The Spatial Pattern of the Prefecture-Level Carbon Emissions and Its Spatial Mismatch in China with the Level of Economic Development

Abstract

Now, more and more attention is being paid to the deviation between economic benefits and environmental costs. Therefore, the research investigated the temporal variation in, and the spatial pattern of, carbon emissions systematically from the prefecture-level cities in China, and the spatial mismatch with the level of economic development from 2005 to 2020 by the spatial autocorrelation, the barycenter model, the spatial mismatch index and the standard deviation ellipse. The research results showed that: (1) The prefecture-level carbon emissions showed the characteristics of continuous expansion in time, decreasing from the north to the south and increasing from the southeast to the north-west in space. (2) The spatial distribution of high and low values of the prefecture-level carbon emissions in China showed significant spatial aggregation and positive correlation. Among them, the high-high (H-H) regions were mainly distributed in the city agglomerations of the mid-southern Liaoning, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Huebaoyu, central Shanxi, Shandong Peninsula, and Yangtze River Delta. Low-low (L-L) regions continued to accelerate to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang and Macao, Pearl River Delta, Beibu Gulf, central Yunnan, central Guizhou, Chengdu-Chongqing, and other city agglomerations. (3) The barycenter of the carbon emissions has always been located in the north of the barycenter of economic development, and the spatial mismatch distance between the two showed the change characteristic of the type of N. It can be seen that the spatial mismatch was apparent. (4) The mismatch index and the mismatch contribution of the cities showed a significant regional differentiation pattern, decreasing from the east to the west.