Abstract
Carbon emissions are a major concern in China, and transportation is an important part of it. In this paper, data on China’s 30 provinces’ transport carbon emissions from 2005 to 2019 were selected to construct a spatial autocorrelation model and identified the decoupling types, which revealed the relationship between transport carbon emissions and economic development. This study suggests a regulation strategy for provincial transport carbon emissions in China based on the contribution rates of transport carbon emission variables. According to the findings, transport carbon emissions of China indicated a slow rise from 2005 to 2019, the annual growth rate has fluctuated downward, and petroleum products have been the most major source. The geographical correlation of transport carbon emissions has gradually improved, and the transport carbon emission intensity has become more significant. Differences in the transport carbon emission intensity slightly increased, which were significantly regionally correlated. There were seven forms of decoupling between yearly provincial transport carbon emissions and economic development, with weak decoupling accounting for the largest proportion, 45.24%. Decoupling was achieved in 83.33% of the provinces in the period of 2005–2019. As a consequence of factor decomposition, the energy intensity, transport intensity, and economic structure played an overall inhibitory role, while the carbon emission intensity, economic scale, and population played promoting roles. The economic scale was the most important influencing factor.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant numbers 42171298 and 42201333) and Late Project of National Social Science Foundation in China (grant number 20FJYB035).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Qian Cui, Zhixiang Zhou, Dongjie Guan, and Yuqian Xue. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Qian Cui, Dongjie Guan, Zhixiang Zhou, Lilei Zhou, and Ke Huang; all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Highlights
• China’s transport carbon emissions indicated a slow rise from 2005 to 2019; the annual growth rate of carbon emissions has fluctuated downward.
• The geographical correlation of transport carbon emissions has gradually improved, and the transport carbon emission intensity has become more significant.
• There were seven decoupling types between the annual provincial transportation carbon emissions and economic development in China, with weak decoupling accounting for the largest proportion.
• Economic scale was the main driving factor of traffic carbon emissions.
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Cui, Q., Zhou, Z., Guan, D. et al. Spatiotemporal evolution trend and decoupling type identification of transport carbon emissions from economic development in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 111459–111480 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29857-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-29857-z