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Analysis on the regional difference and impact factors of CO 2 emissions in China
Author(s) -
Cui Erqian,
Ren Lijun,
Sun Haoyu
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
environmental progress and sustainable energy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.495
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1944-7450
pISSN - 1944-7442
DOI - 10.1002/ep.12590
Subject(s) - urbanization , per capita , population , energy intensity , economics , greenhouse gas , china , population growth , geography , environmental science , agricultural economics , economic growth , energy (signal processing) , mathematics , demography , statistics , ecology , archaeology , sociology , biology
China has become the largest CO 2 emitter in the world for the rapid economic growth, and the large amount of CO 2 emissions has caused worldwide concern. Based on the energy‐related data of CO 2 emissions in eight economic zones from 2000 to 2012, this paper built a STIRPAT‐based multivariate linear model fitted by a ridge regression to examine the relationships between net CO 2 emissions and a list of socioeconomic factors, including GDP per capita, population, energy intensity, and urbanization level. Regression results show that population, GDP per capita and urbanization level contribute to the increase of net CO 2 emissions while energy intensity expresses an inhibitory effect. In addition, the elastic coefficients of different variables indicate that population scale and urbanization level play more important roles than GDP per capita and energy intensity in net CO 2 emissions, where population scale contributes most significantly. Since the influence mechanisms of impact factors vary with scales of regional economy and characteristics of industry structure, some specific policy suggestions are also presented on how to mitigate the growth of CO 2 emissions in each economic zone. This study have an important reference value for examining the impact factors of energy‐related CO 2 emissions and the academic value in terms of enriching low carbon economy research systems in China. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1282–1289, 2017