Decoupling Analysis of CO2 Emissions in Transportation Sector from Economic Growth during 1995–2015 for Six Cities in Hebei, China

Abstract

The transport sector is one of the most important and potential sectors to achieve low-carbon development in China. As economic growth is desirable, but high-level traffic CO 2 emissions are not. This paper estimated the on-road traffic CO 2 emissions and investigated the decoupling states of traffic CO 2 emissions from economic growth for six cities in Hebei province from 1995 to 2015. In 2015, the on-road traffic CO 2 emissions were ranked, as follows: Tangshan (4.75 Mt) > Handan (3.38 Mt) > Baoding (1.38 Mt) > Zhangjiakou (1.05 Mt) > Langfang (1.01 Mt) > Chengde (0.46 Mt). Two turning points of traffic CO 2 emissions during the study period were found. From 2008 to 2013, the traffic CO 2 emissions increased more rapidly than before. After 2013, the traffic CO 2 emissions of three cities (Baoding, Handan and Chengde) began to decrease, and the traffic CO 2 emissions' growth rates of the other three cities (Zhangjiakou, Langfang and Tangshan) became lower than before. The decoupling states during 1996-2015 can be divided into four phases: decoupling-coupling concurrence stage (1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000), decoupling dominant stage (2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008), coupling dominant stage (2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013), and improvement stage (2014)(2015). Chengde and Baoding were identified due to their good local practice on decoupling CO 2 emissions in transport sector from economic growth. These results will enrich the greenhouse gas inventory of China at city level and provide scientific support to achieve the mitigation of CO 2 emissions in the transport sector.

Carbon emissions performance in logistics at the city level

“…Studying cities' carbon emissions and their performance is fundamental to proposing mitigation actions. Although a few studies have focused on different cities' carbon emissions, such as Mi et al (2016), Cai et al (2018), Zhang et al (2018) and Mi et al (2019b), more work remains to be done on carbon emissions efficiency and climate policy analysis, particularly for new and different cities. Therefore, this study fills the literature gap by exploring the carbon emissions performance in the logistics industry at the city level.…”

Research on the Relationship between CO2 Emissions, Road Transport, Economic Growth and Energy Consumption on the Example of the Visegrad Group Countries

“…Studies using ARDL models for the relationship between CO 2 emissions, energy consumption and economic growth and other variables such as urbanisation and foreign exchange for various countries, including China, Pakistan, Turkey, Singapore, the Danube Region, SAARC and ASEAN, among others, have also been conducted to date, revealing both short-and long-run relationships between the variables [29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37]. Some researchers have also researched the use of ARDL models in the search for links between transport in the broad sense and CO 2 emissions and energy consumption [38][39][40][41][42].…”

The Promoting Effect of Green Technology Innovations on Sustainable Supply Chain Development: Evidence from China’s Transport Sector

“…The concept of SSC has been proposed and widely followed by supply chain management researchers. Since then, scholars have discussed the sustainable supply chain (SSC) issues from the perspectives of contract designing, decision making, pricing strategies and so on, finding that technological innovation is an important factor in the development of SSCs [9,[17][18][19][20][21].…”