Investigating the driving factors of carbon emissions in China's transportation industry from a structural adjustment perspective

Promoting the transport industry to achieve a carbon peak and controlling carbon emissions in various regions of China through structural adjustment are important means to significantly reduce CO₂ emissions. To explore the drivers of carbon emissions from China's transportation sector from 2006 to 2021. And constructs the IPAT-S (IPAT model considering structural adjustment) model, the structural equation is combined to explore the carbon emission reduction path of China's transportation industry from the perspective of structural adjustment. The results show that the structural adjustment is beneficial to alleviate the pressure of emission reduction, carbon emissions from the national transportation sector show a pattern of “low in the north and high in the south”, with the trend gradually shifting to the central region, and the spatial structural effect on carbon emissions has been significantly strengthened, the industrial structure, energy structure and transportation structure still contribute to the carbon emissions of the transportation industry. From the regional level, there are some differences in the impact of structural adjustment on carbon emission reduction in different regions, but optimizing the energy structure will be conducive to carbon emission reduction. In the case of the Northeast region, the energy consumption structure, industrial structure, and transportation structure do not inhibit carbon emissions, and the structural emission reduction in the Central region has begun to bear fruit. The structural adjustment in the eastern and western regions has yet to be improved, which will also provide the government with policy recommendations for structural emission reduction based on regional differentiation.