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Structure and influencing factors of CO2 emissions from transport sector in three major metropolitan regions of China: estimation and decomposition

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Abstract

The three metropolitan regions, including **g-**-Ji (JJJ), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD), are the most developed regions of China. This study focuses on these three metropolitan regions and tries to estimate and analyze the structure and influencing factors of CO2 emissions from transport sector, including passenger and freight transport, simultaneously covering road, rail, and water transport. The results suggest that in the period of 2000–2013, the CO2 emissions from transport sector increased from 27.8 to 198.8 Mt in JJJ, from 29.7 to 163.5 Mt in YRD, and from 13.1 to 74.0 Mt in PRD. Comparatively speaking, JJJ had the highest CO2 emission intensity of freight and urban passenger transport as well as highest transport CO2 emissions per capita and per unit GDP, while PRD had the highest transport CO2 emissions per hectare. The main challenge of reducing CO2 emissions from transport sector in these regions stemmed from freight transport and road transport. Based on decomposition analysis, economic welfare was the most important driving force of the CO2 emissions growth in all three regions, followed by transport type mix, transport dependence and modal energy intensities. In the future, low-carbon transport strategies about controlling the growth of transport demand, adjusting the transport modal structure and improving the modal energy efficiency and fuel emission efficiency are needed in all three regions, and each region should have slightly different focus. The JJJ region needs to emphasize adjusting transport modal structure, the YRD region needs to emphasize improving modal energy efficiency, and the PRD region needs to focus more on controlling the growth of transport dependence.

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Acknowledgements

This work was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41701119) and the Major Program of National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 15ZDA021). The author greatly appreciates the constructive comments of the three anonymous reviewers and the editor.

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  1. College of Resources Science & Technology, Faculty of Geographical Science, Bei**g Normal University, Bei**g, China

    Linna Li

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  1. Linna Li
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Correspondence to Linna Li.

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Appendix

Appendix

See Table 4.

Table 4 Data sources for estimating CO2 emissions from transport sector in three metropolitan regions of China
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Li, L. Structure and influencing factors of CO2 emissions from transport sector in three major metropolitan regions of China: estimation and decomposition. Transportation 46, 1245–1269 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11116-017-9827-6

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