A Study On The Impact Of Urban Population Spatial Structure Change On Carbon Emissions In China

Sine IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has published the third times of climate assessment report in2001, the global climate warming gradually becomes an important political and economic issue among all the countries. On February24th,2003, the UK government announced the Energy White Paper:Our Energy Future:Creating a Low-carbon Economy, letting the concept of low-carbon economy available on the publics’vision in the first time. Developing low-carbon economy in response to solve climate warming has already been to the consensus for the whole world. While as a frontier idea, low-carbon economy owns a wide range of social cognition degrees, which cover low-carbon development, low-carbon technologies, low-carbon industries, low-carbon life and other various patterns. However the author believes its core is just trying to maximize the reducing of carbon emissions.China’s economy has maintained a double-digit speedy increase. Until the tarly2011, its economic aggregate has surpassed Japan, and officially became the second largest economy worldwide. However, we must be soberly aware that China’s economic growth mode in the past is always haunted by the "nightmare" of high-carbon mode. Either from the viewpoint of resources consumption or environmental pollution to value the path of development in the past, it evidently shows the characteristics of the "three highs",(high pollution, high energy consumption and high consumption)According to latest data released by the International Energy Agency, currently China has surpassed the United States to become the number one carbon emitter, accounting for approximately21%of the world’s carbon emissions.Such external, high-carbon and "childless" developmental process style not only obstructs its own sustainable development (mainly refers to the difficulties of economic transition, increasingly serious energy crisis and so on), but also brings the pressure of carbon emission reduction from worldwide publish opinions. As for the incompatible economic development in the past of China, in order to find effective measures to reduce carbon emissions, an important theoretical proposition is how to understand the problems of city carbon emissions fluctuations within the past period of time. Further, we have to ask, being the main factor of a city, what is the intrinsic connection between population and carbon emissions?This dissertation is based on the classic economic theories (including environmental economics, energy economics, population economics and low-carbon economics, etc.), population theory, econometric analysis theory and operational research theory, combined with the prefecture-level cities’ panel data in the past period time of China, and empirically studies the impact of the spatial structure of China’s urban population’s changing upon the city civil carbon emissions within certain periods. On the basis of summing up the results of previous theoretical and empirical researches, the first chapter introduces this study’s motivation, research objectives, research methods and means, the overall structure as well as major innovation briefly. The second chapter is an overview of the relevant literature; it gives the necessary arrangement and summary of related literature and theories (both the domestic and international research) about the effects of demographic factors on carbon emissions. It includes population growth, age structure of the population, the employment structure of the population, population consumption structure, population urbanization and population spatial structure etc), which in turn provides the necessary groundwork for the later empirical research.Chapter Three introduces the concept of the integrated intensity of the urban population, so as to empirically describe the structure conditions of China’s urban population spatial distribution. Chapter Four accounts Chinese city civil emissions from direct carbon emissions and indirect carbon emission respectively. Furthermore, in the fifth chapter, by applying panel data modol, it specifically proves the changes in the spatial structure of China’s urban population affect carbon emissions’ inherent mechanism. And in the sixth chapter, based on existing empirical conclusions, a scenario analysis and Monte Carlo Stimulation about the effect of changes in the spatial structure of future urban population upon dynamic impact on the city civil carbon emissions are taking on. The last chapter is policies and suggestions as well as research prospects, mainly the summary and conclusion of the empirical findings and political implications in this dissertation. Moreover, it proposes future direction for further research.The major findings of this study can be summarized as follows:in the control of other explanatory variables, meanwhile; after solving the endogeneity problem by using instrumental variables, it shows changes in the spatial structure of urban population samples have a significant negative effect on urban civilian carbon emissions. That is to say under the circumstances of meeting the1%significance level and within the selected sample period of time, changes in the spatial structure of urban population has about14.30%explanatory power on city civil carbon emissions. The following scenario analysis and Monte Carlo Stimulation progress also confirm the higher concentration degree of the urban population, the more obvious effect of urban civil carbon emission reduction.Based on the above discussion, we believe taking the future road of China’s low-carbon urbanization, a reasonable size of city and the best urban population spatial structure must be considered. As a result, the future Chinese economy can enjoy the healthy and sustainable development.