Research on human capital and energy development caused by decarbonization

This study inputs human capital, an important parameter, into the model of carbon emission intensity (CI) that integrates the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) and the production-theoretical decomposition analysis (PDA) while focusing on China's decarbonization, to understand the role of human capital on CO2 emissions under the constraint of energy consumption. The human capital is decomposed into education and “learning by doing” for the analysis of the heterogeneous effects of the two on CO2 emissions. The analysis of China and 30 of its provinces from 2000 to 2019 shows that the human capital substitution effect promoted CO2 emissions reduction owing to an increase in the human capital–energy ratio. Regional decomposition reveals the significance of this finding in the eastern, central, and western regions, which shows that the rapid growth of human capital in these three regions has a substitution effect on energy consumption, thereby reducing CO2 emissions. Further results show that education and “learning by doing” had different effects on CO2 emissions, with education mainly causing CO2 emission reductions and “learning by doing” mainly causing CO2 emission increases in the eastern and western regions; both education and “learning by doing” reduced CO2 emission in the central region. This finding indicates that higher levels of education result in the effective accumulation of human capital, thereby facilitating CO2 emissions reduction through energy substitution.