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To effectively solve the environmental pollution caused by greenhouse gases, countries around the world have successively set up carbon emission trading markets in recent years. At present, China's carbon trading market is only in its infancy, making various mechanisms and policies insufficient. As the core issue of carbon trading market, the fluctuations of carbon trading price are related to the investment decisions of market participants, the formulation of enterprise production and operation plans, and the realization of global emission reduction targets. Therefore, it is of great practical significance to study the influencing factors of carbon price fluctuations and to predict future carbon prices. In this paper, we take the carbon trading week data of the Beijing carbon trading market in China from May to September 2020 as the research object. Firstly, the gray correlation technique is employed to measure the rationality of the selected factors affecting carbon price fluctuations. Secondly, through the principal component analysis method to analyze the various influencing factors, it is found that energy prices and macroeconomic development are the main factors affecting carbon prices, and weather conditions will also cause carbon price fluctuations. Then, four different models are proposed to predict carbon trading prices, and the forecast results are evaluated through the performance evaluation index system. The results show that the GA-ELM model has the best prognosis effect. Finally, according to the analysis results, it provides a useful theoretical reference for carbon market decision makers and participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Promoting low-carbon development in the iron and steel industry (ISI) is essential for China to achieve the carbon neutrality targets. This paper separately adopts the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) technique and the Mean Impact Value (MIV) method to analyze the impact of driving factors on the CO 2 emissions of ISI in the historical and future dimensions. Furthermore, this paper establishes the extreme learning machine model optimized by the bat algorithm (BA-BP) to explore the carbon emission reduction pathways of ISI in the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, the low-speed, medium-speed and high-speed development scenarios considering the constraints of carbon neutrality targets. The results reveal that: (1) Production capacity and energy efficiency are important drivers of CO 2 emissions in ISI; (2) The emission reduction situation is not optimistic under the BAU scenario, and it is difficult to accomplish the carbon neutrality goals by 2060; (3) Under the most ideal emission reduction pathway (corresponding to the high-speed development scenario), ISI will reach its peak in 2022 with the peak value of 2143.42 MtCO 2. Compared to the peak year, the CO 2 emissions will be reduced by 654.69 MtCO 2 and 1558.61 MtCO 2 in 2030 and 2050, respectively. Moreover, the achievement of short-term and long-term emission reduction targets depends on production capacity decline and technological progress, respectively. The optimal emission reduction pathway provides a reference for ISI to formulate periodic emission reduction targets. • The improved extreme learning machine is employed to predict the carbon emissions. • The emission reduction pathways are explored under the carbon neutrality target. • Controlling production capacity is a crucial reduction strategy. • The energy rebound effect is supposed to be weakened. • The application of advanced technologies will greatly promote emission reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]