Drivers of China’s Industrial Carbon Emissions: Evidence from Joint PDA and LMDI Approaches

Feng Dong, Xinqi Gao, Jingyun Li, Yuanqing Zhang and Yajie Liu
Additional contact information
Feng Dong: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Xinqi Gao: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Jingyun Li: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Yuanqing Zhang: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China
Yajie Liu: School of Management, China University of Mining and Technology, Xuzhou 221116, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 12, 1-28

Abstract: As the world’s top carbon-emitting country, China has placed great emphasis on understanding the driving factors of carbon emissions and developing appropriate emissions reduction policies. Due to the obvious variations in carbon emissions among various industries in China, corresponding policies need to be formulated for different industries. Through data envelopment analysis, this study introduced the Shephard distance function into the logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI) for decomposition analysis, built a carbon emissions decomposition model of 23 industries in China during 2003–2015, and analyzed the impact of 10 factors driving carbon emissions. The main results are as follows. (1) Potential gross domestic production (GDP) is a crucial factor for increasing carbon emissions, whereas potential energy intensity and technological advances of carbon emissions have a significant inhibitory effect on carbon emissions; (2) the technological progress of energy usage and the technological advances of GDP output are manifested by inhibiting carbon emissions at the early stage of development and increasing emissions at the later stage; (3) the structure of coal-based energy consumption is difficult to change in the long term, resulting in a weak effect of energy mix on carbon emissions and an increase in carbon emissions due to the potential energy carbon intensity factor.

Keywords: carbon emissions; factor decomposition; LMDI; Shephard distance function; PDA; Chinese industry (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/12/2712/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/15/12/2712/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:15:y:2018:i:12:p:2712-:d:187021

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().