Carbon emissions predicting and decoupling analysis based on the PSO-ELM combined prediction model: evidence from Chongqing Municipality, China

The “14th Five-Year Plan” period is a crucial phase for China to achieve the goal of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality (referred to as the “double carbon”). Thus, it is very important to analyze the main factors affecting carbon emissions and accurately predict the change of carbon emissions to achieve the goal of double carbon. For the slow data updates and the low accuracy of traditional prediction models about the carbon emissions, the key factors of carbon emissions change selected by gray correlation method and the consumption of coal, oil, and natural gas were input into four single prediction models: gray prediction model GM(1,1), ridge regression, BP neural network, and WOA-BP neural network to obtain the fitted and predicted values of carbon emissions, which serve as input to the particle swarm optimization–extreme learning machine (PSO-ELM) model together. Based on the PSO-ELM combined prediction method above and the scenario prediction indicators constructed according to relevant policy documents of Chongqing Municipality, the carbon emission values of Chongqing Municipality during the 14th Five-Year Plan period are predicted in this paper. The empirical results show that carbon emissions of Chongqing Municipality still maintain an upward trend, but the growth rate slow down compared with 1998 to 2018. In general, the carbon emission and GDP of Chongqing Municipality showed a weak decoupling state during 1998 to 2025. By calculation, the PSO-ELM combined prediction model is superior to the above four single prediction models in carbon emission prediction and has good property by the robust testing. The research results can enrich the combined prediction method about the carbon emissions and provide policy suggestions for Chongqing’s low-carbon development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period.