Abstract
Both the realization of the “double carbon” goal and the low-carbon economy development requires a focus on transportation CO2 emissions. Calculating Chinese transportation CO2 emissions and exploring its principles are essential for achieving high-quality development of the transportation industry. Firstly, we use a “top-down” method to assess carbon emissions from transportation operations from 2003 to 2019. Secondly, the study decomposes the influencing factors of transportation CO2 emissions in China using the log-average weight decomposition method. Thirdly, the Tapio decoupling model is applied to study the decoupling effect of transportation CO2 emissions in each province of China. The findings suggest that China’s transport carbon emissions are growing at an annual rate of roughly 16%. All GDP per capita, transportation energy intensity, and population size increase the growth of transportation CO2 emissions. Contrastly, energy use per unit of turnover and transportation intensity decrease the growth of transportation CO2 emissions. There is much variation in China’s carbon emission decoupling index from year to year. Policy recommendations are proposed in response to the study of the above findings and the differences in carbon reduction potential among provinces.
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Funding
This research was funded by Shaanxi Provincial Social Science Foundation (Grant No. 2020R026), Shaanxi Province Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2021JQ-294 and 2020JQ-400), Key Scientific Research Project of Shaanxi Provincial Department of Education (Grant No. 21JT001), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (CHD 300102112604 and 300102112501).
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J.C. and S.M. designed the research and wrote the paper. H.J., W.J., and Z.B. revised the paper. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.
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Cai, J., Ma, S., Ji, H. et al. Spatial–temporal characteristics and decoupling effects of China’s transportation CO2 emissions. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 32614–32627 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24470-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-24470-y