Sensitivity of sectoral CO2 emissions to demand and supply pattern changes in China

Whether China made efforts to decouple economic growth from CO2 emissions?-Production vs consumption perspective

Decoupling analysis is able to reveal the linkage between economic growth and environmental pressure. However, traditional studies mostly concentrate on production-based decoupling analysis and ignore the pressure emerging from supply chains to satisfy the final consumption. Through a comprehensive framework integrating input-output analysis, decomposition methods, and the Tapio index, this work may be considered the first attempt to explore whether China made efforts to decouple economic growth from CO₂ emissions from production-based and consumption-based perspectives simultaneously. We found that (1) CO₂ emissions in China expanded by around 1.6-fold during 2002-2015, of which Production and supply of electricity and heat and Construction contributed most to the production-based emissions (PBE) and consumption-based emissions (CBE), respectively; (2) Three-quarters of sectors presented weak decoupling or strong decoupling under both PBE and CBE perspectives, and Textile was the only sector achieving strong decoupling under both perspectives; (3) All sectors have made efforts to decouple economic growth from CO₂ emissions under PBE perspective, while several sectors failed under CBE perspective. Overall, the decoupling status for PBE was better than that for CBE during the study period. Our results are able to provide targeted and effective references for allocating decoupling responsibilities between producers and final consumers more adequately and reasonably.

Spatial Characteristic of Coal Production-Based Carbon Emissions in Chinese Mining Cities

The objective of this paper is to investigate CO2 emissions in the production of coal sources at the prefecture level and to analyze their spatial distribution and regional differences based on the spatial autocorrelation and standard deviational ellipse analysis. The results indicate that Chinese coal production from 2018 will most likely generate 485.23 million tons of CO2 emissions, and there still exists an obvious gap between the five coal development districts in terms of their CO2 emissions. A significant clustering pattern and positive spatial autocorrelation are revealed in the coal production-based carbon emissions in China. In addition, the spatial pattern of coal production-based CO2 emissions has an obvious central tendency and directional trend, and the ellipse direction is quite consistent with the Aihui–Tengchong Line. Our findings suggest that energy policy-makers should be concerned about the carbon emission effect when implementing regional coal development plans and actively guide the formation of a low-carbon spatial strategic pattern of coal production with a directional distribution of CO2 emissions perpendicular to the Aihui–Tengchong Line.

The influencing factors and spatial spillover effects of CO2 emissions from transportation in China

CO₂ emissions from transportation (TC) are one of the main causes of global climate change. China faces particularly severe pressures and challenges in transportation carbon reduction. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2000 to 2015, this study explored the influencing factors and spatial spillover effects of TC by estimating spatial panel data models. It found that China's TC will continue to increase in the future, because the increase in per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is the primary driving force to accelerate the growth of TC, but an increasing proportion of tertiary industry (PTI) in the national economy will help reduce the growth in emissions. Moreover, urban road density (URD) and per capita highway mileage (PHM) are the other two major factors promoting the growth of TC. In contrast, urban population density (UPD) has a negative direct impact on per capita CO₂ emissions from transportation (PTC) but also has a larger positive spatial spillover effect, which indicates that these three factors should be properly planned and controlled. Meanwhile, we should actively advocate the development of urban public transport because it plays an important role on reducing TC. The conclusions provide important inspiration and a scientific basis for formulating policies to effectively curb the growth of CO₂ emissions in China.