Impacts of international export on global and regional carbon intensity

Xue Yang and Bin Su

Applied Energy, 2019, vol. 253, issue C, -

Abstract: Carbon intensity is a valuable indicator for balancing economic growth and environmental pollution, and plays an important role in mitigating global climate change and promoting environmental sustainability. This study attempts to examine the impacts of export on carbon intensity by proposing a novel framework that targeting at the gap between export aggregate carbon intensity (EACI) and self aggregate carbon intensity (SACI) which constitute the total carbon intensity to reveal export effects. Multi-region input-output model was used to calculate EACI and SACI in 44 world regions in 2014. LMDI approach was further adopted to decompose the gap between EACI and SACI from sectoral perspective. Some main results are concluded. (1) On global scale, exports increased 7.2% in carbon intensity. On national scale, exports showed increased effects on most countries (42/44). The regional EACI/SACI ranged from 0.79 to 3.53. (2) Sectoral aggregate carbon intensity (ACI) of export decreased EACI by 51 g/$, while sectoral aggregate structure (AS) of export increased EACI by 186 g/$, resulting in 135 g/$ increase in EACI globally. (3) For most regions, although ACI of carbon-intensive sectors (Elec., Metal, Nonmetal, Trans., Chem. and Coke&petrol.) in exports was lower than that in self, the high AS of these sectors in exports resulted in EACI higher than SACI, causing pulling force of export on global carbon intensity. Thus reducing carbon-intensive industries’ weights in exports would have great effects on global and national carbon intensity mitigation.

Keywords: Carbon intensity; International export; Input-output model; LMDI; Sectoral structure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261919312267
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:appene:v:253:y:2019:i:c:89

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2019.113552

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).