Research On The Relationship Between Carbon Emissions And Economic Growth In Yangtze River Delta

Global warming has become a global environmental problem, which is widely discussed in the 21st century. According to the fifth IPCC report, the global average temperature in 2012 is 0.85 degrees hotter than that in 1880. Greenhouse gases are concerned to be the primry cause by most of scholars, especially carbon dioxide emissions. "Low-carbon economy" became the main stream of the world economic development and the fourth revolution in the human history. According to IEA (2009), C02 from fossil energy consumption reached 60.7 billion tons in China in 2007, which was higher than the US which reached 57.5 billion tons. It means that China has become the largest carbon emissions country. World Bank (2010) shows that China’s per capita carbon emissions has exceeded the world average emissions, which means China has to face a serious challenge. Yangtze River Delta region it is on of well development and rapidly area in China. In 2014, the Yangtze River Delta GDP totaled 15.14 trillion yuan, accounting for 23.78% of the whole country, with the energy consumption accounting for 19.94% and carbon emissions accounting for 18.34%. So it is significant to study the relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta.This thesis defines the range of research to the Yangtze River Delta, including Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and five cities in Anhui:Hefei, Ma’anshan, Anqing, Chuzhou. The following motheds are used to do study. Firstly, geographical analysis softwares such as Arcgis 10.2 are used to study spatial-temporal evolution of carbon emissions in each city. Secondly, environmental Kuznets curve and decoupling model are combined to analyse the relationship amony energy, carbon emission and economic growth. Finally, Kaya decomposition model and LMDI are combined to analyze the factors contribtion to the decoupling carbon emissions and their contribution degree. Here comes the conclusion:(1) The temporal-spatial character of carbon emissions:the total carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta show a change from stable to increasing during 2000 to 2014. The amont totals from 485 million tons to 1.485 billion tons. The high carbon emissions cities are Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Xuzhou, and other economic developed cities; the number of less high emissions cities increases year by year, centering in northern Jiangsu, northern Zhejiang Province cities.(2) The correlation analysis of energy emissions and economic growth about the Yangtze River Delta presents an inverted u-shaped EKC curve. Only if GDP reaches 23.73 trillion yuan in 2021, the inflection point appears. There are four EKC curve models among cities, such as U, N, inverted N and linear forms. The decoupling state of the Yangtze River Delta is divided into three stages:weak decoupling state from 2000 to 2001; expansive negative decoupling from 2002-2007; weak decoupling state from 2007 to 2014. The decoupling states of 30 cities show a trend of improvement.(3) The biggest contributing factor of carbon emission of the Yangtze River Delta is the economic growth, added 112.96% to carbon emission. The population is another contributing factor, with a smaller contrition.The biggest inhibited factor is energy intensity, with a 60.13% decline. The energy structure is a smaller inhibited factor. When it comes into the decoupling efforts state, the delta shows a weak efforts state, with the index between 0 to 1.Each city appears the same state with the whole delta.