The Major Driving Factors of Carbon Emissions in China and Their Relative Importance: An Application of the LASSO Model

Abstract

China is one of the biggest energy consumers and carbon emitters in the world. Understanding the factors affecting carbon emissions is critical for policymakers to control the rising trend of carbon emissions. This paper investigates the relative importance of carbon emissions drivers in China. Literature review has been carried out to determine a set of predominant independent variables; the LASSO model is then introduced to rank the relative importance among the set of independent variables. The results find that 1) carbon emissions were mainly driven by economic growth and energy consumption followed by population size and industrialization; and 2) income growth slowed down carbon emissions during the studied period, but it is the least significant factor among the other factors. The ranking allows policy makers to focus on the most critical contributors to carbon emissions and gives policymakers more flexibility in determining policy interventions.

Spatio-Temporal Dynamics of Carbon Emissions and Their Influencing Factors at the County Scale: A Case Study of Zhejiang Province, China

“…Consequently, we chose to focus our investigation on variables such as population size, economic development level, urbanization rate, and industrial structure when exploring the spatio-temporal variations in carbon emission factors across Zhejiang Province's counties during the period spanning from 2002 to 2022, as detailed in Table 1. Specifically, population size was defined by the year-end resident population of each county within Zhejiang Province [44], economic development level was quantified using per capita GDP data for Zhejiang Province [45], urbanization rate was determined by the ratio of urban population to the total population at the year-end in each county [46], and industrial structure was expressed as the proportion of the secondary industry's value relative to each county's total GDP [47].…”

The driving factors of corporate carbon emissions: an application of the LASSO model with survey data

“…We computed the largest λ and the smallest λ , while making the largest value of λ 10,000 times the smallest value. The 100 specifications sets of regressions were run with different values of λ , denoted as SP (Shum et al 2021 ). Specification 1 and specification 100 are the specifications with the smallest value of λ and the largest value of λ .…”

CO2 Emissions, Remittances, Energy Intensity and Economic Development: The Evidence from Central Asia

“…The authors in (Apergis et al 2023) examine a modified iteration of Okun's Law, which integrates energy consumption and temperature variables, within the context of five Central Asian countries. According to the study (Shum et al 2021) on the primary drivers of carbon emissions in China, economic expansion and energy utilization were the main drivers of carbon emissions, followed by population density and industrialization. Although this study is not specific to Central Asia, it suggests that energy intensity, as a measure of energy consumption, can be a significant driver of carbon emissions.…”