An Empirical Research Based on STIRPAT Model: CO2 Emission Accounting and Influencing Factors of China’s Macro Infrastructure Life Cycle

Feiyu Chen, Weining Yang

Ekoloji, 2018, Issue 106, Pages: 31-45, Article No: e106012

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Abstract

With the development of modernization and industrialization in China, the infrastructure energy consumption increases, which shows the process of modernization in our country. Despite there are a lot of researches about the energy consumption in the field of construction, transportation and other infrastructure, in academia, there are less statistics about energy consumption for the infrastructure as a whole in the life cycle, and its proportion in total energy consumption in the whole country. Thus, this paper tries to characterize infrastructures of China, which include construction, transportation, energy, water supply and drainage, post and telecommunications communication system by establishing an estimation model of infrastructure system CO2 emissions in the life cycle through national official macro-level statistical data. The results show that CO2 emissions from the infrastructure have rapidly grown over the past decades. And based on the extension of STIRPAT model framework, we make an empirical analysis of the important factors on China’s macro infrastructure systematic CO2 emissions from the population, urbanization level, residents’ consumption level, the third industry development, and investment in fixed assets using dynamic panel data. Results show that in the above factors, the contribution rate of infrastructure investment is the highest, followed by family size, 30.9% and 22.6%, respectively, and the urbanization rate is the highest in the elasticity of all the factors affect the carbon emissions, whenever the urbanization rate increases by 1%, the macro infrastructure carbon emissions increase 1.624. In this paper, from the perspective of the overall environmental benefits, we provide a more comprehensive environmental assessment analysis method for the policy makers. And the infrastructure construction of China has periodic characteristic. We analyze the specific features of the infrastructure CO2 emissions in the life cycle, and put forward emission-reduction measures in consideration of the current conditions. In addition, the method of building the model of infrastructure CO2 emissions in the operation stage development is also important for future quantifications of CO2 emissions of other sectors in China and beyond.

Keywords

macro infrastructure, life cycle, CO2 emissions, STIRPAT, China

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