The Driving Factor Analysis of China’s CO 2 Emissions Based on the STIRPAT Model

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.