Analysis of the Influence Mechanism of CO₂ Emissions and Verification of the Environmental Kuznets Curve in China

Changes in economic development stage and growth type will lead to variations in the CO₂ emissions. Traditional empirical analysis of the variations often only considers the impact of influencing factors on CO₂ emissions from a single dimension. Under the background of China’s economy transferring from high-speed growth to high-quality development, this paper comprehensively considers the characteristics of the relevant influencing factors under different development stages and growth rates, and further calculates the panel gray incidence degree between CO₂ emissions and these influencing factors in eastern, central, and western China. Based on the different development conditions, corresponding benchmarks of the indicators for the three regions (eastern, western, and central China) are accordingly set, highlighting the unity as well as the uniqueness between different regions. Furthermore, this paper verifies the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) in the three regions. The result shows that all the factors of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Energy Intensity, Urbanization Level, and Trade Openness have a high correlation with CO₂ emissions in the three regions, in which CO₂ emissions are all between the two inflection points of the inverted N-shaped model.