Spatiotemporal patterns and influencing factors of carbon emissions from different industrial counties in China

Abstract

Abstract Counties are important geographical units as relates to energy conservation and the reduction of CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, it is of great significance to investigate the spatiotemporal patterns and impacting factors of county scale carbon emissions in different regions for various leading industries in China, toward the achievement of "carbon peaking and carbon neutrality" goals. A total of 1912 counties in China were selected as research areas, for which the carbon emission patterns were analyzed from 2000 to 2015. Subsequently, they were classified by industry, which was combined with night light data, energy consumption data, land use data, and other relative data. The Random Forest algorithm was employed to study the influencing factors of county carbon emissions in China in 2000, 2005, 2010, and 2015. The results revealed that: (1) For the 16 years under study, carbon emissions grew most rapidly in North China, followed by East China, with the lowest increase observed in Northeastern China. The counties with high carbon emissions were concentrated in the eastern coastal areas. (2) The Moran index showed that the carbon emissions of counties in China had an obvious aggregating effect, which was strongly correlated with the Chinese economy over the studied time scale; (3) The changes and development of various industrial counties in different regions were primarily demarcated by their reduction in services year by year. Further, the industrial counties initially increased and then decreased, which clearly illustrated the series of processes involved in China’s economy "extensive development -- industrial transfer -- paying attention to environmental protection"; (4) The impacting factors of carbon emissions for different regions and various types of industrial counties in China exhibited variable characteristics at different development stages, which reflected the complex developmental attributes of different counties. The general trend was that the increased carbon emissions from various industrial counties in China since 2000 were mainly impacted by the surge in government investment. This study provides theoretical guidance for various localities to implement energy conservation and emission reduction strategies according to local conditions.