Studies On The Driving Force Of The CO₂and The Prediction Of CO₂by IPAT Model

A large number of studies have shown that the main reason for global climatechange is the sharp increase in greenhouse gases emissions, especially carbon dioxideemissions, caused by human activities,.Hunan Province is now in advance stage ofrapid industrialization and urbanization, and in quite a long period of time, energyconsumption and carbon dioxide emissions will be increasing rapidly which making itdifficult to carry out the energy saving work.In order to provide a theoretical basis andcountermeasures support to the energy saving and low-carbon economic developmentin Hunan Province, this article used STIRPAT model to study the impact of these fivefactors, population size, urbanization level, per capita GDP, industrial structure andtechnological progress on carbon dioxide emissions of Hunan Province in the past15years.The results show that the impact of industrial structure and population on carbondioxide emissions of Hunan Province was very significant, with their coefficient ofelasticity of carbon dioxide emissions being2.6065and2.1784, respectively.Technological progress, the level of urbanization and per capita GDP were alsosignificant factors affecting carbon dioxide emissions in Hunan Province, and theircoefficient of elasticity were0.6474,0.4951and0.2421, respectively.It can be seen,the impact of GDP per capita on carbon dioxide emissions in Hunan Province, isrelatively minimal in these five factors.This is also a side note: the more feasiblemethod to reduce Carbon dioxide emission is not to inhibit the growth rate of theeconomy, but to accelerate the pace of adjustment of industrial structure, to promotethe evolution of industrial structure to a low carbon development direction, actively toresearch and develop and introduce advanced technologies to improve energy usepatterns and reduce the energy intensity of the economy in Hunan Province, actively todevelop the wind, solar, nuclear and other emerging energy industry which is lowcarbon emissions, and to optimize the energy structure, etc..In addition,,we employed the improved IGT model in this paper to predict CO₂emissions in2011and2020of Hunan Province and quantitatively analyzed thecontribution of the energy structure to the carbon dioxide emission reduction.Predictedresults show that: in2020, CO₂emissions was46173.23in Hunan Province,1.51timesas much as that in2010, however, carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP was3.02tons/million, lowered by41.6%as compared with that in2010.In2020, Carbon dioxide emission reduction due to optimization of energy structure was6672.07million tons, accounting for14.45%of total CO₂emissions. If the Hunan’s energysaving rate reaches7.8%per unit GDP, CO₂emissions will remain the same level, asthat in2010, but the current technology’s progress is not enough to achieve this goal,so the road in the energy saving is still very long in Hunan Province.