Carbon Effect Of Urbanization In China

At present,China is in the period of rapid urbanization.As the region with the most concentrated human economic activities and the main body of energy consumption,cities have become the regions with the most concentrated greenhouse gas emissions represented by carbon dioxide.Urbanization drives economic growth,and at the same time,the rapid urbanization process has also caused a series of negative effects,among them,the most important and most direct negative impact is the increasing global temperature.In turn,the environmental changes caused by urbanization will also have positive or negative impacts on urban infrastructure,economy,ecology,society and many other aspects,among which the negative impact is particularly serious.For example,acid rain corrodes urban infrastructure,and storm floods cause damage and disturbance to power infrastructure;Storm and flood would damage and disrupt power infrastructure;Droughts or floods caused by global warming affect economic activities,agriculture,industry and services.Therefore,an appropriate urbanization development path is conducive to promoting sustainable economic and environmental development.City is a complex system that gathers various factors of production,different elements in the process of urbanization have different impacts on carbon emissions,the impact results are different.Through the review of domestic and foreign literature,it is found that there are various research results on the relationship between urbanization and carbon dioxide emissions in academic circles,and the conclusions have not yet reached a consensus.This paper starts from the practical problems of climate and environmental changes brought about by urbanization,and is guided by the agglomeration effect of urbanization,on the basis of combing domestic and foreign literature,based on economic logic,the four most important factors and angles,namely,industrial structure effect,population agglomeration effect,economic level effect,and technological progress effect.And an attempt is made to systematically analyze the carbon emission effect of urbanization at the theoretical level.Based on statistical caliber consistency and data availability,the research object of this paper is the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2019(excluding the data of Hong Kong,Macao,Taiwan and Tibet),the threshold-STIRPAT extension model analyze urbanization and carbon emissions from the perspective of energy intensity.Among them,carbon emission is used as the explained variable,urbanization is the core explanatory variable affected by the threshold variable,and population size,economic level,industrial structure,and energy-saving policy are used as control variables.Based on the research purpose of this paper,the energy intensity that can represent the technical level is selected as the threshold variable,and the carbon effect characteristics of urbanization under different technical levels are analyzed.Secondly,according to the test results of the threshold effect,this paper analyzes the nonlinear relationship between urbanization and carbon emissions,and summarizes the stage differences between urbanization and carbon emissions.Finally,it analyzes the green transformation and development path of urbanization in consideration of environmental efficiency and achieving the goal of energy conservation and emission reduction.The study found: The impact of urbanization on carbon emissions is in the same direction but different in magnitude.The carbon effect of urbanization is characterized by stages.That is to say,urbanization has a positive promoting effect on carbon emissions at different stages,but the impact on carbon emissions is different in different intervals.When the technical level is the lowest,that is,when the energy intensity is greater than1.2609 tons of standard coal/10,000-yuan,carbon emissions will increase by 0.3355% for every 1% increase in the urbanization level.After crossing the first threshold of 1.2609 tons of standard coal/10,000-yuan,the energy intensity is between 0.7621 tons of standard coal/10,000 yuan and 1.2609 tons of standard coal/10,000-yuan.For every 1% increase in urbanization,carbon emissions will only be an increase of 0.2693%,During this period,the positive externalities brought by the agglomeration effect of urbanization began to become prominent,for example,centralized supervision is conducive to the implementation of environmental policies and reduces supervision costs,the improvement of technical learning effect brought by agglomeration is conducive to technological innovation,and the upgrading of industrial structure,etc.However,the increase in carbon emissions is still very significant at this time,which can correspond to the rapid development stage of urbanization.When the second threshold value is crossed,the technology level is the highest,and the energy intensity is less than 0.7621 tons of standard coal/10,000-yuan,the minimum impact coefficient of urbanization on carbon emissions is 0.1930,compared with the first two stages,the positive promotion effect was the lowest,but the influence coefficient did not pass the significance test,this may be due to the fact that the mature period of urbanization has not yet come fully,and the sample capacity of high technical level is not large.In any case,it can be seen that the carbon effect transmission mechanism of urbanization is a combination of multiple factors;Looking at the overall national data,the carbon effect of urbanization has significant periodic characteristics;The positive effect of urbanization on carbon emissions gradually weakens with the decrease of energy intensity;The negative inhibitory effect of national urbanization on carbon emissions as a whole,that is,the state of complete "decoupling" has not yet arrived,It may be related to the uneven development of cities in various regions,and the overall maturity of urbanization has not yet fully arrived.Based on this,this paper proposes that China’s economy is in a transitional period,facing the trade-off and coordination between economic growth and energy conservation and emission reduction,it is necessary to play an active role in energy conservation and emission reduction of urbanization,and urbanization needs to take the path of green and sustainable development,focus on technological innovation in energy conservation and emission reduction,optimize the industrial structure in a differentiated manner,and advocate a green lifestyle for residents,focus on implementing special policies for energy conservation and emission reduction through market-oriented mechanisms,and actively create an environment for urbanization to reduce carbon emissions.