Empirical Research on the Relationship between Economic Development and Carbon Emissions of Chinese Provincial Regions

This study is conducted to evaluate the relationship between carbon emissions and GDP growth of 29 provinces from 1955 to 2011. Based on the theoretical principles of EKC and reasonable theoretical explanation, this paper proposes CKC hypothesis. At first, this paper estimates carbon emissions by using energy combustion chemistry principle. Then it makes two empirical researches with time series and panel data respectively to examine whether CKC exits for Chinese provincial regions. It not only in general demonstrates a positive correlation and unidirectional Granger causality of per capita CO2 emission and per capita GDP, but also reveals the differences of original carbon emissions among provincial regions.