The Impact Of Urbanization On Carbon Emissions In China

With the worsening of the global environment, the problem of global climate change that caused by the emissions of greenhouse gases is being has attracted attention all around the world. Urbanization is a new power of the future development of our country. Urbanization is a new power to the future development of our country. Meanwhile, in the process of the urbanization, the economic scale effect, agglomeration effect and energy consumption features have important influence on carbon emissions. It is necessary to research the specific influence and the regional difference of urbanization on carbon emissions in our country, and it is significant on promoting the development of urbanization in our country and achieving goals of energy conservation and emissions reduction.This paper analyzes the influence mechanism of urbanization on carbon emissions from the aspects of economic growth, industrial structure upgrade, consumption upgrade and trade openness in the process of urbanization. The panel data of30Chinese provinces (except Tibet) from1995to2012were firstly selected and the carbon emissions quantities were then evaluated by using8kinds of fossil energy consumption. The selected province urbanization levels were further classified into high level (>70%), medium level (50%-70%) and low level (<50%).The study finally analyzed Chinese urbanization’s effect on carbon emissions based on STIRPAT model and EKC, by using the method of panel cointegration analysis.The result shows that there is a long-term stable equilibrium relationship between carbon emissions, population, urbanization, per capita GDP, energy consumption intensity and trade openness. Carbon emissions increase with the whole Chinese urbanization development. The urbanization effects on carbon emissions presented an inverted U-shaped pattern resulting in the carbon emission regional differences due to the three urbanization levels. Chinese urbanization rate may see a turning point in64%. The high and low urbanization level regions negatively affected carbon emissions while the middle urbanization level regions positively affected carbon emissions. This study concludes that it is necessary for China to take a path of low-carbon and urbanization that match the characteristics of environmental resources and the level of economic development.