Research On The Effects Of Economic Structure On CO₂Emissions

Early in the year2008, China overtook American in CO₂emissions and becamethe world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. At present, China is at the stage ofincreasing industrialization and urbanization, and the rising consumption of energyresources has caused high carbon emissions. Therefore, it is of great practicalsignificance to study the influencing factors of carbon emissions and accordingly theways of reducing carbon emissions. This paper analyzes carbon emissions from theperspective of economic structure change.Based on the theories of economic structure and the former studies on therelationship between economic structure and CO₂emissions, this paper applies therationalization of economic structure and the upgrading of economic structure toestimate the change of economic structure. Then, this paper analyzes the mechanismof CO₂emissions.After an analysis on the status quo of China’s economic structure and CO₂emissions, combined the Environmental Kuznets Curve with the indexes of economicstructure change, this paper sets the econometric model. Then, this paper uses GLS toanalyze how the change of economic structure impact CO₂emissions from theperspective of National level, the Eastern China level, the Central China level and theWestern China level. The results indicate that: the improvement of the rationalizationof economic structure and the upgrading of economic structure help reducing CO₂emissions. However, due to the imbalance of economic development in differentregions, the rationalization of economic structure and the upgrading of economicstructure have different impacts on differe nt regions.Finally, based on the above research, the paper provides countermeasureproposals of reducing China’s CO₂emissions.