Why do China and India burn 60% of the world’s coal? A decomposition analysis from a global perspective

Qiang Wang and Xiaoxin Song

Energy, 2021, vol. 227, issue C

Abstract: The coal consumption behind the increasingly severe carbon emissions deserves attentions. In this study, a unified research system is established to investigate the contrastive evolutions in coal consumptions of two major consumers, China and India, and the key driving factors behind them. It combines the multi-regional input-output analysis and structural decomposition analysis models, with a novel perspective to illustrate their coal consumptions embodied in international trade. By contrastive analyzing from the proposed perspectives of “source” and “sink”, it is found that China and India had different trajectories of coal consumption. While the main factors driving the growth in coal consumptions in these two countries were both from the demands of the sink side. From the source side, the decreasing effect of energy intensity in China was more effective than that of India. Production structure was the second factor that decreased coal consumption in India, but it increased coal consumption in China. Moreover, energy structure was the second factor that decreased coal consumption in China, but it increased coal consumption in India. There are both similar and different drivers for the growth trend in two countries during these study periods. Both China and India have advantages that are worth learning from each other, and deficiencies that are worth reflecting on in details. China and India should jointly explore how to optimize their consumption effects from the controllable source drivers, facing with the increasing sink drivers.

Keywords: Coal consumption; China and India; Drivers; Source; Sink (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221006381
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:227:y:2021:i:c:s0360544221006381

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.120389

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().