Regional differences in China's apparent carbon dioxide emissions and their evolution

In order to respond to China's call for "Peak Carbon" by 2030, and to meet the needs of potential energy restructuring in the 14th Five-Year Plan and the 15th Five-Year Plan, carbon emissions need to be decreased and the proportion of non-fossil energy consumption needs to be increased. This paper selects the apparent carbon emission inventories of 30 provincial-level administrative units in China from 1997 to 2021 as the research samples, and investigates the regional differences in carbon emissions and the evolution of regional differences in carbon emissions in different provincial units through the methods of Thiel Index Decomposition, Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), and Kernel Density Analysis (KDA). And to study the evolution of regional differences in carbon emissions from different provincial units. The paper finds that there are obvious regional differences in carbon dioxide emissions in China's provincial units, and the intra-regional differences are prominent; the energy structure of China's provincial units has changed significantly, so it explores the trends of the regional differences and changes in the energy structure, and makes recommendations for China's provincial units to realize carbon dioxide emission reduction and achieve "carbon peak" by 2030.