Urbanisation, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions in China: A panel data analysis of China’s provinces.

Global warming resulting from rapid economic growth across the world has become a worldwide threat. The coordination of development of urbanisation, energy consumption, and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions therefore forms an important issue; it has attracted considerable attention from both governments and researchers in recent years. This study investigated the relationship between urbanisation, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions over the period 1995–2011, using a panel data model, based on the data for 30 Chinese provinces. The potential to reduce CO 2 emissions was also analysed. The results indicated that per capita CO 2 emissions in China were characterised by conspicuous regional imbalances during the period studied; in fact, per capita CO 2 emissions decrease gradually from the eastern coastal region to the central region, and then to the western region. Urbanisation, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions were found to present a long run bi-directional positive relationship, the significance of which was discovered to vary between provinces as a result of the scale of their respective economies. In addition, a bi-directional causal relationship was found to exist between urbanisation, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions: specifically, a bi-directional positive causal relationship exists between CO 2 emissions and urbanisation, as well as between energy consumption and CO 2 emissions, and a one way positive causal relationship exists from urbanisation to energy consumption. Scenario simulations further demonstrated that whilst China’s per capita and total CO 2 emissions will increase continuously between 2012 and 2020 under all of the three scenarios developed in this study, the potential to achieve reductions is also high. A better understanding of the relationship between urbanisation, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions will help China to realise the low-carbon economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]