[Decoupling Status and Driving Factors of Provincial Transport Carbon Emissions in China]

In the context of the "dual carbon" strategy, the transportation industry actively seeks a new development path of low-carbon transformation, which is one of the hot spots in China's carbon emission reduction. Based on the Tapio decoupling and logarithmic mean Divisia index （LMDI） models, this study analyzed the carbon emission characteristics, decoupling status, and driving factors of China's provincial transportation industry from multiple perspectives, such as overall, time period, and regional decomposition from 2012 to 2021. The results showed that China's total carbon emissions from transport sector exhibited an increasing trend with passing years overall, but growth rate showed decreasing trend. The spatial distribution pattern of carbon emissions from transportation industry was higher in the southeast and lower in northwest. During the past decade, 40.0% of the provinces achieved absolute decoupling between carbon emissions from transportation industry and economic development, and 53.3% of the provinces achieved relative decoupling. From the perspective of the transportation industry, economic growth, population size, and carbon emission coefficient promoted an increase in carbon emissions, while transportation energy intensity and industry scale inhibited the increase in carbon emissions. Therefore, during the process of realizing the "dual carbon" goal in China, each province should formulate differentiated reduction policies in regional carbon emissions according to local conditions, actively assume emission reduction responsibilities, increase efforts to promote the decoupling process, and promote the green and low-carbon transformation of the transportation industry.