Abstract: For verifying if the investment increased pollution discharge load, according to a spatial panel model, the article focuses on the empirical analysis about the effect of the total investment growth and structure difference to the industrial SO₂ emissions in China's 31 provinces from 2004 to 2013. The article finds the industrial SO₂ emissions have a significant spatial spillover among the inter-provinces and also form a "high-high" agglomeration in some regions. From the overall views, there is a significant inverse "U" relationship between industrial SO₂ emissions and total investment. From the structural views, the local investment has a significant influence to emissions. For the given high discharge industry, non-state-owned investment is the primary cause leading to the emissions, even though there are no difference between the state-owned and non-state-owned investment superficially. The different scale of investment has a similar effect to industrial SO₂ emissions and also nothing to do with the segmented industry. The expansion and reconstruction project is nearly unrelated to industrial SO₂ emissions, and the key factor is mainly from the new construction project.

Key words: total investment, investment structure, industrial SO₂ discharge, spatial correlation