Abstract
Low-carbon transition has gradually become the focus of research on environmental issues. This paper takes China’s eight major economic regions as the entry point. First, carbon emissions are measured according to United Nations’ baseline methodologies. Second, the stochastic nonparametric data envelope analysis (StoNED) model is used to measure energy efficiency to improve the accuracy of the measurement. Finally, considering the temporal and spatial nonstationarity of carbon emission data, this paper constructs geographically and temporally weighted regression-stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (GTWR-STIRPAT) model, which can accurately analyze the impact of each driving factor of carbon emissions. This paper also explores efficient emission reduction paths in conjunction with the forcing mechanism. According to the study, China’s carbon emissions show a decreasing trend from coastal areas to inland areas. In addition, there are significant problems with carbon emissions in China: some regions focus on improving energy efficiency but neglect increasing energy consumption; some regions focus on industrial development but neglect long-term emission reductions. Among the driving factors, energy efficiency, foreign trade, environmental regulations, and industrial structure have the effects of spatiotemporal heterogeneity, spatial heterogeneity, and time lag on carbon emissions, respectively.
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Notes
Due to the poor availability of data in the Tibet Autonomous Region, Taiwan Province, Hong Kong and Macau Special Administrative Regions, they were not included in the study.
It is based on the spirit of “Several Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Promoting the Rise of the Central Region”, “Implementation Opinions of the State Council on Several Policies and Measures for the Development of the Western Region” and the report of the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.
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This work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (grant numbers 18AGJ003, 19BTJ054), Scientific Research Project of Liaoning Provincial Department of Education (grant number LN2020Z02).
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Conceptualization, Jingquan Chen. Formal analysis, Baishu Chang. Writing (original draft), Xinyan Lian and Baishu Chang. Writing (review and editing), Hanning Su. Project administration, Xiaojun Ma. Supervision, Jingquan Chen and Xiaojun Ma. Investigation, Ziyan Zhang.
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Chen, J., Lian, X., Su, H. et al. Analysis of China’s carbon emission driving factors based on the perspective of eight major economic regions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 8181–8204 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11044-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11044-z