Estimation Model and Spatio-Temporal Analysis of Carbon Emissions from Energy Consumption with NPP-VIIRS-like Nighttime Light Images: A Case Study in the Pearl River Delta Urban Agglomeration of China

Urbanization is growing at a rapid pace, and this is being reflected in the rising energy consumption from fossil fuels, which is contributing significantly to greenhouse gas impacts and carbon emissions (CE). Aiming at the problems of the time delay, inconsistency, uneven spatial coverage scale, and low precision of the current regional carbon emissions from energy consumption accounting statistics, this study builds a precise model for estimating the carbon emissions from regional energy consumption and analyzes the spatio-temporal characteristics. Firstly, in order to estimate the carbon emissions resulting from energy consumption, a fixed effects model was built using data on province energy consumption and NPP-VIIRS-like nighttime lighting data. Secondly, the PRD urban agglomeration was selected as the case study area to estimate the carbon emissions from 2012 to 2020 and predict the carbon emissions from 2021 to 2023. Then, their multi-scale spatial and temporal distribution characteristics were analyzed through trends and hotspots. Lastly, the influence factors of CE from 2012 to 2020 were examined with the OLS, GWR, GTWR, and MGWR models, as well as a ridge regression to enhance the MGWR model. The findings indicate that, from 2012 to 2020, the carbon emissions in the PRD urban agglomeration were characterized by the non-equilibrium feature of “high in the middle and low at both ends”; from 2021 to 2023, the central and eastern regions saw the majority of its high carbon emission areas, the east saw the region with the highest rate of growth, the east and the periphery of the high value area were home to the area of medium values, while the southern, central, and northern regions were home to the low value areas; carbon emissions were positively impacted by population, economics, land area, and energy, and they were negatively impacted by science, technology, and environmental factors. This study could provide technical support for the long-term time-series monitoring and remote sensing inversion of the carbon emissions from energy consumption in large-scale, complex urban agglomerations.