China has become the world’s largest carbon emitter, and coal consumption in the Yangtze River Economic Zone takes over more than one third of the total number in the country. Investigating the main influencing factors of the Yangtze River Economic Zone’s CO₂ emissions is of vital importance to develop effective environmental policies. The vector autoregression model was applied in the present paper to analyze the driving forces in this area based on the pertinent data from 1985 to 2014. Results show that energy efficiency is the primary influencing factor of the region’s carbon emissions, which plays a leading role in mitigating CO₂ emissions. Energy structure has an obviously positive impact on the zone’s CO₂ emissions. Urbanization has continuously promoted coal consumption in this area. These findings are extremely helpful for related departments in the Yangtze River Economic Zone to develop appropriate policies pertaining to energy savings and emissions reduction.