The causal relationship between carbon emissions and land urbanization quality: A panel data analysis for Chinese provinces

The Chinese government, like many others around the world, has set carbon targets that by the time of 2020, to achieve a 40-45% decrease in CO2 emissions per GDP compared with that of 2005. In some parts of China, short-term economic needs have dominated urban planning, while in other areas-especially in recent years-emphasis has shifted to the quality of urban development This paper contributes to the literature as placing emphasis on the quality of land use as well as detecting possible causal links between land urbanization quality (LUQ) and carbon emissions using panel data from at provincial level from 2004 to 2013. The results show that: There is bidirectional long-run causal relation between carbon emission and LUQ on the national scale, which implies that the two are jointly determined and that they simultaneously affect each other. As the case of recovery to the equilibrium, Eastern regions have the fastest speed, followed by the Central and the Western ranked at last Further, what worth noting is LUQ contribute to reducing carbon emissions, indicating the ongoing industrial restructuring and green developments have come into force. Moreover, we deduce that the Central region has the highest potential for energy conservation. We further propose that emphasis should be placed on promoting the degree of LUQ and energy conservation in the implementation during the New-type Urbanization Plan (2014-2020). (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.