Factors affecting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China's transport sector: a dynamic nonparametric additive regression model

With the recent surge in vehicle population, particularly private vehicles, the transport sector has significantly contributed to the increase in energy consumption and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in China. Most existing research utilized linear models to investigate the driving forces of the transport sector's CO2 emission, but little attention has been paid to a large number of nonlinear relationships embodied in economic variables. This paper adopts provincial panel data from 2000 to 2012 and nonparametric additive regression models to examine the key influencing factors of CO2 emissions in the transport sector in China. The estimation results show that the nonlinear effect of economic growth on CO2 emissions is consistent with the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis. The nonlinear impact of urbanization exhibits an inverted “U-shaped” pattern on account of large-scale population migrations in the early stages and expanding use of non-polluting urban rail public transportation and hybrid fuel vehicles at the later stage. Private vehicles population follows an inverted “U-shaped” relationship with CO2 emissions owing to early surge in private car ownership and late increased use of electric and hybrid cars. The inverted “U-shaped” effect of cargo turnover is due to different modes of freight transport at different stages. But, energy efficiency improvement follows a positive “U-shaped” pattern in relation to CO2 emissions because of the different scale of transportation ownership and the speed of technological progress at different times. Hence, the differential dynamic effects of the driving forces at different times should be taken into consideration in reducing CO2 emissions in China's transport sector.

[1]  Thomas W Kirchstetter,et al.  Quantifying on-road emissions from gasoline-powered motor vehicles: accounting for the presence of medium- and heavy-duty diesel trucks. , 2013, Environmental science & technology.

[2]  Chunping Xie,et al.  Reduction potential of CO2 emissions in China's transport industry , 2014 .

[3]  C. Tang,et al.  The impacts of transport energy consumption, foreign direct investment and income on CO2 emissions in ASEAN-5 economies , 2013 .

[4]  R. Crookes,et al.  Reduction potentials of energy demand and GHG emissions in China's road transport sector , 2009 .

[5]  Elspeth Thomson,et al.  The role of oil and gas in China's energy strategy: an overview , 2015 .

[6]  Zhengwei Ma,et al.  Analyzing the factors that influence Chinese consumers׳ adoption of the biodiesel: The private vehicles owner׳s investigating in Beijing , 2014 .

[7]  Li Wang,et al.  Nonparametric additive model-assisted estimation for survey data , 2011, J. Multivar. Anal..

[8]  Rocío Yñiguez,et al.  Economic assessment of CO2 emissions savings in Spain associated with the use of biofuels for the transport sector in 2010 , 2014 .

[9]  Anthony M. Filippi,et al.  stimation of floodplain aboveground biomass using multispectral emote sensing and nonparametric modeling , 2014 .

[10]  Qinghua Zhu,et al.  Analysis of greenhouse gas emissions of freight transport sector in China , 2014 .

[11]  Mark Jaccard,et al.  Achieving CO2 emission reduction and the co-benefits of local air pollution abatement in the transportation sector of China , 2012 .

[12]  Can Wang,et al.  CO2 mitigation scenarios in China’s road transport sector , 2007 .

[13]  Filip Johnsson,et al.  How to decarbonize the transport sector , 2013 .

[14]  S. Kumbhakar,et al.  A Generalized Empirical Model of Corruption, Foreign Direct Investment, and Growth , 2014 .

[15]  Muhammad Shahbaz,et al.  What role of renewable and non-renewable electricity consumption and output is needed to initially mitigate CO2 emissions in MENA region? , 2014 .

[16]  S. Katircioğlu,et al.  Economic growth, CO2 emissions, and energy consumption in the five ASEAN countries , 2015 .

[17]  Ming Zhong,et al.  Modeling the congestion cost and vehicle emission within multimodal traffic network under the condition of equilibrium , 2012 .

[18]  Local Linear Estimation of a Nonparametric Cointegration Model , 2015 .

[19]  Sue J. Lin,et al.  The forecast of motor vehicle, energy demand and CO2 emission from Taiwan's road transportation sector , 2009 .

[20]  J. V. Ommeren,et al.  An Empirical Analysis of Urban Form, Transport, and Global Warming , 2008 .

[21]  Guanghui Zhou,et al.  Measuring energy efficiency performance of China's transport sector: A data envelopment analysis approach , 2014, Expert Syst. Appl..

[22]  P. Monteiro,et al.  Investigating the complex relationship between in situ Southern Ocean pCO 2 and its ocean physics and biogeochemical drivers using a nonparametric regression approach , 2012 .

[23]  Prem K. Goel,et al.  Modeling the relationships among urban passenger travel carbon dioxide emissions, transportation demand and supply, population density, and proxy policy variables , 2014 .

[24]  R. Färe,et al.  Revisiting the quiet life hypothesis in banking using nonparametric techniques , 2014 .

[25]  M. Shekarchian,et al.  Energy and exergy utilization efficiencies and emission performance of Canadian transportation sector, 1990-2035 , 2014 .

[26]  Sonia Yeh,et al.  Incorporating travel behaviour and travel time into TIMES energy system models , 2014 .

[27]  Stefano Galmarini,et al.  European CO2 emission trends: A decomposition analysis for water and aviation transport sectors , 2012 .

[28]  Jian Zuo,et al.  Economic Development, Energy Consumption, and Air Pollution: A Critical Assessment in China , 2015 .

[29]  Boqiang Lin,et al.  Carbon dioxide emissions reduction in China's transport sector: A dynamic VAR (vector autoregression) approach , 2015 .

[30]  Zhiliang Yao,et al.  Energy use of, and CO2 emissions from China's urban passenger transportation sector - Carbon mitigation scenarios upon the transportation mode choices , 2013 .

[31]  Malin Song,et al.  Energy Consumption and Energy Efficiency of the Transportation Sector in Shanghai , 2014 .

[32]  Mohammad Ahanchian,et al.  Energy demand, emissions forecasts and mitigation strategies modeled over a medium-range horizon: The case of the land transportation sector in Metro Manila , 2014 .

[33]  中華人民共和国国家統計局.  China statistical yearbook , 1988 .

[34]  Chuanguo Zhang,et al.  Panel estimation for income inequality and CO2 emissions: A regional analysis in China , 2014 .

[35]  Hai-long Ma,et al.  Quantifying the relationship between urban development intensity and carbon dioxide emissions using a panel data analysis , 2015 .

[36]  C. Kanzian,et al.  Design of forest energy supply networks using multi-objective optimization , 2013 .

[37]  Ming Zhang,et al.  Decomposition analysis of energy consumption in Chinese transportation sector , 2011 .

[38]  P. Zhou,et al.  Total-factor carbon emission performance of the Chinese transportation industry: A bootstrapped non-radial Malmquist index analysis , 2015 .

[39]  Dincer Konur,et al.  Carbon constrained integrated inventory control and truckload transportation with heterogeneous freight trucks , 2014 .

[40]  Hongwei Xiao,et al.  Carbon Emissions in China: A Spatial Econometric Analysis at the Regional Level , 2014 .

[41]  Huiming Zhu,et al.  Urbanization and CO2 emissions: A semi-parametric panel data analysis , 2012 .

[42]  Ádám Török,et al.  Theoretical investigation of environmental development pathways in the road transport sector in the European Region , 2014 .

[43]  Yan Yan,et al.  Measuring carbon dioxide emissions from the Chinese transport sector , 2014 .

[44]  Muhammad Shahbaz,et al.  Causal links between renewable energy, environmental degradation and economic growth in selected SAARC countries: Progress towards green economy , 2014 .

[45]  Ina Meyer,et al.  International passenger transport and climate change: A sector analysis in car demand and associated CO2 emissions from 2000 to 2050 , 2007 .

[46]  C. J. Stone,et al.  Additive Regression and Other Nonparametric Models , 1985 .

[47]  V. Grimm,et al.  Sequential versus Bundle Auctions for Recurring Procurement , 2007 .

[48]  Denise Eby Konan,et al.  Home grown or imported? Biofuels life cycle GHG emissions in electricity generation and transportation , 2014 .

[49]  Wei Zhang,et al.  Is It Feasible for China to Optimize Oil Import Source Diversification , 2014 .

[50]  Pedro José Pérez-Martínez,et al.  A methodology for territorial distribution of CO2 emission reductions in transport sector , 2012 .

[51]  Shinya Hanaoka,et al.  Assessment of Modal Shift and Emissions along a Freight Transport Corridor Between Laos and Thailand , 2015 .

[52]  Chihwa Kao,et al.  Spurious Regression and Residual-Based Tests for Cointegration in Panel Data When the Cross-Section and Time-Series Dimensions are Comparable , 1996 .

[53]  Naveen Eluru,et al.  Land-use and socio-economics as determinants of traffic emissions and individual exposure to air pollution , 2013 .

[54]  Shizhong Xu,et al.  Semiparametric nonlinear regression for detecting gene and environment interactions , 2015 .

[55]  Ruhul Salim,et al.  Urbanization and renewable and non-renewable energy consumption in OECD countries: An empirical analysis , 2014 .

[56]  E. Rosa,et al.  Effects of population and affluence on CO2 emissions. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[57]  Dejian Lai,et al.  Comparison of Statistical Methods for Pretest–Posttest Designs in Terms of Type I Error Probability and Statistical Power , 2015, Commun. Stat. Simul. Comput..

[58]  M. Ouyang,et al.  Regional disparity of urban passenger transport associated GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions in China: A review , 2014 .

[59]  A. Bertello,et al.  Compilation of a road transport emission inventory for the Province of Turin: Advantages and key factors of a bottom-up approach , 2014 .

[60]  Boqiang Lin,et al.  Energy substitution effect on transport industry of China-based on trans-log production function , 2014 .

[61]  Subhashis Ghosal,et al.  Fast Bayesian model assessment for nonparametric additive regression , 2014, Comput. Stat. Data Anal..

[62]  R. Duarte,et al.  HOUSEHOLDS’ BEHAVIOUR AND ENVIRONMENTAL EMISSIONS IN A REGIONAL ECONOMY , 2014 .

[63]  Roberto Bellasio,et al.  Emission inventory for the road transport sector in Sardinia (Italy) , 2007 .

[64]  R. Begum,et al.  CO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic and population growth in Malaysia , 2015 .

[65]  Yue-Jun Zhang,et al.  The decomposition of energy-related carbon emission and its decoupling with economic growth in China , 2015 .

[66]  Q. Cui,et al.  The evaluation of transportation energy efficiency: An application of three-stage virtual frontier DEA , 2014 .

[67]  Min Zhou,et al.  Using LMDI method to analyze transport sector CO 2 emissions in China , 2011 .

[68]  Adnan Kasman,et al.  CO2 emissions, economic growth, energy consumption, trade and urbanization in new EU member and candidate countries: A panel data analysis , 2015 .

[69]  Hong Huo,et al.  Energy efficiency achievements in China׳s industrial and transport sectors: How do they rate? , 2014 .

[70]  Yu Chen,et al.  Thou shalt drive electric and hybrid vehicles: Scenario analysis on energy saving and emission mitigation for road transportation sector in China , 2013 .

[71]  Bin Chen,et al.  Driving force analysis of water footprint change based on extended STIRPAT model: Evidence from the Chinese agricultural sector , 2014 .

[72]  C. Granger.  Some recent development in a concept of causality , 1988 .

[73]  Bin Yu,et al.  Transport Turnover with Spatial Econometric Perspective under the Energy Conservation and Emissions Reduction in China , 2013 .

[74]  Chu Wei,et al.  Economic development and carbon dioxide emissions in China: Provincial panel data analysis , 2012 .

[75]  Jing-Bao Nie,et al.  China's one-child policy, a policy without a future. Pitfalls of the “common good” argument and the authoritarian model. , 2014, Cambridge quarterly of healthcare ethics : CQ : the international journal of healthcare ethics committees.

[76]  Boqiang Lin,et al.  China's building energy efficiency and urbanization , 2015 .

[77]  M. Keuken,et al.  Impact on air quality of measures to reduce CO2 emissions from road traffic in Basel, Rotterdam, Xi'an and Suzhou , 2014 .

[78]  F. Luo,et al.  Assessment of Human Health Risk for an Area Impacted by a Large-Scale Metallurgical Refinery Complex in Hunan, China , 2015 .

[79]  Walter W Piegorsch,et al.  Benchmark Dose Analysis via Nonparametric Regression Modeling , 2014, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[80]  G. Timilsina,et al.  Transport sector CO2 emissions growth in Asia: Underlying factors and policy options , 2009 .

[81]  Dennis Normile,et al.  China's Living Laboratory in Urbanization , 2008, Science.

[82]  B. Saboori,et al.  Economic growth, energy consumption and CO2 emissions in OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development)'s transport sector: A fully modified bi-directional relationship approach , 2014 .

[83]  R. Rasiah,et al.  The Clean Energy-Growth Nexus with CO2 Emissions and Technological Innovation in Norway and New Zealand , 2014 .

[84]  Guiling Wang,et al.  Analysis of influencing factors of CO2 emissions in Xinjiang under the context of different policies , 2015 .