Does population have a larger impact on carbon dioxide emissions than income? Evidence from a cross-regional panel analysis in China

Abstract

h i g h l i g h t sWe reassessed the impact of demographic and GDP changes on CO 2 emissions in China. Income rather than population growth was a major contributor to growing emissions. Urbanisation increases energy use and CO 2 emissions, except in western China. Shrinking household size did not reduce energy use and emissions. The impact of human activities on the environment varies across regions. a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c tAs global warming intensifies, the accumulation of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and other greenhouse gases have attracted great global attention. However, questions regarding whether, how and to what extent demographic factors and processes affect carbon emissions have not yet been fully explained -particularly in China. This study used an improved STIRPAT model to reassess the impact of demographic and income changes on China's energy-related CO 2 emissions at the national and regional levels using balanced provincial panel data from the 1990-2012 period. Whereas most previous studies of emission-popula tion/income elasticity in China have yielded wide-ranging estimates, this study showed that income rather than demographic change has been the dominant driving force behind China's growing CO 2 emissions. Urbanisation has increased energy consumption and emissions, except in western China. Changes in the age structure have had a statistically insignificant effect on energy use, but resulted in increased national emissions -particularly in eastern China. Shrinking household size did not reduce energy use and emissions, indicating that improved residential energy efficiency might reduce emissions. Changing the traditional mode of economic growth, reasonable controlling the pace of urbanisation, improving energy efficiency and upgrading industrial structures may yet be necessary to mitigate the environmental impact of human activities in China.

The effect of urbanization on carbon dioxide emissions efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta, China

“…Urbanization and CEE shows a significant negative and U-curve relationship, indicating that CEE decreases at the early stage of urbanization and then increases at higher urbanization levels. More infrastructures and resources are needed at the early stage of urbanization, leading to more carbon emissions (Zhou and Liu, 2016). However, when urbanization reaches a higher level, the prefecturelevel cities may have more resource to improve management efficiency and make better use of public infrastructures.…”

“…Many studies investigated energy efficiency or CEE at the country level (Beltr an-Esteve and Picazo-Tadeo, 2017; Girod et al, 2017;Sakamoto and Managi, 2017;Zhou et al, 2017) or province level (Liu et al, 2016a(Liu et al, , 2016bZhang et al, 2016b;Zhou and Liu, 2016). Due to the spatial variations in economic development and the source of carbon emissions inside the country or province, there is obvious spatial difference in CEE across its prefecture-level cities inside the country or province.…”

“…While there are some studies on CEE, there are three limitations in previous research. First, the study scale was mainly the country (Beltr an-Esteve and Picazo-Tadeo, 2017; Girod et al, 2017;Sakamoto and Managi, 2017;Zhou et al, 2017) or the province (Liu et al, 2016a(Liu et al, , 2016bZhang et al, 2016b;Zhou and Liu, 2016), and few studies have examined the CEE of prefecture-level cities (Yuan et al, 2013). Second, previous studies on the factors that influence CEE mainly focus on market-oriented reforms (Lin and Du, 2015), environmental regulations (Zhao et al, 2015), technology and management factor (Cui and Li, 2015;Qin et al, 2017), while few of them focus on urbanization.…”

A Transformative Turn towards Sustainability in the Context of Urban-Related Studies? A Systematic Review from 1957 to 2016

“…• As one of our aims was to evaluate the environmental perspective of urban transformations, we selected in the third step those articles which clearly show a relation to GEC. Based on the abstract, we selected those articles dealing with the use of nature in cities, climate issues, environmental degradation in and caused by cities, urban health-and risk and disaster issues if related to nature and the environment (articles such as [34][35][36] or [37]). 226 articles were selected this way.…”

Analysis of Co-Effects on Air Pollutants and CO2 Emissions Generated by End-of-Pipe Measures of Pollution Control in China’s Coal-Fired Power Plants

“…GHG emissions are mainly associated with human activities [3]. The impacts of GDP increase, urbanization processes, population growth, and energy consumption have important relationships with carbon emissions [4,5], but some studies state that population growth has been statistically insignificant for China [6,7]. Fossil fuel combustion produced the most CO 2 emissions (90%), and has simultaneously caused serious environmental issues in China [8].…”