Carbon emissions in the transportation sector of Yangtze River Economic Belt: decoupling drivers and inequality

Carbon emissions in the transportation sector are of great concern, since they are the third leading contributor to China’s carbon emissions. This research examines the decoupling relationship between economic outputs and carbon emissions of 11 provinces in 2000–2016 by focusing on Yangtze River Economic Belt (YREB), which is the densest traffic and economic corridor in China. Although many studies have focused on the decoupling state and its driving forces between economic outputs and carbon emissions, few studies further addressed the microscale analysis for decoupling drivers. This paper reveals the characteristic, inequality contribution ratio, and dynamic evolution of the drivers by integrating Dagum’s Gini ratio with kernel density estimation in YREB. Results are as follows: (1) The decoupling states presented weak decoupling state at the whole belt in the majority of the latter observed sub-periods. The decoupling states at the provincial level turned more satisfactory during the four observed sub-periods, especially for Shanghai and Zhejiang. (2) The energy intensity (EI) effect is the predominant driver for promoting the decoupling state in the vast majority of provinces, whereas value added per capita effect is the major role for inhibiting the decoupling state. (3) During the four observed sub-periods, the Gini inequality and transvariation intensity of the EI effect between sub-regions are the main sources of the provincial differences in YREB. The driving force of EI effect is increasing, but the provincial differences are expanding in the upstream and downstream regions by analyzing its dynamic evolution. Understanding the temporal and spatial microscale inequality of the decoupling drivers provides governments with differentiated and forward-looking suggestions towards coordinating regional economic growth and carbon emissions reduction.