A Comparison Study On Factors Influencing Shanxi Urban/Rural Residential Direct CO₂ Emissions

The Paris Agreement which came into effect on November 4,2016 shows the determination of countries around the world to address climate change by working together.As a responsible and great country,China has been actively promoting domestic greenhouse gas reduction.Chinese government has promised to reach the peak of CO₂ emissions no later than 2030.Carbon reduction has become one of the Chinese strategic priorities in next 15 years.Residential CO₂ emission is the second largest component of China's carbon emissions,and residential direct carbon emissions have increased greatly during the last two decades.China has vast territory,and each province developing level is different.Urban-rural dual economic structure leads to the differences in standards of living between urban and rural areas.Therefore,we used LMDI model to measure the impacts of six factors?per capita household income,number of households,household size,energy intensity,energy structure and carbon emissions coefficient?on Shanxi urban/rural residential direct CO₂ emissions during 1995-2012.Then the difference of the six factors'effect between urban and rural areas was compared.The results are as follows:?1?the urban and rural residential direct CO₂emissions increased significantly with higher growth for urban emissions than that for rural emissions.?2?The per capita household income effect contributed most to the increase of residential direct CO₂ emissions for both urban and rural Shanxi.The number of household effect significantly increased urban residential direct CO₂emissions.However,its positive impact on the growth of rural residential direct CO₂emissions was little.Energy intensity effect and household size effect were the first and second biggest inhibitory factor respectively for both urban and rural residential direct CO₂ emissions.To promote the increase of residential direct CO₂ emissions,energy structure effect played a more important role in urban Shanxi than in rural areas.However,the inhibition effects of carbon emissions coefficient effect on both urban and rural residential direct CO₂ emissions were very little.Finally,several policy implications are suggested based on our findings above.