Lifestyles, technology and CO2 emissions in China: A regional comparative analysis

With rapid economic development, higher income levels, urbanization and other socio-economic drivers, people's lifestyles in China have changed remarkably over the last 50 years. This paper uses the IPAT model (where I = Impact representing CO₂ emissions, P = Population, A = Affluence, and T = emission intensity) to analyze how these main drivers contributed to the growth of CO₂ emissions over this time period. Affluence or lifestyle change has been variously recognized as one of the key factors contributing to CO₂ emissions. Through comparative analysis of the development of five regions in China, we trace lifestyle changes since the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 until 2002. We find that household consumption across the five regions follows similar trajectories, driven by changes in income and the increasing availability of goods and services, although significant differences still exist between and within regions due to differential policies in China and different possibilities for social mobility. There are considerable differences between the southeast and northwest and between urban and rural areas. We also found that technological improvements have not been able to fully compensate for the increase of emissions due to population growth and increasing wealth, which is also in line with results from other studies. Finally, this paper emphasizes that developing countries such as China, which is home to 22% of the world population and a growing middle class, and which is on a fast track to modernization, need to ensure that people's lifestyles are changing towards more sustainable ways of living. China has been investing heavily in infrastructure and thus creating the emissions of tomorrow. Thus investing, for example, in public transport and low energy building today will help reduce emissions in the future and will support more sustainable lifestyles.     

城镇化、城乡消费比例和结构对居民消费间接CO2排放的影响*

本文利用投入-产出分析法计算了我国居民消费间接CO2排放量,并应用结构分解分析（SDA）方法分析了城镇化、城乡消费比例、消费结构等因素对居民消费间接CO2排放的影响。研究结果发现：（1）城镇化的扩张和消费结构的升级是增加我国居民消费间接CO2排放的重要因素,尤其是食品、居住和交通通讯是导致居民消费间接CO2排放的主要部门;（2）城乡消费比例和排放强度对居民消费间接CO2排放具有明显的抑制作用;（3）人均消费的提高对居民消费间接CO2排放增长贡献最大。最后,本文基于实证结果提出了减少我国居民消费间接CO2排放的政策建议。     

Does urbanization increase pollutant emission and energy intensity? evidence from some Asian developing economies

This paper aims to investigate the effects of urbanization on pollutant emissions and energy intensity in selected Asian developing countries after controlling for the effects of disaggregated (renewable and non-renewable) energy consumption, trade liberalization, and economic growth. We use both linear and nonlinear panel data econometric techniques and employ recently introduced mean group estimation methods, allowing for heterogeneity and cross-sectional dependence. However, to check the robustness of our panel results, we also apply the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL)-bound testing approach to country-level data. In addition, the relationship between affluence and CO₂ emissions is examined in the context of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The estimation results identify the population, affluence, and non-renewable energy consumption as major factors in pollutant emissions in Asian countries. However, the results of the EKC hypothesis show that when countries achieve a certain level of economic growth, their emissions tend to decline. Whereas nonlinear results show that renewable energy, urbanization, and trade liberalization reduce emissions, linear estimations do not confirm these outcomes. Thus, substitution of non-renewable for renewable energy consumption, cautious and planned urbanization programs and more liberal trading regimes may be viable options for sustainable growth of these developing Asian economies.     

Examining the influencing factors of CO2 emissions at city level via panel quantile regression: evidence from 102 Chinese cities

Ascertaining the influencing factors of carbon dioxide emissions in Chinese cities is an important issue for policy-makers. This paper investigates the effect of several determinants on carbon emissions per capita in Chinese cities. Non-normally distributed and heterogeneous features of carbon emissions per capita in Chinese cities are considerably important. The empirical results demonstrate that GDP per capita has an increasingly positive impact on carbon emissions per capita due to the growth in household consumption. Urbanization has a slightly decreasing positive effect on carbon emissions per capita with a quantile increase resulting from continuous highway construction. Industrialization has a decreasing positive effect with carbon emission per capita quantile increases because of increasing energy efficiency and lower costs related to carbon reductions. The population has a decreasing negative effect on carbon emissions because of people’s increasing demand for environmental safety. The distributions of emissions per capita conditional on the 10th and 90th quantiles of independent variables also vary considerably. Specific policy implications are provided based on these results.     

城镇化中能源消费与二氧化碳排放研究——基于省级面板数据的实证检验

文章扩展了STIRPAT模型,使用1995-2011年中国30个省级面板数据,研究中国城镇化进程在全国以及区域层面上对能源消耗的需求变化与二氧化碳排放的影响效应。研究结果表明:在全国层面上,城镇化增加了对能源消费的刚性需求且对二氧化碳排放具有显著的正向影响。同时,城镇化对二氧化碳排放量影响有明显的区域差异:在东部地区,城镇化水平的提高增加了二氧化碳排放量,但在中西部地区,城镇化水平的提高减少了二氧化碳排放。基于以上结论,文章探讨了未来中国城镇发展的相关对策:适当控制土地城镇化发展速度,积极探索低碳城镇化发展模式,培养市民良好的低碳生活方式,优化与调整地区产业结构与能源消费结构。     

CO2 emissions in Australia: economic and non-economic drivers in the long-run

Australia has sustained a relatively high economic growth rate since the 1980s compared to other developed countries. Per capita CO₂ emissions tend to be highest amongst OECD countries, creating new challenges to cut back emissions towards international standards. This research explores the long-run dynamics of CO₂ emissions, economic and population growth along with the effects of globalization tested as contributing factors. We find economic growth is not emission-intensive in Australia, while energy consumption is emissions intensive. Second, in an environment of increasing population, our findings suggest Australia needs to be energy efficient at the household level, creating appropriate infrastructure for sustainable population growth. High population growth and open migration policy can be detrimental in reducing CO₂ emissions. Finally, we establish globalized environment has been conducive in combating emissions. In this respect, we establish the beneficial effect of economic globalization compared to social and political dimensions of globalization in curbing emissions.     

Energy consumption,economic growth and environmental degradation in OECD countries

The interdependence among energy consumption, economic growth and environmental degradation has become an important public policy priority among OECD countries. Yet, the related literature provides conflicting results when describing the dynamic nature of such a relationship and the way it affects countries' development path. Using a sample of 35 OECD countries over the period 2000–2014, we find that economic growth and energy consumption patterns contribute to the enhancement of countries' environmental performance levels. In contrast to a large stream of empirical research, our findings highlight that countries' economic development path and their energy consumption patterns have started to align with their environmental policies. The results are robust since we utilize different aspects of countries' environmental degradation such as carbon dioxide emissions, ecological footprints and countries' environmental performance levels. Finally, the analysis of the dynamic interrelations among countries' energy consumption, economic growth and environmental degradation levels, reveals the necessity to promote sustainable development through a coexistence rather than through a trade-off mechanism.     

The impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions: Evidence from developing countries

This paper analyzes the impact of urbanization on CO₂ emissions in developing countries from 1975 to 2003. It contributes to the existing literature by examining the effect of urbanization, taking into account dynamics and the presence of heterogeneity in the sample of countries. The results show an inverted-U shaped relationship between urbanization and CO₂ emissions. Indeed, the elasticity emission-urbanization is positive for low urbanization levels, which is in accordance with the higher environmental impact observed in less developed regions. Among our contributions is the estimation of a semi-parametric mixture model that allows for unknown distributional shapes and endogenously classifies countries into homogeneous groups. Three groups of countries are identified for which urbanization's impact differs considerably. For two of the groups, a threshold level is identified beyond which the emission-urbanization elasticity is negative and further increases in the urbanization rate do not contribute to higher emissions. However, for the third group only population and affluence, but not urbanization, contribute to explain emissions. The differential impact of urbanization on CO₂ emissions should therefore be taken into account in future discussions of climate change policies.     

CO2 emissions,economic growth,energy consumption,trade and urbanization in new EU member and candidate countries: A panel data analysis

This paper investigates the causal relationship between energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, economic growth, trade openness and urbanization for a panel of new EU member and candidate countries over the period 1992–2010. Panel unit root tests, panel cointegration methods and panel causality tests are used to investigate this relationship. The main results provide evidence supporting the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. Hence, there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between environment and income for the sampled countries. The results also indicate that there is a short-run unidirectional panel causality running from energy consumption, trade openness and urbanization to carbon emissions, from GDP to energy consumption, from GDP, energy consumption and urbanization to trade openness, from urbanization to GDP, and from urbanization to trade openness. As for the long-run causal relationship, the results indicate that estimated coefficients of lagged error correction term in the carbon dioxide emissions, energy consumption, GDP, and trade openness equations are statistically significant, implying that these four variables could play an important role in adjustment process as the system departs from the long-run equilibrium.     

江苏居民消费碳排放测度与影响因素研究——基于GTWR模型的实证分析

基于CLA(消费者生活方式法)模型和ESDA模型对2009—2017年江苏省居民生活消费碳排放量进行测度与时空关联关系分析,构建OLS模型和时空地理加权回归(GTWR)模型研究碳排放量的社会和经济影响因素,结果表明:研究期内居民生活消费碳排放量显著增长,并呈现苏南>苏中>苏北的空间格局;13个省辖市人均生活消费碳排放量Moran’s I指数从0.5267增长至0.5789,并呈现“HH”和“LL”的空间集聚特征;总体来看,人口密度、恩格尔系数和R&D占比对居民消费碳排放量有负向影响,而人均地区生产总值、第三产业占比和人均生活用电量对其有正向影响,且城市间各因素回归系数存在空间差异性。依据分析结论,提出提高第三产业能源利用率,倡导居民绿色生活和低碳消费等措施建议。     

Simulating the spatial distribution of population and emissions to 2100

Urbanization and economic development have important implications for many environmental processes including global climate change. Although there is evidence that urbanization depends endogenously on economic variables, long-term forecasts of the spatial distribution of population are often made exogenously and independent of economic conditions. It is common for research concerning long-run projections of global environmental change to use population density as the primary means to spatially distribute emissions projections. However, researchers typically utilize year 1990 cross-sectional population data to distribute their emissions projections for both the short- and long-term, without projecting any changes in population density. Thus, a beta distribution for individual countries/regions is estimated to describe the geographical distribution of population using a one-degree-by-one-degree latitude–longitude global population data set. Cross-sectional country/regional data are then used to estimate an empirical relationship between parameters of the beta distribution and macroeconomic variables as they vary among countries/regions. This conditional beta distribution allows the simulation of a changing distribution of population, including the growth of urban areas, driven by economic forecasts until the year 2100.     

能源高质量发展与环境保护动态关系管理研究——基于区域的模型分析

能源高质量发展与环境保护是中国高质量发展的有机组成部分,研究能源高质量发展与环境保护动态关系对于建设中国高质量发展体系尤为重要。基于区域视角对云南省1995—2017年能源消费数据和主要大气排放量数据进行实证分析,通过建立能源消费和大气保护动态关系区域VAR模型,运用Johansen协整检验和脉冲响应进行分析,得出结论。从短期看,天然气和一次电消费的增加会减少环境污染,但长期看,这种影响由于产业结构的特性和固化,不能产生持久性的作用。据此为区域能源高质量发展、产业调整、环境保护动态关系管理提供较为精准的量化依据,并提出意见和建议。     

Shaping the Relationship Between Economic Development and Carbon Dioxide Emissions at the Local Level: Evidence from Spatial Econometric Models

The debate over the correlation between economic growth and environmental pollution has attracted a great deal of attention from academic researchers and policy makers in recent years. There has been excessive use of spatial econometric models and too much emphasis on statistical procedures in empirical studies. In this study, we contribute to the existing literature by conducting a more rigorous analysis of the relationship between economic growth and \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions in Chinese cities using spatial Durbin models. Our results show that \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions increase monotonically in relation to economic growth at the city level and that the driving effects of economic growth are slightly smaller in central China than in eastern and western China. In addition to economic growth, industry’s share of the economy is a major driver of \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions, while technological improvement, measured by energy intensity per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), and the effectiveness of environmental governance flatten the shape of the environmental Kuznets curve. We provide evidence of local spillover effects of explanatory variables on \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions. Economic competition as well as technological diffusion are found to exist in Chinese cities in relation to \(\hbox {CO}_{2}\) emissions. We also find carbon leakage between cities only if the per capita GDP of a given city is less than $493 (in 2010 constant dollars). Results hold when robustness checks are performed. Policy makers should carefully consider regional differences and the inherent spatial interactions between factors when formulating carbon reduction policies.     

Energy consumption, carbon emissions, and economic growth in China

This paper investigates the existence and direction of Granger causality between economic growth, energy consumption, and carbon emissions in China, applying a multivariate model of economic growth, energy use, carbon emissions, capital and urban population. Empirical results for China over the period 1960-2007 suggest a unidirectional Granger causality running from GDP to energy consumption, and a unidirectional Granger causality running from energy consumption to carbon emissions in the long run. Evidence shows that neither carbon emissions nor energy consumption leads economic growth. Therefore, the government of China can purse conservative energy policy and carbon emissions reduction policy in the long run without impeding economic growth.     

Sustainable development of Shandong peninsula Peninsula urban agglomeration: a scenario analysis based on water shortage and water environment changes

China has experienced a rapid urbanization since late 1970s. The great increase of urban population has resulted in various environmental changes, of which urban water shortage and water environment problems have occurred in most cities, especially in the rapidly developing urban agglomerations in the eastern coastal region. This research, taking Shandong Peninsula Urban Agglomeration (SPUA) as a case study area, analyzes the urbanization expansion in the last decades, discusses the water shortage and water environment changes following the rapid economic development and urbanization such as groundwater sinking in the urban and plain area, sea water and salt-water intrusion in the coastal cities, water pollution overspreading and "water ecosystem degradation, and puts forwards some strategies for sustainability in populous regions with severe water shortage. Some countermeasures for sustainable development of SPUA are put forward, such as modern water resources inter-city networks to regulate water resource between cities, adjusting urbanization policy and urban scale planning to promote the development of small towns and medium sized cities, optimizing urban industry structure by restricting high water consumption enterprises and stimulating the growth of tertiary industry, improving water use efficient to reduce freshwater consumption and wastewater discharge, introducing economic means to water pricing and water management system. and restoring ecological conditions to strengthen the natural water-making capacity.     

Factors affecting electricity generation in China: Current situation and prospects

China has attracted worldwide attention due to the global economic and environmental effects of its rapid economic growth over the last 20 years, with particular attention given to the country's accelerating energy consumption and resulting greenhouse gas emissions. China's electricity sector is particularly important for both of these issues as it accounts for nearly half of its greenhouse gas emissions and even greater proportions of the country's demands for primary fuel resources. In order to better understand how these issues may progress in an economy changing as fast as China's, this paper develops a framework that can be used to help model the electricity sector's future development. The framework builds upon key technological and socio-economic drivers, including those affecting electricity demand (e.g., economic growth, structure, energy efficiency, urbanization, and change in per capita income) and electricity supply (e.g., deregulation, initiatives to promote natural gas, nuclear and renewable energy, air pollution regulations, price developments for coal and natural gas, and changes in generation technology). The framework serves as a foundation for a scenario exercise on the greenhouse gas and fuel consumption impacts of different developmental paths for China's electricity sector. These scenarios and their implications for emissions and fuel consumption are presented in a subsequent article.     

生育政策调整是否会影响我国“碳达峰”目标的实现?——基于STIRPAT和Leslie模型的实证研究

以中国人口生育政策调整为研究背景,基于STIRPAT模型和Leslie模型综合考察中国人口生育政策调整可能对实现“我国二氧化碳排放力争2030年前达到峰值”目标所带来的影响。结果表明,除了经济发展水平、能源技术水平、能源消费结构等因素外,人口年龄结构对人均碳排放也具有显著影响。在论文设置的四种生育率情景下,人口总量峰值分别出现在2025年、2027年、2031年和2027年。若生育政策调整能够有效提高社会总和生育率,人口规模和人口年龄结构的变化会使碳排放总量峰值推后出现。因此,中国逐步放宽的人口生育政策可能会给实现碳达峰目标带来一定压力。     

Is high-speed rail heading towards a low-carbon industry? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

Existing studies have investigated the environmental dividends of substituting high-speed rail (HSR) for other energy-intensive vehicles from an engineering standpoint, but they have yet to explore the economic effects of HSR and the associated carbon emissions reduction benefits. To fill the research gap, we use panel data from 285 Chinese cities between 2004 and 2014, and employ a spatial difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the impact of HSR opening on industrial CO₂ emissions. After controlling for spillover effects from neighboring HSR cities, our results show that cities offering HSR services significantly reduce their own industrial CO₂ emissions. This finding is robust and is unaffected by outliers, control group selection, time trends, geography and expectation factors, or endogeneity. The mechanism test reveals that the structural transformation effect, technological innovation effect, and investment attractiveness effect are three intermediate influence channels. Further research finds that the emissions reduction benefit increases as the spatial and temporal intensities of HSR openings ascend the ladder, and HSR services have a spillover effect within a 300-kilometer radius. Moreover, the carbon benefit of China’s HSR far surpasses its carbon footprint, indicating that China’s HSR is green after accounting for economic emissions reductions that were often neglected in prior research. Based on these findings, we recommend that China accelerate HSR expansion in order to reduce carbon emissions in a scientific and responsible manner.     

What does MENA region initially need: Grow output or mitigate CO2 emissions?

We contribute to the economic growth–CO₂ emissions literature in the MENA region by focusing on both production and environmental functions. Adopting an original analytical framework, our empirical investigation parallels two approaches. The first one follows the studies by Lean and Smyth (2010a) and Sadorsky (2012) which examine the dynamic interaction of energy consumption and trade openness using production function. The second one extends the recent works by Halicioglu (2009), Jalil and Mahmud (2009), and Jayanthakumaran et al. (2012) which attempt to introduce energy consumption and trade openness in the environmental function as a solution to circumvent omitted variable bias. Our findings suggest that MENA countries should adopt policies to control the increase of pollution as well as to stabilize the productivity growth. One of these policies is to increase the share of renewable energy relative to non-renewable energy sources.     

Impacts of Novel Protein Foods on Sustainable Food Production and Consumption: Lifestyle Change and Environmental Policy

We analyse the impacts of a change in consumers’ preference for Novel Protein Foods (NPFs), i.e. a lifestyle change with respect to meat consumption, and the impacts of environmental policies e.g. tradable emission permits for greenhouse gases (GHGs) or an EU ammonia (NH₃) emission bound per hectare. For our analysis we use a global applied general equilibrium (AGE) model that includes consumers’ lifestyle change, different production systems, emissions from agricultural sectors, and an emission permits system. Our study leads to the following conclusions. Firstly, more consumption of NPFs assists in reducing global agricultural emissions of methane (CH₄), nitrous oxides (N₂O) and NH₃. However, because of international trade, emission reduction does not necessarily occur in the regions where more NPFs are consumed. Secondly, through lifestyle change of the ‘rich’, the emission reduction is not substantial because more ‘intermediate’ consumers will increase their meat consumption. Finally, for the same environmental target the production structure changes towards less intensive technologies and more grazing under environmental policy than under lifestyle change.

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