Determinants of industrial carbon dioxide emissions growth in Shanghai: A quantile analysis

Abstract The emergence of Shanghai as an international city necessitate that the industrial sector should be less polluting as much as possible because pollution will alienate businesses, professionals and the relocation or setting up of corporate offices that enhances green economic growth. To ensure that policy targeting industrial emissions are achieved, standard mean based models underperforms, so exploring a quantile framework, varying effects of economic development, energy structure, energy efficiency, industrial structure and urbanization across the levels of carbon dioxide emissions were analyzed for the industrial sector of Shanghai where estimates both described the distribution of carbon dioxide emissions and their marginal effects on different quantiles. Explanatory variables were emission friendly and did not exert same effects on the acceleration of carbon emissions. Averagely, the coefficient of GDP, ENS, ENE, IND, and URB at Q(0.50) = 0.06306, 0.39285, 0.07375, 0.52193 and 0.48357 respectively, implying that a unit increase in these economic indicators will increase carbon dioxide emissions by 6.3, 39.3, 7.3, 52.2 and 48.4 percent approximately and the model goodness of fit was 87.8 percent. Urbanization had the greatest impact on carbon dioxide emissions across all quantiles, showing that it is a major driving force that increase carbon emissions, followed by energy structure, industrial structure, economic growth and energy efficiency. An optimized energy efficiency will be the best mitigating variable that could curb carbon dioxide emissions, then followed by energy structure. Favorable economic policies from the government have contributed enormously to the development of the industrial sector, however, additional policies are needed to steer the city from an investment and export growth model to consumption (services).