Assessing economic and social determinants of carbon emissions towards sustainable development in West Java, Indonesia

Abstract

The West Java Province has become regions that has CO2 emissions above the world target that contribute to global warming due to social and economic factors. This problem allances to the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) which examines the relationship of those three factors to environmental impacts and the Environmental Kuznet Curve (EKC) which states that economic growth will increase environmental damage but will improve after passing a certain point. The research aims to identify factors that influence CO2 emissions in West Java by utilizing STIRPAT and EKC with population approached population growth, affluence approached per capita GRDP, and technology approached industrial investment, private motor vehicles, and vegetation density. Big data approach used from OCO-2 and Landsat-8 satellites as well as data from West Java-BPS and West Java-Open Data covering cities in West Java in the period 2015–2021. Due to the limited years of observation, one-way time effect panel data regression is proposed to analyze the relationship. Results show that all variables significantly affect CO2 at the 1% significance level with an adjusted R2 of 65%. In addition, CO2 emissions are positively influenced by population growth, investment in the industrial sector, and private motor vehicles. On the contrary, vegetation density can reduce CO2 emissions. Results also show that EKC has occurred in West Java. The West Java government is expected to be able to reduce CO2 through optimization on economic growth, industrial and transport sectors, household activities, and land coverage issues.