Natural Peak Characteristics and Peak Forecast of Carbon Emissions in Transportation Industry

The peak of carbon emissions in the transportation industry is a natural long-term evolutionary process. In order to study the process of carbon peaking in China's transportation industry, this paper adopts the international analogy method, selects typical foreign countries, and compares the time of the peaks of the overall national carbon emissions, transportation industry carbon emissions, and converted turnover. The natural peak characteristics of transportation industry carbon emission are analyzed and the time of the natural peaks of carbon emissions in China's transportation industry is predicted according to transportation demand forecast. Then, the STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence, and Technology) prediction model is constructed by introducing the core influencing factors such as carbon emissions per unit of converted turnover and the ratio of railroad to road freight transportation. Finally, through analogical analysis and model prediction, the time and volume of peak carbon emissions of China's transportation sector are obtained. The results of the international analogy show that there is no clear causal relationship between the peak carbon emissions of the transportation industry and the national peak carbon emissions, but it is closely related to the peak converted turnover, and the converted turnover reaches the peak or is close to the peak when the carbon emissions of the transportation industry reach the peak. It is predicted that China's converted turnover will reach a plateau period of 26 trillion ton-kilometers in about 2048. From the perspective of the international analogy, the time of the natural peak of China's carbon emissions from transportation is roughly roughly between 2040 and 2043. The STIRPAT model shows that the carbon emissions of China's transportation industry will increase by 1.201%, 0.259%, 0.454%, and -0.389%, respectively, for every 1% increase in urbanization rate, per capita GDP, carbon emissions per unit converted turnover, and railway- road freight ratio. Based on the combination prediction of international analogy and STIRPAT model, China's transportation industry will achieve peak carbon emissions in 2038-2040, with about 1.3 billion tons. © 2024 Science Press. All rights reserved.