Study On The Mitigation Strategies And Synergistic Emissions Reduction Effect Of Greenhouse Gas And Haze Pollution

Air pollution and climate change are two challenges faced by the atmospheric environment today.As the bigest developing country in the world,China is still in the period of industrialization.Due to long-term extensive economic development,China is faced with not only the domestic pressure of air pollution control,but also the international pressure of carbon emissions reduction.Therefore,it is an important research topic to achieve collaborative management of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution.The work plan for the control of greenhouse gas emissions during the 13th Five-Year Plan period and the 13th Five-Year Plan for the protection of ecological environment have clearly identified“strengthening the collaborative control of air pollutant emissions and carbon emissions”as an important means of low-carbon transformation.For China,which is in a critical period of economic transformation,the collaborative control of carbon emissions and air pollution is an important policy path.This research combines the econometric analysis with the decomposition analysis.It first explores the carbon emissions reduction and haze pollution control strategies,respectively.Furthermore,this paper quantifies the impact of CO₂ emissions reduction activities on PM_2.5 emissions reduction from a macro policy level,thereby providing a scientific basis for enterprises and policy makers to formulate emissions reduction strategies.In order to formulate differentiated carbon emissions mitigation strategies,based on the extended STIRPAT?the stochastic impacts by regression on population,affluence,and technology?model,quantile regression is employed to examine the impacts of various determinants on carbon emissions in a sample of China's 30provinces over the period 2000–2016.Furthermore,this paper employs the regression-based Shapley value decomposition method to quantify the contributions of individual determinants to the regional differences in carbon emissions?measured by three inequality indices?.Panel quantile regression results specify that economic development,urbanization,the share of the secondary industry and energy intensity have positive impacts on per capita carbon emissions,while openness has a negative impact on per capita carbon emissions.In addition,it is found that economic growth is the main reason for the increase in per capita carbon emissions during 2000-2016,while the decline in energy intensity leads to decreasing per capita carbon emissions.Shapley value decomposition results show that economic development and energy intensity are the main socio-economic factors accounting for the regional inequality of carbon emissions,furthermore,the contribution of regional factor cannot be ignored.However,the contributions of other variables are relatively weak.We try to explore differentiated haze pollution control strategies from the perspectives of determinants and regional disparities.Specifically,quantile regression and Shapley value decomposition are employed to study the effects of various determinants on haze pollution at different quantiles and quantify the contributions of individual determinants to regional differences in haze pollution,respectively.The quantile regression results show that the effects of various factors on haze pollution differ distinctly at different quantiles.Population density and industrialization level have positive impacts on haze pollution,and economic development is conducive to reducing haze pollution.Specially,the impact of environmental regulation on haze pollution is invalid.With quantile increasing,FDI first positively influences haze pollution,then negatively affects haze pollution.By contrast,energy intensity first negatively affects haze pollution,then positively influences haze pollution.The Shapley decomposition results specify that the regional differences in population density contribute the most to the interprovincial differences in haze pollution,with annual average contribution rate of 35%.It is found that industrialization level,regional factor and energy intensity are also important factors accounting for inter-provincial differences in haze pollution.In addition,the contributions of FDI and environmental regulation are relatively little.However,the gap of economic development leads to decreasing the regional differences in haze pollution.In order to quantify the impact of CO₂ emissions reduction activities on PM_2.5emissions reduction,this study takes aggregate PM_2.5 emissions instead of PM_2.5concentration index as the research object,and it first incorporates the synergistic effect of carbon emissions into the Kaya identity of PM_2.5 emissions.Accordingly,the LMDI approach is first performed to decompose PM_2.5 emissions changes into the synergistic effect of carbon emissions,energy emission intensity effect,energy intensity effect,economic development effect and population effect at total economy,regions and provinces levels.Furthermore,following LMDI decomposition,this study adopts the econometric methods to quantify the synergistic effect of CO₂ emissions reduction on PM_2.5 emissions reduction.Accordingly,CO₂ emissions reduction,energy mix,technological progress,per capita GDP and population density are introduced as the proxy variables for the five decomposed effects through LMDI decomposition.The empirical results are as follows:?1?the LMDI decomposition results specify that the synergistic emissions reduction accounts for the most of the reduction in PM_2.5emissions.In addition,energy intensity changes also contribute to the reduction in PM_2.5 emissions;?2?by contrast,it is found that the economic development effect is the main factor resulting in the increase of PM_2.5 emissions,while the contributions of the energy emission intensity effect and population effect to PM_2.5 emissions changes are relatively little;?3?all the models show CO₂ emissions reduction activities will significantly contribute to PM_2.5 emissions reduction;?4?for every 10,000 t increase in CO₂ emissions reduction,PM_2.5 emissions reduction will increase by 3.3 t,and the potential for synergistic emissions reduction of PM_2.5.5 differs distinctly among different provinces;?5?technological progress and population density positively influence PM_2.5emissions reduction,while coal consumption rate has a negative impact on PM_2.5emissions reduction,in addition,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita GDP and PM_2.5 emissions reduction.Finally,the research is summarized,and on this basis,relevant policy implications are proposed from the perspectives of carbon reduction,haze mitigation and synergistic emissions reduction.