Convergence of per capita carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China

Shiwei Yu, Xing Hu, Xuejiao Zhang and Zhenxi Li

Energy & Environment, 2019, vol. 30, issue 5, 776-799

Abstract: The convergence of carbon emissions in important regions is a key prerequisite for reaching China’s carbon emissions peak target. The Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB) is the latest strategic economic area in China. In this study, a method of investigating the convergence of per capita carbon emissions in the YREB is proposed, and it includes the following models: σ convergence, stochastic convergence and β convergence. Besides, the five control variables per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), energy consumption structure, industrial structure, population density and urbanization rate are considered in the test models. In addition to testing the whole sample of 74 cities belonging to the Economic Belt, the convergence of three subgroups (municipalities, capital and sub-provincial cities and prefecture-level cities) is also tested by considering spatial effects. The following results are obtained: (1) although σ convergence and β conditional convergence are observed, stochastic convergence is not observed for the 74 cities; (2) the per capita GDP and energy structure are the key factors influencing the cities’ convergence, whereas the urbanization rate has a limited impact; and (3) improving the industrial structure and reducing the population density are effective methods of promoting the convergence of per capita carbon emissions among the capital and sub-provincial cities and municipalities, respectively.

Keywords: Carbon emission; convergence; Yangtze River Economic Belt; spatial effect; reduction; cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0958305X18813620 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:engenv:v:30:y:2019:i:5:p:776-799

DOI: 10.1177/0958305X18813620

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Energy & Environment
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().