Impacts of economic growth and urbanization on CO2 emissions: regional differences in China based on panel estimation

This study analyzed the impact of urbanization and the level of economic development on CO2 emissions using the STIRPAT model and provincial panel data for China. This study classified the 29 provinces of China into three groups (eastern, central, and western regions) and examined regional differences in the environmental impacts of urbanization and economic development levels. The results demonstrated that there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between urbanization and CO2 emissions in the central and western regions of China. However, we did not confirm the environmental Kuznets curve relationship between urbanization and CO2 emissions in eastern China, where CO2 emissions increase monotonically with urbanization. This study showed that the impacts of urbanization differ considerably. There was a U-shaped relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions. However, the point of inflexion was very low, which indicates that economic growth will promote CO2 emissions in China. The share of the industry output value had a marginal incremental effect on CO2 emissions. There was a decreasing effect of population scale on CO2 emissions. Energy efficiency is the main factor that restrains CO2 emissions, and the effect was higher in regions with low energy efficiency.