Environmental Pollution Caused by the Transportation Industry and Influencing Factors of Carbon Emission: A Case Study of Jiangxi Province, China

With the accelerating industrialization and urbanization in China, the energy consumption of the transportation industry in the country is increasing quickly, and its proportion to the total social energy consumption is significantly growing. The transportation industry is a main source of carbon emission in urban areas. The unreasonable structure of energy consumption, the low proportion of new-energy use, and low energy utilization influence the energy-saving and emission reduction in the transportation industry. Thus, in this work, the influencing factors of transportation-induced carbon emission were estimated to analyze the environmental pollution caused by the transportation industry further. Regression analysis was performed on the environmental pollution caused by the transportation industry and the influencing factors of carbon emission in Jiangxi Province, China. Subsequently, a random STIRPAT model was constructed, and the influencing factors of carbon emission from the transportation industry in Jiangxi Province from 2007 to 2017 were analyzed through the partial least squares (PLS) method. Regression results based on the PLS method were relatively ideal. Increases in gross domestic product per capita, population size, passenger person kilometers, rotation freight transport kilometers, and the number of car ownerships can intensify transportation-induced carbon emission. This emission is increased when transportation energy intensity declines, but can be significantly inhibited by increased energy prices. The conclusions of this study can provide references for the continuous optimization of the energy use structure in the transportation industry, saving of energy resources, reduction of greenhouse gas and pollutant emission, and acceleration of low carbonization in the transportation industry.