Impact of Urbanisation on the Spatial and Temporal Evolution of Carbon Emissions and the Potential for Emission Reduction in a Dual-Carbon Reduction Context

Abstract

Urbanisation is accelerating under the new economic development trend, but the global warming exacerbated by greenhouse gases has caused a certain degree of constraint on the speed and quality of economic development, among which anthropogenic emissions, mainly from transportation, are more obvious. Therefore, based on the background of urbanisation and taking urban agglomerations as the research object, this study investigates the spatial and temporal mechanisms and dynamics of carbon emissions through the construction of carbon emission models, the identification of influencing factors, and the processing of spatial data and proposes relevant measures for carbon emission control mechanisms. This study finds that the improvement of the per capita economic level and the urbanisation rate will correspondingly lead to an increase in carbon emissions and that the spatial distribution of carbon emissions under passenger and freight transport modes shows a pattern of “low at the ends and high in the middle”, with the predicted carbon emission levels remaining balanced over a long period of time, with a variation rate of less than 1%. The model idea proposed in this study can effectively provide new perspectives and ideas for the differentiated formulation of emission reduction policies, and the government ought to focus more on the dynamic changes of urbanised carbon emissions in future development so as to realise the potential of urban emission reduction.