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High carbon emissions and population aging are two obstacles to China's development as an emerging economy. It is urgent to scientifically examine the impacts of population aging on carbon emissions to discover new pathways for urban carbon emission reduction. However, existing studies face challenges in terms of focusing on and methodology for accurately capturing the role of industrial production and energy consumption in the environmental effects of population aging. This paper constructs a chain mediation analytical framework and systematically examines the intrinsic linkages between population aging and carbon emissions in Chinese cities from 2000 to 2020 using a two-way fixed effects model. This paper has three main findings. (1) The positive correlation between urban population aging and carbon emissions development is generally low, with coupling coordination degree values of 0.4233, 0.4458, 0.4220, 0.4715, and 0.4665 for each yearly cross-section. (2) For every 1% increase in the population aging rate, carbon emissions decrease by 0.3478% on average. The carbon reduction effect of population aging is significantly greater in low-emissions cities and high-income cities than in other cities. (3) The industrial upgrading (IU) path, energy conservation (EC) path and chain mediation (CM) path account for 72.43%, 7.23% and 20.34%, respectively, of the indirect effects. If the causal link between IU and EC is not considered, the EC effect will be overestimated by 281.16%. The results of the study suggest that properly coping with population aging and reducing carbon emissions are not completely opposed to each other, a conclusion that passes both endogeneity exclusion and robustness check. This paper advocates replacing the one-size-fits-all approach in carbon emissions management and investing more in policy preferences to support carbon emission reduction in both high-emissions and low-income cities. [Display omitted] •The synergistic trends of carbon emissions and population aging are not apparent. •Population aging significantly reduces carbon emissions at the city scale. •Linkage effect of industrial upgrading and energy conservation on carbon emission reduction. •Energy conservation effect of population aging amplified by industrial upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power industry is a major source of carbon emissions in China. In order to better explore the driving factors of carbon emissions in China's power industry and assist the Chinese government in formulating emission reduction strategies for the power industry, this study applies the improved production-theoretical decomposition analysis (PDA) method to analyze the carbon emission drivers of China's power industry. This study investigates the impact of energy intensity, per capita GDP, population density, power generation structure, and environmental climate on carbon emissions in China's power industry in 30 provinces from 2005 to 2020. It was found that the carbon emission ratios of the power sector in all provinces and cities are basically greater than 1, which indicates that carbon emissions in most of the power sectors in the country are still increasing as of 2020. Overall, the effects of potential thermal fuel carbon emission efficiency, potential thermal energy consumption efficiency, the carbon emission efficiency of thermal power generation, economic scale, population density, and annual rainfall change are mostly greater than 1 and will promote the growth of carbon emissions in the power sector. Moreover, the effects of thermal power generation energy efficiency technology, thermal power generation emission reduction technology, power generation structure, and power generation per unit GDP are mostly less than 1 and will inhibit the growth of carbon emissions in the power sector. However, each of these drivers does not have the same degree of influence and impact effect for each province and city. Based on the research results, some policy recommendations are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]