Driving factors of carbon emissions from transportation in China based on the model of LMDI and SYS-GMM

As an important manifestation of environmental pressure, carbon emission has important guiding significance to study internal driving factors and realize green development. China’s transportation industry is an energy-intensive industry, and it produces abundant carbon emissions each year. The environmental and ecological problems caused by transportation have attracted close attentions of many researchers. First, factor decomposition on variations of energy consumption and carbon emissions from transportation in China from 2003 to 2019 was performed by using LMDI factor decomposition method. Second, driving factors of energy consumption and carbon emissions from transportation in China were estimated by using the system GMM model. According to LMDI factor decomposition results, economic development and energy efficiency are major driving factors of carbon emissions from transportation in China within the study period, whereas energy structure is the major inhibition factor. According to the system GMM model, the driving factors of carbon emissions from transportation in China are ordered from GDP, freight turnover, and total retail sales of consumer goods from high to low, whereas the sequence of inhibition factors is from urbanization, volume of technological market transaction, and proportion of the tertiary industry. Finally, some suggestions, such as decreasing traditional energy consumption for transportation, developing energy-saving and emission-reduction technology for the transportation industry, increasing energy utilization in transportation, and increasing transportation environmental governance efficiency are proposed.