Technology-adjusted national carbon accounting for a greener trade pattern

Zengkai Zhang

Energy Economics, 2018, vol. 73, issue C, 274-285

Abstract: Crediting green trade patterns is essential for effective national carbon accounting. Neither production- nor consumption-based accounting satisfies this condition. Thus, Kander et al. [Kander, A., Jiborn, M., Moran, D.D., Wiedmann, T.O., 2015. National greenhouse-gas accounting for effective climate policy on international trade. Nature Climate Chang. 5(5):431–435.] proposed a technology-adjusted consumption-based carbon accounting method that focuses on interregional differences in sectoral carbon intensity. The intermediate input structure is also closely related to the production technology level. Therefore, this study recommends a new technology-adjusted consumption-based carbon accounting framework that distinguishes between direct and cumulative exports, forward and backward industrial linkages, and different trade patterns. Based on the consideration that production-based accounting will remain the core indicator for regional emissions in the near future, this study proposes a technology-adjusted production-based accounting framework. The empirical study is based on the World Input-Output Database, and the results indicate that technology-adjusted carbon accounting will redraw the global emissions map if the intermediate input linkage is considered. The technology-adjusted carbon accounting method satisfies the conditions of additivity, sensitivity, monotonicity, and scale invariance, through proper selection of the world average emissions multipliers.

Keywords: Carbon accounting; Intermediate input structure; Technology adjustment; Trade pattern; Input-output model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C67 F18 O33 Q54 Q56 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140988318301920
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:eneeco:v:73:y:2018:i:c:p:274-285

DOI: 10.1016/j.eneco.2018.05.025

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Economics is currently edited by R. S. J. Tol, Beng Ang, Lance Bachmeier, Perry Sadorsky, Ugur Soytas and J. P. Weyant

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