Formation Mechanism of the Perfect Inverted V-Shape CO2 Emission Amount Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) at the Country Level: Taking Taiwan as an Example

The reduction of carbon emissions (such as CO2) is important to slow down global warming. The direct emissions of CO2 in Taiwan are contributed from the power generation sector. This research thus analyzes the effect of fuel used in the past years and finds that the summarized percentage of coal and natural gas used is the key factor in the amount of CO2 emissions. Results show that the CO2 emission amount exhibits a perfect inverted V-shape environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) from 1998 to 2014 in Taiwan. We attribute this to there being a disproportion process of transferring residual load powering to base-load powering for coal and natural gas energies and the increase in electric generation amount every year. This disproportion process means the co-existence of all technical generation in power plants.