[Analysis of China's Carbon Emission Decoupling Effect, Driving Factors, and Forecasting]

Against the backdrop of the contradiction between economic development and the "dual carbon" policy, it is of great significance to explore the decoupling effect and driving factors of China's carbon emissions. Here, we used the Tapio decoupling model to characterize the decoupling state of China's carbon emissions and economic growth, optimizing and expanding the decoupling index based on the LMDI model, systematically exploring the driving factors and their contribution to carbon emissions decoupling, further predicting the driving factors based on the grey breakpoint model, and then exploring the main contradictions of carbon emission decoupling in China in the next few years. The results showed that the decoupling state of carbon emissions in various regions of China was mainly weak decoupling, with the western region performing the worst. Under the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, most regions have shown a strong decoupling state, but the decoupling index of carbon emissions rebounded during the economic recovery stage. Energy efficiency and technological progress were the main driving forces for carbon emission decoupling, while economic growth was the main obstacle. The impact of fossil energy consumption structure and demographic factors was relatively small. In the next few years, the decrease in energy efficiency will weaken the role of the energy intensity effect in promoting carbon emission decoupling, and the decline in innovation efficiency will inhibit carbon emission decoupling.