Research On China’s Urbanization Process And Carbon Emissions

With the quick development of the urbanization and the rapid increase of energyconsumption in China, the energy security became a significant factor restrainingChina’s economic and social development. Meanwhile, the energy consumption in theurbanization process produced large amount of carbon dioxide, which destroyed theenvironment heavily. Therefore, upon the coordination of urbanization, energyconsumption and carbon emissions depends the sustainable development of China’surbanization, energy security and environmental protection. The urbanization have adirect and significant impact on the economic development, industrial structure andresidents’ living, and then affect the energy consumption and carbon emissions.According to empirical studies, the urbanization could restrain the carbonemissions in China, while the energy consumption could improve the carbon emissions.According to time series analysis of relevant data in the urbanization process in China,it could be found that there exist both short term equilibrium and long term equilibriumamong the economic development, energy consumption, trade openness andurbanization. The results show: in the long run, economic growth, energy consumptionand trade openness have positive influence on carbon dioxide emissions, buturbanization negative. In the short run, economic growth and energy consumption havestrong positive influence on carbon dioxide emissions, while urbanization strongnegative one, and the relationship between trade openness and carbon emissionscouldn’t be affirmed. According to further studies with the panel data analysis, from theperspective of the overall country, the contribution of the energy intensity of grossdomestic product to the carbon dioxide emissions is more than the carbon intensity ofenergy in China, and both of them increase in the long term. Urbanization couldimprove the carbon emissions in the short run while in the long run it turns to decrease.From the perspective of regional difference, the impact mechanism of carbon emissionsin each region is different from others. The main reasons of the difference lie in thediversity of energy consumption and urbanization, which could be caused by thedifferent level of economic development in different region. The impact of energyconsumption on carbon emissions in eastern region is obviously weaker than the centraland western regions, while the impact of urbanization is stronger than the others.Moreover, this paper applies Granger causality tests and impulse response analysis to further understanding of the impact mechanism of carbon emissions in the urbanizationprocess.Finally, this paper explains the empirical results one by one and proposescorresponding policy suggestions. The coordination of energy consumption and carbonemissions is very important to the urbanization process, to achieve it, it is necessaryadhere to low-carbon development path, optimize the industrial structure and energystructure, improve the scientific and technological innovation capability and energyefficiency, and enact pertinent development strategy for different regions.