Research On Regional Carbon Emission Convergence And Influencing Factor

Under the pressure of reducing carbon emissions,China has made a solemn commitment to the international community to achieve the dual-carbon goal at an early date.Therefore,guided by the high-quality development strategy,this thesis takes the Yangtze River Economic Belt,a major strategic area of China’s economic and social development,as the research object,trying to clearly present the evolution characteristics and rules of its carbon emissions,so as to provide references for the formulation and implementation of scientific carbon emission reduction measures,and help the Yangtze River Economic Belt achieve the“double carbon” goal as soon as possible.In this thesis,the carbon emission data of 11 provinces and cities in the Yangtze River Economic Belt during 1997-2019 were extracted from the China Carbon Accounting Database(CEADs),and the per capita carbon emission and carbon emission intensity of the whole region and 11 provinces and cities were calculated based on the population and GDP data.Then,the Dagum Gini coefficient,the convergence test theories and the extended STIRPAT model were used to study the regional differences,convergence and influencing factors of per capita carbon emission and carbon emission intensity in the Yangtze River Economic Belt,and the following conclusions were drawn:(1)From the perspective of evolution,per capita carbon emissions in the whole Yangtze River Economic Belt and all regions showed an “S” shaped trend,while carbon emission intensity showed a downward trend.Specifically,per capita carbon emissions showed a descending spatial pattern from east to west,and carbon intensity showed a distribution feature of “higher in the upper and middle reaches and lower in the lower reaches”.From the perspective of regional differences,per capita carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt have obvious regional differences,but the degree of which decreases year by year.The evolution of overall differences in carbon emission intensity shows an inverted “U”shape,and the net differences between regions are the main source of overall differences in carbon emissions.(2)From the convergence characteristics,the per capita carbon emissions of the whole Yangtze River Economic Belt and the lower reaches have σ convergence,while the per capita carbon emissions of the upper and middle reaches and the carbon emission intensity of the whole and each region diverge.At the same time,except for the downstream,the per capita carbon emission and carbon emission intensity in the whole,upstream and midstream all haveβ absolute convergence,and the per capita carbon emission and carbon emission intensity in the whole and all regions have β conditional convergence.Population density and economic development will inhibit carbon emission convergence,while economic density,industrial structure,energy intensity and energy structure will promote carbon emission convergence.In addition,per capita carbon emission and carbon emission intensity in each region are unit root processes and there is no structural mutation phenomenon,so it is considered that there is no random convergence of carbon emission in each region.(3)From the perspective of influencing factors,the “path locking” effect significantly exists in the carbon emission evolution of the whole Yangtze River Economic Belt and various regions.Population agglomeration promoted the per capita carbon emission and carbon intensity in the upper and middle reaches,while economic density inhibited the per capita carbon emission and carbon intensity in the upper and middle reaches.The overall economic level is positively correlated with carbon emission intensity,while the upstream and midstream economic level is “N-shaped” with carbon emission.The effects of industrial structure and energy structure on carbon emissions have significant regional heterogeneity.Finally,energy intensity has a positive effect on overall and regional carbon emissions,indicating that in order to achieve the “two-carbon” goal of the Yangtze River Economic Belt,more efforts should be made to control energy consumption.Due to the absolute differences in development stage,resource endowment and energy consumption among the regions of the Yangtze River Economic Belt,significant spatial-temporal heterogeneity exists in carbon emissions.Therefore,the Yangtze River Economic Belt should be guided by the idea of systematic governance,and mobilize human,financial,material and technology across the region as a whole,so as to promote the improvement of the carbon reduction system with “rational division of labor and efficient coordination” as soon as possible,so as to facilitate the continuous progress of ecological civilization construction in the Yangtze River Basin and the realization of high-quality development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt and even the Chinese economy.