Energy-related CO2 emissions in Hebei province: Driven factors and policy implications

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to identify the driven factors affecting the changes in energy-related CO2 emissions in Hebei Province of China from 1995 to 2013. This study confirmed that energy-related CO2 emissions are correlated with the population, urbanization level, economic development degree, industry structure, foreign trade degree, technology level and energy proportion through an improved STIRPAT model. A reasonable and more reliable outcome of STIRPAT model can be obtained with the introducing of the Ridge Regression, which shows that population is the most important factor for CO2 emissions in Hebei with the coefficient 2.4528. Rely on these discussions about affect abilities of each driven factors, we conclude several proposals to arrive targets for reductions in Hebei’s energy-related CO2 emissions. The method improved and relative policy advance improved pointing at empirical results also can be applied by other province to make study about driven factors of the growth of carbon emissions.