  This paper examines the distribution dynamics of carbon dioxide (CO2)
emission intensity across 30 Chinese provinces using a weighted distribution
dynamics approach. The results show that CO2 emission intensity tends to
diverge during the sample period of 1995-2014. However, convergence clubs are
found in the ergodic distributions of the full sample and two sub-sample
periods. Divergence, polarization and stratification are the dominant
characteristics in the distribution dynamics. Weightings with economic and
population sizes have important impacts on current distributions and hence long
run steady distributions. Neglecting economic size may under-estimate the
deterioration in the long run steady state. The result also shows that
conditioning on space and income cannot eliminate the multimodality in the long
run distribution. However, capital intensity has important impact on the
formation of convergence clubs. Our findings have contributions in the
understanding of the spatial dynamic behaviours of CO2 emissions across Chinese
provinces, and have important policy implications for CO2 emissions reduction
in China.
