Analysis of the impact path on factors of China's energy-related CO emissions: a path analysis with latent variables.

Identifying the impact path on factors of CO emissions is crucial for the government to take effective measures to reduce carbon emissions. The most existing research focuses on the total influence of factors on CO emissions without differentiating between the direct and indirect influence. Moreover, scholars have addressed the relationships among energy consumption, economic growth, and CO emissions rather than estimating all the causal relationships simultaneously. To fill this research gaps and explore overall driving factors' influence mechanism on CO emissions, this paper utilizes a path analysis model with latent variables (PA-LV) to estimate the direct and indirect effect of factors on China's energy-related carbon emissions and to investigate the causal relationships among variables. Three key findings emanate from the analysis: (1) The change in the economic growth pattern inhibits the growth rate of CO emissions by reducing the energy intensity; (2) adjustment of industrial structure contributes to energy conservation and CO emission reduction by raising the proportion of the tertiary industry; and (3) the growth of CO emissions impacts energy consumption and energy intensity negatively, which results in a negative impact indirectly on itself. To further control CO emissions, the Chinese government should (1) adjust the industrial structure and actively develop its tertiary industry to improve energy efficiency and develop low-carbon economy, (2) optimize population shifts to avoid excessive population growth and reduce energy consumption, and (3) promote urbanization steadily to avoid high energy consumption and low energy efficiency.