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Role of urban income, industrial carbon treatment plants and forests to control the carbon emission in China

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Abstract

Present study contributes to the existing literature by introducing the role of urban income and urban expenditure to control the carbon emission, especially produced by urbanization. Additionally, investment in industrial treatment plant is used to study its impact in carbon reduction. By using the data of 30 Chinese provinces over the period of 2005–2015, we have reported that urbanization and industrialization are main culprits of the carbon emission, whereas the higher urban income leads to decrease the carbon emission that has been caused by urbanization, as mentioned by the negative coefficient of urban income. Moreover, the investment in industrial treatment plants help to reduce the industrial carbon emission. Post-policy estimations have confirmed that forest management can be a useful measure to eradicate the carbon emission. Overall, the findings confirm that higher urban income, industrial carbon treatment plants, and forest investment activities are useful to control the precipitous increase in carbon emission. Given results enhance the existing literature as well as deliver the policy implications to curtail the environmental degradation process.

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Notes

  1. Earlier literature has extensively studied the role of waste water treatment to reduce the carbon emission, but the distinction of present study is to examine the role of carbon treatment plants to reduce the carbon emission.

  2. a,bSource: Chinese Energy Statistic Yearbook (NBSC, 2014); LCV: low calorific value; c,d Source: Song et al. (2018); d EF: emission factor.

    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

  3. System GMM is introduced by (Arellano and Bover 1995; Blundell and Bond 1998)

  4. NBS (The National Bureau of Statistics of China), 2018. China Statistical Yearbook ( 2016. China Statistics Press, Beijing.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics, Shandong University, Jinan, China

    Suleman Sarwar

  2. Finance and Economics Department, University of Jeddah, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Suleman Sarwar

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  1. Suleman Sarwar
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Correspondence to Suleman Sarwar.

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Sarwar, S. Role of urban income, industrial carbon treatment plants and forests to control the carbon emission in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 16652–16661 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-04854-3

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