Impact of Urbanization on Co2 Emissions:Regional Differences Based on Panel Estimation

This study analysed the impact of urbanization and the level of economic development on energy-related CO₂ emissions using the STIRPAT model and provincial panel data from 1995 to 2011 for China. This study classifies the 29 provinces of China into groups according to their economic development levels and examined regional differences in the environmental impacts of urbanization. The results demonstrated that there was an inverted U-curve-shaped relationship between urbanization and CO₂ emissions in the major regions of China. However, we did not confirm the environmental Kuznets Curve relationship between income and CO₂ emissions in China, where CO₂ emissions increase monotonically with income. Among our contributions is the classification of the 29 provinces of China into three groups according to their economic development levels, which showed that the impacts of urbanization differ considerably. In two of the groups, a threshold level was identified, beyond which the emission-urbanization elasticity was negative and further increases in the urbanization rate did not contribute to higher emissions. However, for the third group only population and affluence, but not urbanization, helped to explain emissions. Therefore, the different impacts of urbanization on CO₂ emissions should be taken into consideration in future discussions of climate change policies.