Decomposition Analysis in Decoupling Transport Output from Carbon Emissions in Guangdong Province, China

Abstract

Abstract:With a continuously growing share of the world's overall energy consumption, the transport sector has been acknowledged as one of the most important contributors to global carbon emissions. This paper applies a complete decomposition and decoupling analysis to investigate and quantitatively analyze the main factors influencing the energy-related carbon emissions of the transport (TCE) sector during 1995-2012 in Guangdong, the richest and most populated province in China. Results showed that decoupling level between transport output and TCE was relatively low, especially when compared with year 1995, in which case it remained as expansive coupling. Optimization of tertiary industry structure was the main factor inhibiting TCE increase. However the rapid growth of GDP per capita and population was more powerful at boosting TCE, resulting in elasticity index rising directly. 2005 was a turning point when environmental friendly policies took action, after which decoupling state improved significantly, achieving weak decoupling when comparing adjacent years. By studying TCE and its components, we found that the National 5-Year Plan policy impacts TCE tremendously, which leads to a 5-year periodic pattern of fluctuations. This highlights policy as potentially the most important factor behind Guangdong's decoupling effort, dwarfing the impact from energy and other inner-drivers.

An Analysis of Decoupling and Influencing Factors of Carbon Emissions from the Transportation Sector in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Area, China

“…The previous research results mentioned in our literature review indicated that the optimization of tertiary industry structure played an inhibiting role with regard to transportation-related carbon emissions [60,63]. Given the actual situation, it is hard to adjust the industrial structure, so the industrial structure trend is not pronounced.…”

“…Some studies have also measured environmental and energy performance in China [11,13,[58][59][60] and have also conducted a comparative analysis of China's regional energy and emissions performance [60][61][62] using a DEA model. Zhao et al [63] performed a complete decomposition and decoupling analysis, in order to quantitatively analyze the main factors influencing the carbon emissions of the transportation (TCE) sector in Guangdong Province over the period from 1995 to 2012. Zhao's results indicated that the decoupling degree between transportation output and TCE was relatively low.…”

Delinking Indicators on Transport Output and Carbon Emissions in Xinjiang, China

“…With increasing emissions from the transport sector and rising environmental awareness, CO 2 emissions mitigation has attracted more attention in China [15,17,21,[29][30][31][32][33]. Researchers have analyzed the carbon emissions of the transport sector from various perspectives.…”

Influencing Factors and Decoupling Elasticity of China’s Transportation Carbon Emissions

“…However, in the "Industrial classification for national economic activities of 2017", production of transportation goods belongs to the manufacturing industry, and the use of vehicles belongs to the transportation industry. This article uses the official classification, and the definition of the transportation industry in this paper is also widely used in other studies, such as Zhao et al [51], Wang et al [59], and Hao et al [12].…”

“…Loo et al [50] explored the potential and the reality of decoupling transportation from economic growth in 15 major countries such as China, Russia and Canada. Zhao et al [51] analyzed the relationship between transportation growth and carbon emissions associating the decomposition technique with the decoupling elasticity in Guangdong province, China. Using the Tapio elasticity analysis method, Liu et al [52] explored the decoupling between transportation development and economic growth.…”