The Major Driving Factors Of Carbon Emissions In China And Their Relative Importance: An Application Of The Lasso Model

China is one of the biggest energy consumers and carbon emitters in the world. Understanding the factors affecting carbon emissions is critical for policymakers to control the rising trend of carbon emissions. This paper investigates the relative importance of carbon emissions drivers in China. Literature review has been carried out to determine a set of predominant independent variables; the LASSO model is then introduced to rank the relative importance among the set of independent variables. The results find that 1) carbon emissions were mainly driven by economic growth and energy consumption followed by population size and industrialization; and 2) income growth slowed down carbon emissions during the studied period, but it is the least significant factor among the other factors. The ranking allows policy makers to focus on the most critical contributors to carbon emissions and gives policymakers more flexibility in determining policy interventions.