutrality by
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