scholarly journals Driving Factors and Future Prediction of Carbon Emissions in the ‘Belt and Road Initiative’ Countries

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (17) ◽  
pp. 5455
Author(s):  
Lili Sun ◽  
Huijuan Cui ◽  
Quansheng Ge

‘Belt and Road Initiative’ (B&R) countries play critical roles in mitigating global carbon emission under the Paris agreement, but their driving factors and feasibility to reduce carbon emissions remain unclear. This paper aims to identify the main driving factors (MDFs) behind carbon emissions and predict the future emissions trajectories of the B&R countries under different social-economic pathways based on the extended STIRPAT (stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology) model. The empirical results indicate that GDP per capita and energy consumption structure are the MDFs that promote carbon emission, while energy intensity improvement is the MDF that inhibits carbon emission. Population, as another MDF, has a dual impact across countries. The carbon emissions in all B&R countries are predicted to increase from SSP1 to SSP3, but emissions trajectories vary across countries. Under the SSP1 scenario, carbon emissions in over 60% of B&R countries can peak or decline, and the aggregated peak emissions will amount to 21.97 Gt in 2030. Under the SSP2 scenario, about half of the countries can peak or decline, while their peak emissions and peak time are both higher and later than SSP1, the highest emission of 25.35 Gt is observed in 2050. Conversely, over 65% of B&R countries are incapable of either peaking or declining under the SSP3 scenario, with the highest aggregated emission of 33.10 Gt in 2050. It is further suggested that decline of carbon emission occurs when the inhibiting effects of energy intensity exceed the positive impacts of other MDFs in most B&R countries.

2020 ◽  
Vol 280 ◽  
pp. 115934 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qinli Lu ◽  
Kai Fang ◽  
Reinout Heijungs ◽  
Kuishuang Feng ◽  
Jiashuo Li ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rongrong Li ◽  
Qiang Wang ◽  
Yi Liu ◽  
Rui Jiang

PurposeThis study is aimed at better understanding the evolution of inequality in carbon emission in intraincome and interincome groups in the world, and then to uncover the driving factors that affect inequality in carbon emission.Design/methodology/approachThe approach is developed by combining the Theil index and the decomposition technique. Specifically, the Theil index is used to measure the inequality in carbon emissions from the perspective of global and each income group level. The extended logarithmic mean Divisia index was developed to explore the driving factors.FindingsThis study finds that the inequality in carbon emissions of intraincome group is getting better, whereas the inequality in carbon emission of interincome group is getting worse. And the difference in global carbon emissions between income groups is the main source of global carbon emission inequality, which is greater than that within each income group. In addition, the high-income group has transferred their carbon emissions to upper-middle income group by importing high-carbon-intensive products to meet the domestic demand, while lower-middle-income group do not fully participate in the international trade.Practical implicationsTo alleviate the global carbon inequality, more attention should be paid to the inequality in carbon emission of interincome group, especially the trade between high-income group and upper-middle income group. From the perspective of driving factors, the impact of import and export trade dependence on the per capita carbon emissions of different income groups can almost offset each other, so the trade surplus effect should be the focus of each group.Originality/valueIn order to consider the impact of international trade, this study conducts a comprehensive analysis of global carbon emissions inequality from the perspective of income levels and introduces the import and export dependence effect and the trade surplus effect into the analysis framework of global carbon emission inequality drivers, which has not been any research carried out so far. The results of this paper not only provide policy recommendations for mitigating global carbon emissions but also provide a new research perspective for subsequent inequality research.


Energies ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 2405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Changzheng Zhu ◽  
Dawei Gao

Carbon emissions in countries in the “Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)” account for more than half of the world’s total volume. According to the international energy agency report, the world transportation industry carbon emissions in 2015 came second on the list for the proportion of global carbon emissions across all industries, accounting for 23.96% of the total. Along with the advancement of the BRI construction, transportation industry carbon emissions will continue their rapid growth. Therefore, studying the factors affecting the carbon emissions of the transportation industry in countries in the BRI is conducive to the formulation of policies to control carbon emissions. In this paper, the CO2 emissions of the transportation industry in countries in the BRI line from 2005 to 2015 were measured, and then the influencing factors of 57 countries in the BRI were analyzed by using the panel data model. The results show that per capita GDP, urbanization level, and energy consumption structure have positive effects on the carbon emissions of transportation industry, while technology level and trade openness have negative effects on carbon emissions of the transportation industry. Therefore, in order to effectively control the carbon emissions of the transportation industry in the BRI countries, it is necessary to reasonably control the transportation industry carbon emissions caused by urbanization, optimize the energy consumption structure of the transportation industry, optimize the structure of the transportation industry, and improve the openness of trade and the technical level of the BRI countries.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Junsong Jia ◽  
Yueyue Rong ◽  
Chundi Chen ◽  
Dongming Xie ◽  
Yong Yang

Purpose This paper aims to retrospectively quantify the contribution of renewable energy consumption (REC) to mitigate the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions for the belt and road initiative (BRI) region. The reason is that, so far, still few scientists have deeply analyzed this underlying impact, especially from the income levels’ perspective. Design/methodology/approach The study divides the BRI region into four groups by the income levels (high, HI; upper middle, UM; lower middle, LM; lower, LO) during 1992–2014 and uses the logarithmic mean Divisia index. Findings The results show the REC of the BRI has an overall decreasing trend but the driving contribution to the CO2 growth except that the HI group’s REC has an obviously mitigating contribution of −2.09%. The number indicates that it is necessary and urgent to exploit and use renewable energy, especially in mid- and low-income countries due to the large potential of carbon mitigation. Besides, during 2010–2014, the energy intensity effects of different groups were negative except for the low income group (positive, 5.47 million tonnes), which showed that some poor countries recently reduced CO2 emissions only by extensively using renewable energy but not enhancing the corresponding efficiency. Conversely, in other rich countries, people paid more attention to improve the energy-use efficiency to lower energy intensity. Originality/value This study creatively analyzes this underlying impact of the REC to mitigate the CO2 emissions from the income levels’ perspective and proposes some reasonable countermeasures of reducing CO2 for the BRI region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guobao Xiong ◽  
Junhong Deng ◽  
Baogen Ding

Abstract Using the tourism's carbon emission data of 30 provinces (cities) in China from 2007 to 2019, we have established a logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) model to identify the main driving factors of carbon emissions related to tourism and a Tapio decoupling model to analyze the decoupling relationship between tourism's carbon emissions and tourism-driven economic growth. Our analysis suggests that China's regional tourism's carbon emissions are growing significantly with marked differences across its regions. Although there are observed fluctuations in the decoupling relationship between regional tourism's carbon emissions and tourism-driven economic growth in China, the data suggest weak decoupling. Nonetheless, the degree of decoupling is rising to various extents across regions. Three of the five driving factors investigated are also found to affect on emissions. Both tourism scale and tourism consumption lead to the growth of tourism's carbon emissions, while energy intensity has a significant effect on reducing emissions. These effects differ across regions.


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