Decomposing the change of CO2 emissions: A joint production theoretical approach

Xing-Ping Zhang, Jing Zhang and Qin-Liang Tan

Energy Policy, 2013, vol. 58, issue C, 329-336

Abstract: This paper presents an alternative decomposition method to explore the driving forces of change in carbon emissions by using distance functions estimated by data envelopment analysis. The proposed approach can isolate the effects of changes in GDP composition and energy supply composition on the change of carbon emissions. In addition, it is capable of identifying the effects of changes in different input ratios, which may be very important if there are substitution effects among different inputs. Moreover, the proposed model can measure the effects of changes in good and bad output technical efficiencies. Consequently, this decomposition technique allows a change of carbon emissions to be decomposed into contributions from ten factors, which provides more insights for policy makers. We apply this model to decompose carbon emissions in 25 OECD counties and China. For the sample countries as a whole, the empirical results indicate that the economic growth is the crucial driver to carbon emissions increase, while the changes in GDP composition and capital–energy ratio are two main drivers to carbon emissions reduction. In particular, we discuss in detail the driving forces of China's carbon emissions change in order to propose some valuable policy implications for China from an international perspective.

Keywords: Decomposition analysis; CO2 emissions; Data envelopment analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421513001882
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:enepol:v:58:y:2013:i:c:p:329-336

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2013.03.034

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

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