Assessing and prospecting decoupling effect of carbon emissions from economic growth: Empirical studies from Chinese provinces

China has proposed ambitious goals of carbon peak and carbon neutrality, and will pay more attention to the relationship between economic development and carbon emissions. It's significant to assess the current environmental decoupling and prospect the future conditions in China. This article studies the decoupling status and influencing factors in Chinese provinces from 1996 to 2018 through Tapio decoupling index and decomposition model. The results show that most provinces are currently in a weak decoupling state. The growth of per capita GDP and population will affect the process of strong decoupling, while the optimization of energy intensity, energy structure and industrial structure will promote the realization of strong decoupling. Moreover, this paper prospects the decoupling scenarios of Chinese provinces from 2019 to 2035 and finds that all provinces will achieve strong decoupling before 2040, 2035 and 2030 under different carbon emissions scenarios respectively. To achieve the strong decoupling of economic output and carbon emissions as soon as possible, the government must improve energy efficiency, use renewable energy in large quantities, and promote the industrial transformation and upgrading.