How industrialization and urbanization process impacts on CO2 emissions in China: Evidence from nonparametric additive regression models

a r t i c l e i n f o This paper examines the impacts of industrialization and urbanization on CO 2 emissions in China using nonparametric additive regression models and provincial panel data from 1990 to 2011. The empirical results show that there is an inverted U-shaped nonlinear relationship between industrialization and CO 2 emissions in the three regions in China. Urbanization follows an inverted U-shaped pattern with CO 2 emissions in the eastern region, and a positive U-shaped pattern in the central region. However, the nonlinear impact of urbanization on CO 2 emissions is insignificant in the western region. As a result, the differential dynamic effects of industrialization and urbanization on CO 2 emissions in the three regions should be taken into consideration in reducing China's CO 2 emissions. As the largest developing nation in the world, China is currently in the process of industrialization and urbanization (Jiang and Lin, 2012). The in-dustrialization level (i.e., industry sector value added/GDP) increased from 36.1% in 1990 to 41.3% in 2011, an average annual growth of about 1%. Over the same period, China's urbanization level rose from 26.4% to 51.3%, and it will increase to 60% and reach 880 million (UN projection) or 1 billion (MGI estimate) in 2030 (Dhakal, 2009). The rapid industriali-zation and urbanization have created huge challenges for the environment , especially in terms of energy consumption and CO 2 emissions. In 2012, China's total energy consumption reached 3.62 billion tons of standard coal while the total CO 2 emission was approximately 10 billion tons (Frieler et al., 2013). China has become the world's largest energy consumer and CO 2 emitter (Chen and Santos-Pauline, 2013). Given that rapid industrialization and urbanization lead to a surge in China's CO 2 emissions, many scholars have conducted extensive studies on the effects of industrialization and urbanization on CO 2 emissions from a national perspective without consideration for regional differ-China has a vast territory, with apparent regional differences in resource endowments, level of economic development and population distribution (Du et al., 2012; Zhang and Nian, 2013). Meanwhile, the patterns of industrialization and urbanization also vary in the different regions (Wei et al., 2012; Zhang and Lin, 2012). Thus, CO 2 emissions are impacted by regional features whether at the overall or per capita level. The researches investigating the impacts of industrialization or urbanization on CO 2 emissions from only a national …