Are Developed Regions in China Achieving Their CO 2 Emissions Reduction Targets on Their Own?—Case of Beijing

Wen Wen and Qi Wang
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Wen Wen: College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, No. 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China
Qi Wang: College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University, No. 5 Yiheyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing 100871, China

Energies, 2017, vol. 10, issue 12, 1-25

Abstract: The extensive and close economic linkages among different regions of China have effects not only on regional economic growth, but also on CO 2 emissions and carbon leakage among regions. Taking Beijing as a study case, we constructed MRIO models for China’s 30 provinces and municipalities for 2002, 2007 and 2010, to measure the embodied CO 2 emissions in the interregional trade of China on regional and industrial levels to explore their changes over time, and to analyze the driving forces of the final demand-induced interregional CO 2 emissions through an SDA model. Results showed that Beijing was a surplus region for embodied carbon and the net input embodied CO 2 emissions were in industries with high CO 2 emission coefficients, while the net output embodied carbon was in industries with low carbon-emission coefficients. Beijing’s trade with non-Beijing areas led to an increase in the total CO 2 emissions in China and a composite effect of Beijing and the efficiency effect of non-Beijing areas were the main effects behind the reduction of Beijing’s input embodied carbon. The results have yielded important implications for China’s CO 2 emissions control: first, the embodied CO 2 need be taken into consideration when formulating CO 2 emissions control measures; second, CO 2 emission reduction requirements should be reasonably distributed across the provinces to reduce carbon leakage in interprovincial trade; third, the consumption structure in the production chain needs to be moderately adjusted; and last but not least, financial and technical support for CO 2 emissions control in the central and western provinces should be strengthened.

Keywords: embodied carbon; multi-regional input-output model; structure decomposition analysis model (SDA); China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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