The Research On The Driving Forces Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions In China

Global warming is becoming more serious, which will not only lead to thetemperature rise of the Earth’s surface, glaciers melting and sea levels rising, but alsocause a series of serious problems, such as changes in weather patterns, frequenthurricanes, floods, El Nino, warming and drying. Carbon dioxide is one of the mostimportant greenhouse gases which cause the global climate change. In order to mitigateglobal warming and avoid the catastrophic effects on human, the United Nations set up abasic framework “Framework Convention on Climate Change” for internationalcooperation in June1992. The “Kyoto Protocol” was signed on December11,1997by theUnited Nations, and came into effect on February16,2005, in which there were legallyrestricted targets to curb carbon dioxide emissions for developed countries at the first time.China’s greenhouse gas emissions have been the highest in the world, and China mayreach carbon dioxide emissions peak in2030according to relative research. It is difficultto reduce carbon dioxide emissions since there are rigid requirements for energy in thestage of rapid urbanization and few changes of energy structure and economic structure ina short time. It is a common goal to take a path of low-carbon economic development, inresponse to the climate change and the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Therefore,the study on the driving forces of carbon dioxide emissions in China is of greatsignificance for the government to make effective policies of reducing carbon dioxideemissions.Based on the panel data of27provinces in China from1995to2009, this papercaculates carbon dioxide emissions of fossil fuels and cement according to the referedmethod and formula in the “IPCC2006greenhouse gas emission inventories” andexamines the impacts of economic growth, urbanization, prior carbon dioxide emissions,industrial structure and energy intensity on carbon dioxide emissions withthe STIRPAT model and GMM estimator. The result shows that the prior has agreat positive effect on the current carbon dioxide emissions, which indicates that carbondioxide emissions is continuous and cumulative. Economic growth, urbanization, energyintensity have a positive relation with carbon dioxide, the tertiary industry has a negativerelation with carbon dioxide. The paper also examines the hypothesis of environmentalKuznets curve, in which there is inverted U curve relationship between carbon dioxideemissions and GDP per capita in eastern region and China. Finally, based on the conclusion, we should strive to build the “low-carbon city”. The article makes relevantrecommendations from the perspectives of energy efficiency, energy structure, industrialupgrading, and low-carbon consumption.