Abstract
In recent years, China is facing unprecedented challenges in maintaining sustained economic growth, reducing CO2 emissions and tackling climate change. Therefore, the analysis of China’s CO2 emissions driving factors is of great significance. This paper is based on the extension of the STIRPAT model. It decomposes three factors: the population, economy and technology, and makes a quantitative analysis on driving forces of China’s CO2 emissions about the total population, urbanization rate, real GDP per capita, the proportion of secondary industry, private car ownership, energy intensity, coal consumption and oil consumption. The result shows that the population is still one of the important factors affecting China’s CO2 emissions; the energy consumption structure, mainly coal consumer-oriented, has a big positive driving force on CO2 emissions; real GDP per capita which represents the economic factor and the private car ownership has a bigger elasticity coefficient on CO2 emissions. In order to control and reduce CO2 emissions, we should control the population scale reasonably, improve the level of urbanization, optimize energy structure, improve the quality of economic growth and encourage residents’ green consumption.
Highlights
In recent years, the joint efforts to deal with the global climate issues have achieved outstanding results
The result shows that the population is still one of the important factors affecting China’s CO2 emissions; the energy consumption structure, mainly coal consumer-oriented, has a big positive driving force on CO2 emissions; real GDP per capita which represents the economic factor and the private car ownership has a bigger elasticity coefficient on CO2 emissions
The key to solve these problems is to construct the model of CO2 emissions, arrive at the quantitative relationship between the driving factors on CO2 emissions and find the emphasis of the low carbon economy development in China
Summary
The joint efforts to deal with the global climate issues have achieved outstanding results. From the “Delhi declaration” in 2002, the “Bali roadmap” in 2007 to the international climate conference held in 2009 in Copenhagen, the above shows the human wisdom and efforts to solve the problem of global climate change. China’s economic development faces many problems, such as low level of urbanization, large population base, unreasonable energy consumption structure, excessive proportion of secondary industry, etc. The key to solve these problems is to construct the model of CO2 emissions, arrive at the quantitative relationship between the driving factors on CO2 emissions and find the emphasis of the low carbon economy development in China. In this way can we “suit the remedy to the case”, solve the problem of environment better, and provide theoretical support for the low carbon economy development of China
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