Long-Term and Short-Term Effects of Carbon Emissions on Regional Healthy Development in Shanxi Province, China

Abstract

As an important energy base in China, the economic development of Shanxi Province highly depended on coal resources. However, huge coal consumption produced a large amount of carbon dioxide and aggravated ecological problems. Thus, this study uses energy consumption, GDP, and the urbanization rate from 1981 to 2020 via the Vector Auto Regressive (VAR) and impulse response function to analyze the interaction among carbon emissions, urbanization, and economic growth in Shanxi Province. The results show that relations among carbon emissions, economic growth, and urbanization are complicated, and all three have a long-term stable equilibrium relationship. The lag effect on each other reacts violently in the short term, and gradually becomes gentle over time. In the short term, carbon emissions are positively correlated with economic growth and have the same trend of change, but in the long run, carbon emissions will have a small hindering effect on economic growth. Carbon emissions reduce urbanization levels in the short term, and then gradually climb, tending to stabilize as time goes by. With respect to receiving economic growth impaction, carbon emission increases at the initial stage of economic development, but the growth rate becomes slow as time goes by. With respect to receiving urbanization impaction, carbon emission first declines and then rises slowly with relatively small and slow growth in general. The relations among carbon emissions, economic growth, and urbanization are complicated. Therefore, local government needs to be very cautious in regional governance, especially in economic and urban planning and design, take various factors into consideration, and adhere to low-carbon, green, and circular development so as to achieve the carbon peak and carbon neutrality as scheduled and make the urban economy develop sustainably.