Search

Nitrogen oxides (NO x) has become the priority of China's air pollution control, but the regional socio-economic factors responsible for NO x generation are embedded with spatial disparities, which leads to different effects of air quality policy at the local level. This study applied a geographically weighted regression (GWR) model to investigate the drivers of NO x generation from energy consumption (NGEC) in China's 30 provinces, to explore nonstationary spatial effects of NGEC. The results showed that population size has always been the dominant factor in spatial NGEC across all regions of China, although there is a minor north-south difference. However, the effect of per capita GDP and energy intensity leads to a significant north-south difference when they are influencing NGEC, which shows a minor west-east difference from thermal power generation (TE). We also found that in Northern and Northeast China, the transition towards cleaner energy structure based on natural gas has started correlating significantly with NO x generation through a weakly negative effect in 2015. Our findings show alternative strategies on NO x reduction, which include the spatially differentiated effect of regional socioeconomic factors on energy consumption. • We examined spatially differentiated effects of NO x generation using GWR. • Economic growth and energy intensity showed the largest south-north spatial effects. • PS always dominantly affected spatial NGEC with a minor north-south difference. • NGR correlated significantly with NGEC through a weakly negative effect in 2015. • Spatially differentiated reduction policies need region-wise redesigning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]