Decouple transport CO2 emissions from China's economic expansion: A temporal-spatial analysis.

• Decoupling status and its determinants of China's TECE and GDP were analyzed. • Factors behind decoupling progress were quantified by Kaya identity and Tapio index. • Results show that during 2005–2016, the decoupling status changed from extensive to weak. • Decline of energy intensity is the dominant factor for the decoupling progress. • Scenario analysis was used for finding out pathways of decoupling China's TECE from GDP. China's transport industry is energy intensive and high-polluting. While with the surging urbanization and the development of service industry, China's economic relies more and more on the transport sector. Therefore, exploring the relationship between transport energy-related carbon emission (TECE) and economic development is crucial to the realization of China's "Post Paris" mitigation target. The paper carries out a decoupling research between TECE and Gross domestic product (GDP) at both national level and province level based on Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) decomposition analysis with the extended Kaya identity and Tapio decoupling model. The model quantifies eight factors' effects on the relationship with focusing on external macro socio-economic related factors (i.e., spatial pattern, urbanization, per capita service industry output value, reciprocal of the service industry's share of GDP, and demographic variable) successfully. The key conclusions are indicated as follows: (1) the national decoupling status was extensive coupling during 2004–2010 and then weak decoupling during 2010–2016. The progress can be attributed to the decline of energy intensity. (2) Per capita service output was always the prominent factor to promote carbon emissions growth in different time periods and provinces with inhibiting the advancement of decoupling process, followed by urbanization. (3) Scenario analysis shows that with the continuous growth of traffic demand and the promotion of urbanization, improving energy efficiency has become the key link to realize the decoupling between China's TECE and its economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]