Carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth: A spatial analysis among Iranian provinces

In recent decades, the risks and environmental damage caused by economic growth, population growth and energy consumption have become more apparent. Meanwhile, one of the new advances in the study of the relationship between economic factors affecting environmental quality is the attention to the spatial nature of environmental phenomena. Therefore, the aim of this study was to model the relationship between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and economic growth along with other influential factors. CO2 emissions as a criterion for environmental pollution in Iran have been studied using the Spatial Durbin Model(SDM) and in the framework of spatial panel data among the provinces of Iran during the period 2003-2017. The results of this study show that in total, real GDP per capita increases CO2 emissions at the provincial level, because the positive real GDP per capita coefficient is larger than the negative real GDP per capita coefficient of space. Another very important variable is the intensity of energy consumption and its spatial interruption, which has the highest significant and positive coefficients in the model of this paper. Also, the weighted price of provincial energy and its space interruption have had a significant and negative effect on CO2 emissions. Also increasing the degree of urbanization in neighboring provinces has increased CO2 emissions. Finally, the spatial interruption coefficient of the dependent variable is significant and positive, which shows that the increase in CO2 emissions in neighboring provinces has increased CO2 emissions in the same province.