Interrelations between transportation infrastructure and carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta

With the continuous promotion of China's “dual carbon” goals, carbon emission reduction in the transportation sector, the third largest carbon-emitting industry, has become a hot topic of concern. An autoregressive distributed lag-vector error correction model (ARDL-VECM) is constructed to explore the long-term equilibrium and short-term dynamic relationships between transportation infrastructure, energy intensity and per capita carbon emissions in the Yangtze River Delta and the causal relationships between the variables. The results show a significant negative correlation between railway infrastructure and per capita carbon emissions in the long run. In contrast, road and inland waterways infrastructure are significantly associated with per capita carbon emissions. In the short term, the expansion of all three modes of transportation - roads, railroads, and inland waterways - showed a positive relationship with carbon emissions, and energy intensity showed a significant negative relationship with per capita carbon emissions. In addition, the Granger causality test based on the VECM model confirms that road infrastructure is a one-way Granger cause of per capita carbon emissions, indicating that the current road network expansion will impact the future “dual carbon” target. The results are of great practical value to governmental agencies in building low-carbon transportation networks, promoting freight flow shifting from road to railway and from waterway to railway, and the implementation of the “dual carbon” target in the transportation sector.