Spatiotemporal variation and driving factors of carbon emissions in three industrial land spaces in China from 1997 to 2016

Abstract

As the fastest developing and largest energy-emitting nation in the world, China has been seeking measures to reduce carbon emissions and implement more efficient land-use policies. China's carbon reduction experiences can potentially provide a model for a more sustainable path forward, but increased efforts are needed to understand the factors driving the amount and spatial distribution of carbon emissions and how these drivers are changing through time. This paper develops an understanding of how carbon emissions in three industrial land spaces (agriculture, production and living, and transportation spaces) in China varied across space and through time. A set of complementary models including gravity center and hotspot analysis, alongside an analysis of the relationship between land use and carbon emissions, were implemented to reveal the spatiotemporal distribution of the emissions from 1997 to 2016. Results showed that increasing the extent of land dedicated to different land-uses increased carbon emissions in many areas, but this finding was not universal for all provinces and spaces. Various factors including income, population, energy intensity, energy structure, and economic structure helped explain the variation of emissions across the three types of industrial land spaces. The findings offer implications for China's land use and carbon reduction strategy.