ABSTRACT
In recent years, China is
facing unprecedented challenges in maintaining sustained economic growth,
reducing CO2 emissions and tackling climate change. Therefore, the
analysis of China’s CO2 emissions driving factors is of great significance.
This paper is based on the extension of the STIRPAT model. It decomposes three
factors: the population, economy and technology, and makes a quantitative analysis on driving forces of
China’s CO2 emissions about the total population, urbanization rate,
real GDP per capita, the proportion of secondary industry, private car
ownership, energy intensity, coal consumption and oil consumption. The result
shows that the population is still one of the important factors affecting China’s
CO2 emissions; the energy consumption structure, mainly coal
consumer-oriented, has a
big positive driving force on CO2 emissions; real GDP per capita which
represents the economic factor and the private car ownership has a bigger elasticity
coefficient on CO2 emissions. In order to control and reduce CO2 emissions, we should control the population scale reasonably, improve the level
of urbanization, optimize energy structure, improve the quality of economic
growth and encourage residents’ green consumption.