Elsevier

Journal of Cleaner Production

Volume 211, 20 February 2019, Pages 481-489
Journal of Cleaner Production

Effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions in China: Common characteristics and regional disparity

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2018.11.182Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Multi-freight transport carbon emissions are calculated.

  • Driving factors of carbon emissions in China's freight transport sector are explored.

  • Effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions are discussed.

  • Some freight emissions have an inverted U-shape relationship with per capita GDP.

  • Policy implications for freight transport carbon emission reduction are suggested.

Abstract

China's socioeconomic development, including urbanization, is now facing a key challenge of reducing carbon emissions. This study analyzes the driving factors of freight transport carbon emissions and the effects of urbanization on freight transport carbon emissions in China. The spatial durbin model (SDM)-stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (STIRPAT) model and geographically weighted regression model (GWR)-STIRPAT model are constructed to analyze the common characteristics and regional disparity of the above effects in China. The results show that: (1) The total amount of freight carbon emissions in China has increased from 3.7352 Mt in 1988 to 96.4158 Mt in 2016. Road freight is the largest increasing sub-sector of carbon emissions in the freight transport sector. (2) Urbanization level has a positive impact on road and aviation transport carbon emissions and has a significant negative impact on railway and waterway transport carbon emissions in some provinces, but has a positive impact on their neighboring provinces. There is a significant regional disparity in multi-freight transport carbon emissions. (3) The carbon emissions of freight transport have a characteristic of “path dependence”. The population size and energy intensity have a significant impact on freight carbon emissions. Different from waterway freight, there is an inverted U-shape relationship between the carbon emissions of railway, road, aviation freight and per capita GDP. We provide policy implications based on the findings, which is expected to contribute to the carbon emissions reduction in China's transportation industry.

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:EG=Ni,rm×Ri,rm×EFrmwhere EG represents the freight transport carbon emissions (g); Ni,rm represents the cargo turnover in year m using locomotive i fuel r (1 ×104 t·km); Ri,rm represents the average fuel consumption per unit cargo turnover in year m using locomotive i fuel r (kg/104 t·km); EFrm represents the carbon emissions factor in year m using fuel r

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.

References (40)

Cited by (135)

View all citing articles on Scopus
View full text