Study On The Impact Of Urbanization On Urban Building Carbon Emissions In China

Climate change is affecting the environment and daily life we live in.Addressing climate change has become a global initiative.The current mainstream view is that the main cause of global warming is greenhouse gas emissions and other anthropogenic drivers.It can be seen that the impact of human on the climate system is clear,and the impact is increasing.As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases,China’s energy conservation and emission reduction situation is more severe than that of other countries.In addition,China is experiencing the largest urbanization process in the world.The accompanying effects of urbanization,such as population mobility,economic development,urban construction and spatial expansion,have intensified China’s environmental pressure.It is urgent to seek an effective low-carbon development path.From the perspective of carbon sources,the building sector,as one of the main sources of carbon emissions,is accelerating its growth.Due to the characteristics of large emission reduction potential and low emission reduction cost,the building sector has become an important breakthrough to promote the realization of China’s energy conservation and emission reduction targets.In recent years,the relationship between urbanization and building carbon emissions has gradually attracted the attention of all sectors of society.It is of great significance to study how to promote building carbon emission reduction in the accelerated development stage of urbanization,so as to alleviate the carbon emission pressure brought by the rapid growth of urban construction area.However,due to the lack of basic data,there is little systematic research in the academic community.In this context,this thesis takes the effect of urbanization on the carbon emissions of buildings as the research topic.Firstly,combined with the emission factor method,this thesis uses the energy balance sheet as the data basis to measure and analyze the building carbon emission data;at the same time,it analyses the development status of urbanization,and divides the sample provinces into three urbanization development regions by using the single index method with the urbanization rate as the evaluation index.Secondly,on the basis of summarizing relevant research at home and abroad,this thesis discusses the mechanism of urbanization’s impact on building carbon emissions from three aspects: population,economy and space;at the same time,combined with the particularity of the research object,six key control variables are selected and a theoretical analysis model is constructed.Thirdly,based on the STIRPAT model,this thesis uses the panel data of 30 provinces from 2001 to 2015 as a sample to quantitatively calculate the degree of impact of the control variables at the national and regional levels.The test results show that the model estimation results have significant effectiveness.The main conclusions of this thesis are as follows:(1)China’s building carbon emissions generally show an increasing trend and present a significant regional difference.The per capita building carbon emissions and building carbon emission intensity in high urbanization area were consistently higher than those of medium urbanization area and medium high urbanization area during the study period,but the growth rate was the slowest than that in other regions;(2)Urbanization mainly affects building carbon emissions through three transmission channels: population mobility,economic development and spatial agglomeration,but the degree of influence shows regional differences with the level of urbanization development.Population urbanization mainly affects the carbon emissions of residential buildings through residents’ living consumption,Economic Urbanization mainly affects the carbon emissions of public buildings through the development of tertiary industry,and spatial urbanization mainly affects the carbon emissions of residential buildings and public buildings through the expansion of building scale.(3)From a national level,urban population,the proportion of urban population,added value of tertiary industry,the proportion of tertiary industry and urban building area all promoted the growth of building carbon emissions during the research period,in which the added value of tertiary industry was the main driving factor,while the ‘volume ratio’ of urban buildings played a certain mitigating role in building carbon emissions;(4)From a regional level,urban population and added value of tertiary industry in the medium urbanization area played an important role in promoting building carbon emissions.Added value of tertiary industry and the proportion of urban population were the main driving factors in the middle high urbanization area.Urban population was the primary driving factor in high urbanization area.In addition,urban building area in different urbanization development regions showed a positive role in promoting building carbon emissions,while the ‘volume ratio’ of urban buildings gradually changed from a mitigation role to a driving role with the improvement of urbanization level.This conclusion also reflects the phased characteristics of the impact of urbanization on building carbon emissions,which is consistent with the environmental Kuznets curve.Based on the above conclusions,this thesis combines the new requirements of social development and urban construction in the new era,and considers the specific situation of the current urbanization development in China,constructs the framework system of building carbon emission reduction,and puts forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions from the national and regional levels.The research results of this thesis can not only provide a theoretical basis for the choice of energy-saving and emission-reduction path and the formulation of relevant policies,but also provide decision-making basis for regional coordinated development.At the same time,it can provide reference for related research on carbon emissions in the building sector.