Urbanization, energy use, and CO2 emissions: A provincial-level analysis of China

Most previous studies have studied the relationship among urbanization, energy use, and CO2 emissions. In this paper, Ordinary Least Square (OLS), Fixed Effects (FE), Prais-Winsten (PW), and First Differenced (FD) regression model approaches are applied to analyze the correlation among urbanization, energy use, and CO2 emissions in the interior provinces and eastern/coastal provinces of China. The results show that the impact of urbanization on CO2 emissions is not homogenous for all provinces. The eastern/coastal provinces have a different elasticity with respect to per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and urbanization than the interior provinces. Also, it's possible an Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) exists for the eastern provinces but not for China as a whole.