Uncovering China’s transport CO2 emission patterns at the regional level

With China’s rapid economic development, its transport sector has experienced a dramatic growth, leading to a large amount of related CO2 emission. This paper aims to uncover China’s transport CO2 emission patterns at the regional and provincial level. We first present the CO2 emission features from transport sector in 30 Chinese provinces, including per capita emissions, emission intensities, and historical evolution of annual CO2 emission. We then quantify the related driving forces by adopting both period-wise and time-series LMDI analysis. Results indicate that significant regional CO2 emission disparities exist in China’s transport sector. The eastern region had higher total CO2 emissions and per capita CO2 emissions, but lower CO2 emission intensities in its transport sector. The western region had higher CO2 emission intensities and experienced a rapid CO2 emission increase. The CO2 emission increments in the eastern provinces were mainly contributed by both economic activity effect and population effect, while energy intensity partially offset the emission growth and energy structure had a marginal effect. However, in the central and western provinces, both economic activity effect and energy intensity effect induced the CO2 emission increases, while the effects from population and energy structure change were limited.