Effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions in China: Common characteristics and regional disparity
Introduction
Having experienced a rapid urbanization in the last decades, China is now facing serious environmental issues (Dong et al., 2016, Yang et al., 2018). Especially, China's urbanization, characterized by energy-intensive industrialization, has generated an important impact on global climate change (Fulton et al., 2017, Hao et al., 2014, IPCC, 2006). To cope with global climate change, the Chinese government puts forward to reduce 60%∼65% of the unit GDP carbon emissions by 2030 year than that in 2005 year (China's State Council: CSC, 2015). The development of urbanization can directly lead to increases in transportation industry, which are one of the main sources of carbon emissions (Zang et al., 2017). Further, urbanization would inevitably influence freight transport carbon emissions, which often occupied most of carbon emissions in transportation industry. Thus, examining the effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions have great significance for carbon emission reduction in China.
The report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (NCCPC) clearly proposed to build “a country with strong transportation network” and focused on “green traffic” in China, so the low carbonization of transportation industry is an inevitable path of scientific development in China (NCCPC, 2017). While, there are still many problems on the carbon emission reduction in freight transport to compare with the development of “low carbonization” in passenger transport, such as electric locomotives, electric vehicles and the emphasis on clean energy (Hao et al., 2011, Yu et al., 2016). There are still a considerable proportion of diesel locomotives in railway freight. Road freight mainly uses light vehicles and diesel vehicles. Most of fuel in waterway freight is diesel, and freight accounts for a large proportion in waterway transport structure. Aviation has a separate cargo line, but there is also compartments leased for cargo (Hao et al., 2015). In 2015, there is a total amount of 8.04% of goods in railway freight, 75.43% in road freight, 14.69% in waterway freight, 0.02% in civil aviation, and 1.82% in pipeline. The railway, road, and waterway support the most part of freight transport in China (National Bureau of Statistics of China: NBSC, 2016).
Simultaneously, China is experiencing a rapid urbanization. According to the government's plan, the urbanization rate of permanent residents will reach 60% in 2020(Wei, 2014). Urbanization accelerate the construction of infrastructure, increasing the demand for energy and other bulk goods, and accelerate the frequency and speed of the goods flow, which will undoubtedly lead to increasing transport demand. Hence, the development of urbanization will further impact on freight transport carbon emissions in a long term (Li et al., 2015). The rapid progress of urbanization promotes the prosperity and development of the freight transport industry, but also brings great pressure on energy conservation and emission reduction in China (Sun et al., 2014).
Urbanization level promotes the prosperous development of freight transport industry in China. It also lead to the rapid increase in freight transport carbon emissions, which brings great pressure for energy conservation and emissions reduction in China's transport industry. It also should be noted that the urbanization development differs across regions in China, and the freight transport demand also shows the characteristics of regional disparity. Thus, this study is helpful to examine the relationship between urbanization and freight transport carbon emissions in different regions and time, examine the relationship between freight transport carbon emissions and economic growth, and provide policy implications for regional freight transport carbon emissions reduction from the perspective of urbanization, then expand the empirical study of the transport industry in China. There is important research value and practical significance to provide strategic support for comprehensive transport system establishment and realize the target of “green and beautiful urbanization” and “a country with strong transportation network” in China. The remaining parts of the study are organized as follows. Section 2 is the literature review. Section 3 details the methodology and data sources. Section 4 shows results and discussion. Section 5 concludes the study and discusses policy implications.
Section snippets
Literature review
There have been emerging studies on carbon emissions in the total transport sector and passenger transport sector (Alshehry and Belloumi, 2017, He et al., 2013, López et al., 2009, Woodburn, 2017). Scholars such as Wu and Huo, 2014, Xu and Lin, 2015a, and Sanchez and Albert (2015) had systematically analyzed the factors affecting carbon emissions in China's transport sector, and pointed out that the railway and developing renewable energy were the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions,
Carbon emissions measurement
Multi-freight carbon emissions are measured by the fuel consumption method, the formula for calculating the carbon emissions is as follows:where represents the freight transport carbon emissions (g); represents the cargo turnover in year using locomotive fuel (1 ×104 t·km); represents the average fuel consumption per unit cargo turnover in year using locomotive fuel (kg/104 t·km); represents the carbon emissions factor in year using fuel
The time variation of the multi-freight transport carbon emissions
The freight transport carbon emissions of railway, road, waterway, and aviation were calculated based on Eq. (1). The time variation of the multi-freight transport carbon emissions was shown in Fig. 1. The carbon emissions of multi-freight transport showed an obvious growth trend during the period of rapidly developing urbanization in China from 1988 to 2016. The total amount of carbon emissions from freight transport sector in China has increased from 3.7352 Mt in 1988 to 96.4158 Mt in 2016,
Conclusions
This study examines the spatio-temporal common and disparity effects of urbanization on multi freight transport carbon emissions in 31 provinces of China. The carbon emissions are calculated in 1988–2016. The SDM-STIRPAT model and GWR-STIRPAT model are applied to analyze the common characteristics and regional disparity of effects. The main findings of this paper are as follows:
The total amount of carbon emissions from freight transport sector in China has increased from 3.7352 Mt in 1988 to
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (2009QG10), China University of Mining & Technology, Beijing.
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