ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Sci.
Sec. Environmental Economics and Management
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fenvs.2025.1518237
This article is part of the Research TopicClimate Change and Urban Resilience - Volume IIView all 4 articles
Technological Innovation, Urbanization, and CO2 Mitigation: Provincial Evidence from China
Provisionally accepted
- 1International Media and Communications major, Graduate School of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
- 2Keio University, Minato, Tōkyō, Japan
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China, as the world's largest carbon emitter, faces immense pressure to balance rapid urbanization with sustainable development, particularly in the wake of its 2060 carbon neutrality pledge and COP27 commitments. The country's urban areas account for over 85% of total CO2 emissions, driven by industrial expansion, rising energy consumption, and increased infrastructure demands.However, the effectiveness of urbanization in mitigating or exacerbating CO2 emissions remains a contested issue, particularly at the provincial level, where economic structures and environmental policies vary significantly. This study examines the impact of urbanization (URB), technological innovation, GDP, and energy consumption (EC) on CO2 emissions across 19 Chinese provinces from 2000 to 2020-a period marked by rapid urban expansion and technological transformation.Using advanced panel data techniques that account for cross-sectional dependence and heterogeneity, the results confirm a long-term relationship among these factors, even in the presence of structural breaks. The findings indicate that a 1% increase in GDP, URB, and EC leads to CO2 emission rises of 0.38%, 0.04%, and 0.25%, respectively, while a 1% increase in ICT adoption reduces emissions by 0.047%. Additionally, environmentally friendly technological innovation significantly mitigates urbanization-driven emissions, reducing CO2 by 0.11% across quantiles. Robustness checks using fixed-effects modeling confirm the consistency of these impacts. These results highlight the necessity of integrating urbanization with green innovation to support China's sustainable development goals. The study emphasizes the importance of clean energy adoption, smart urban planning, and innovative technologies in reducing emissions, offering policy insights for fostering smarter, low-carbon cities in China.
Keywords: Urbanization, Technology, Sustainable development goals, energy consumption, Sustainable smart cities, China
Received: 28 Oct 2024; Accepted: 27 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhiying. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhao Zhiying, International Media and Communications major, Graduate School of International Media, Communication, and Tourism Studies, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan
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