Research On Carbon Emissions In East And South Coastal China: Scenario Prediction Based On STIRPAT

The world economy is developing rapidly,and China's enormous role cannot be ignored.At present,China has become the second-largest economy in the world.However,economic growth is always accompanied by a large amount of energy consumption,especially fossil fuels consumption.It is clear that Chinese carbon emissions are closely linked to the consumption of fossil fuels,which makes China the world's largest carbon emitter.East and south coastal China is made up of a cluster of six developed provinces,including Shandong,Zhejiang,Jiangsu,Shanghai,Fujian and Guangdong,whose CO2 emissions account for one third of the total CO2 emissions in China.As such,it is meaningful to predict carbon emissions in this region to assess whether China can achieve emission reduction targets.This paper employed STIRPAT to analyze the factors impacting the carbon emissions of this area from 2000 to 2016,including population(POP),urbanization(UR),GDP per capita(GDP),energy intensity(EI),and industrial structure(IS).The results showed that GDP was mainly responsible for increasing carbon emissions while EI played a significant role in reducing it.This paper combined the Environmental Kuznets Curve with the econometric model.EKC hypothesis was verified to understand the development status and the results demonstrated that there were inverted U-shaped relationships between per capita GDP/urbanization and carbon emissions.Considering the importance of GDP,EI,and IS obtained from regression analysis,basic,highestrate,middle,and advanced scenarios were set to predict carbon emissions according to different change rates.In the basic scenario,carbon intensity was reduced by 48.5% in 2020 compared to 2005,which was slightly higher than the national target of 40–45%,and was reduced by 59.7% in 2030,which was close to a 60–65% reduction.Nevertheless,in the advanced scenario,carbon intensity was reduced by 51.7% in 2020 and 69.1% in 2030 compared to 2005,which were higher than the national targets.Therefore,improving energy efficiency,adjusting industrial structure,and increasing investment in energy technology research were suggested to be major strategies for carbon intensity mitigation.