Factor decomposition and the decoupling effect of carbon emissions in China's manufacturing high-emission subsectors

Jian Liu, Qingshan Yang, Suhua Ou and Jie Liu

Energy, 2022, vol. 248, issue C

Abstract: The manufacturing industry makes the greatest contribution to China's carbon emissions, so reducing emissions among its high-emission subsectors is important to achieve China's overall reduction goals. Innovation is crucial to the green transformation and development of high-emission subsectors. Previous studies have hardly considered the effect of innovation factors on carbon emissions and decoupling of high-emission subsectors. This study incorporated innovation factors into the GDIM (generalized dividing index method) and DEI (decoupling effort index) models and decomposed them into three variables, the innovation input scale, innovation input carbon intensity, and innovation input efficiency, in order to compare the impact of different factors on carbon emissions and decoupling of high-emission subsectors. This approach expands the application scope of the GDIM method and helps to formulate the green transformation policies of the high-emissions manufacturing sector. The results were as follows. (1) The innovation input scale is the primary factor leading to the increase in carbon emissions. The cumulative increase of carbon emissions in the high-emission sectors from 1995 to 2019 was 3.45 billion tons. Innovation input carbon intensity is the primary factor that inhibits the carbon emissions growth. (2) There were significant differences in the degree of decoupling between the high-emission sectors in manufacturing in different periods. The decoupling effect of the manufacture of non-metallic mineral sector was the best; it achieved strong decoupling in 2015–2019, with the DEI reaching 2.17. (3) Decoupling efforts with regard to the carbon intensity of outputs and innovation inputs are the key factors that determine the decoupling of economic growth and carbon emissions in the high-emission subsectors of the manufacturing industry.

Keywords: Carbon emissions; High-emissions manufacturing sector; Influencing factors; Decoupling effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544222004716
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:248:y:2022:i:c:s0360544222004716

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2022.123568

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 ().