China’s provincial CO2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade
Highlights
► China’s embodied CO2 emissions are analyzed from the provincial perspective. ► Eastern provinces have larger CO2 emissions embodied in international trade. ► Embodied CO2 emissions are mainly transferred from eastern area to central area. ► Coastal provinces play important roles in CO2 emissions reduction. ► Inland provinces need supportive policies on emissions reduction.
Introduction
With strong economic growth, China’s CO2 emissions grow quickly. China overtook the United States and became the world’s largest emitter of CO2 in 2007 (IEA, 2009). Facing increasing international pressure to take collaborative action on curbing CO2 emissions, China pledged to cut CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 40–45% from the level of 2005 by 2020. And China’s “12th Five-Year Plan” for national economic and social development set targets to cut CO2 emissions intensity by 17% over the next five years (2011–2015). The CO2 emissions reduction target will be allocated among China’s provinces according to each province’s CO2 emissions level in the base year of 2005, which are affected by trade. It is of great significance to calculate the CO2 emissions embodied in trade for assigning the task of CO2 emissions reduction to different provinces.
Through international trade, significant environmental impacts can be shifted from one country to another (Li and Hewitt, 2008). More and more researches (Peters et al., 2007, Guan et al., 2008, Weber et al., 2008, Feng et al., 2009, Guan et al., 2009, Zhang, 2009a, Zhang et al., 2009) investigating the driving forces of CO2 emissions in China have emerged recently, and it is pointed out that China’s CO2 emissions are largely driven by the rapid growth of export-orientated production. The literatures on China’s CO2 emissions embodied in international trade can be roughly divided into two types. The first type focuses on the changing trend of embodied CO2 emissions in a period (Wang and Watson, 2007, Pan et al., 2008, Qi et al., 2008, Weber et al., 2008, Wei et al., 2009, Wei et al., 2011, Zhang, 2009b, Lin and Sun, 2010, Yan and Yang, 2010, Liu and Ma, 2011). In recent years, China’s CO2 emissions embodied in international trade have risen quickly with the increasing level of economic openness, and China has been a net exporter of embodied CO2 emissions for most years. The problem of “carbon leakage” is becoming more and more serious. International trade is a main reason for the rise of China’s CO2 emissions, due to trade surplus and relatively high level of CO2 emissions intensity. The second type focuses on the CO2 emissions embodied in the international trade with certain countries (Shui and Harriss, 2006, Li and Hewitt, 2008, Xu et al., 2009, Dong et al., 2010, Guo et al., 2010, Liu et al., 2010, Zhou, 2010). China is a net exporter of CO2 emissions embodied in international trade with the majority of foreign nations, and China-US trade surplus is the major cause of embodied CO2 emissions transfer.
Previous studies mainly analyze CO2 emissions embodied in international trade from the national perspective, not reflecting regional diversity within the country. International trade has different impacts on CO2 emissions in different regions. For example, there were obvious differences in regional CO2 emissions during the financial crisis of 2008–2009, when China’s exports decreased rapidly. Eastern and central areas experienced a decrease of annual growth rates of CO2 emission. The growth rates of CO2 emissions for eastern and central areas were 9.15% and 9.07%, respectively, in 2007. After 2007 the growth rates fell down quickly, which were 3.96%, 5.86% in 2008 and 3.95%, 4.30% in 2009. However, the decrease of exports did not have an obvious influence on western area’s CO2 emissions, the annual growth rates of which were 7.17%, 8.85% and 8.67% in 2007, 2008 and 2009. (The data is from our earlier paper, Meng et al., 2011.) So it has great significance to analyze the CO2 emissions embodied in international trade from a provincial perspective.
In 1997, the provinces with higher CO2 emissions were mainly concentrated in areas around North China, while the high emission areas spread from the eastern coastal area to the central area such as Neimeng, Henan, Hubei and Hunan, in 2007 (Meng et al., 2011). With the government paying more attention to environmental protection, more and more enterprises with high emissions are moving from the coastal area to the central and western areas, which do not have strict environmental protection laws and regulations. Coastal provinces shift CO2 emissions to central and western provinces, through moving in high emission goods from central and western provinces. Interprovincial trade has an obvious impact on provincial CO2 emissions, especially considering the fact that the scale of interprovincial trade is much larger than that of international trade.
Input–output analysis (Leontief, 1941), widely used in the calculation of embodied CO2 emissions can be mainly divided into two types (Lin and Sun, 2010): single-regional IO model (Lenzen, 1998, Hertwich et al., 2002, Sánchez-Chóliz and Duarte, 2004, Kander and Lindmark, 2006, Peters and Hertwich, 2006a, Mäenpää and Siikavirta, 2007, Pan et al., 2008, Yan and Yang, 2010, Wei et al., 2011) and multi-regional IO model (Ahmad and Wyckoff, 2003, Lenzen et al., 2004, Sánchez-Chóliz and Duarte, 2004, Munksgaard et al., 2005, Peters and Hertwich, 2006b, Ackerman et al., 2007, Mäenpää and Siikavirta, 2007, Peters, 2007, Weber and Matthews, 2007, Wilting and Vringer, 2007, Peters, 2008, Hertwich and Peters, 2009, Davis and Caldeira, 2010, Wiedmann et al., 2010, Peters et al., 2011). Multi-regional IO model not only reflects the relationship between different sectors, but also the economic links between regions. Adopting the multi-regional IO model, we analyze CO2 emissions embodied in international trade from a provincial perspective and calculate the CO2 emissions embodied in interprovincial trade to investigate the transfer of embodied CO2 emissions among provinces in 2002, and then we estimate the provincial CO2 emissions levels in the base year of China’s CO2 emissions reduction target under both production and consumption principles.. From analyses of both international and interprovincial trade, we can panoramically describe and evaluate the characteristics of China’s provincial emissions.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces the calculation method and data preparation. Section 3 analyzes the calculation results of embodied CO2 emissions. Section 4 presents a discussion on CO2 emissions under different principles, and then estimates the provincial emissions in 2005. A description of uncertainties is given in Section 5, followed by conclusions in Section 6.
Section snippets
Calculation method
Input–output analysis has recently become popular in the context of carbon footprint calculations (Turner et al., 2007, Wiedmann et al., 2007, Minx et al., 2009, Wiedmann, 2009, Wiedmann et al., 2011). The IO table of province r has the accounting balance of monetary flows:where is the output of province r in sector i, is the final consumption of province r in sector i, is the import of province r in sector i, is the
CO2 emissions embodied in international trade
CO2 emissions embodied in international trade are calculated by Eqs. (9), (10). In 2002, China’s CO2 emissions embodied in exports are 688.15 million tons, which are similar to the results of some previous studies (Peters and Herwich, 2008 (586.50 million tons); Weber et al., 2008 (760 million tons); Yan and Yang, 2010 (458.46 million tons)). Wei et al. (2011) claims that the proportion of domestic exported emissions in domestic emissions is 23.97% (20.26% in our paper). Emissions avoided
Discussion on provincial CO2 emissions under different principles
In this section, we compare CO2 emissions under two different emission accounting principles and estimate the provincial CO2 emissions levels in the base year of China’s CO2 emissions reduction target under two principles, which are of great significance for determining regional CO2 emissions reduction strategies and targets.
Aggregation uncertainty analysis
Multi-regional IO models not only inherit all uncertainties specific to single region IO analysis, but also introduce additional uncertainties (Thomas, 2009). Some studies have tried to quantify error margins. For example, Lenzen et al. (2010) attempt to capture all possible variations of the whole MRIO model using Monte Carlo techniques. Thomas (2009) gives a detailed review of relative studies, and points out that “aggregation is a problem in particular when high and low impacting sectors are
Conclusions
This paper analyzes China’s CO2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade from geographical, sectoral and comprehensive perspectives and estimates each province’s CO2 emissions under two different principles. The main conclusions are shown as follows.
(1) There exist great geographical and sectoral differences in China’s CO2 emissions embodied in international trade. The secondary industry is the main contributor to embodied CO2 emissions for the eastern area, which accounts
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant no.skzd11006) and the National Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 71173169). We also would like to thank the anonymous referees as well as the editors.
References (64)
- et al.
The carbon content of Japan–US trade
Energy Policy
(2007) - et al.
The problem of assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions
Ecological Economics
(2004) - et al.
An analysis of the driving forces of CO2 emissions embodied in Japan–China trade
Energy Policy
(2010) - et al.
Lifestyles, technology and CO2 emissions in China: a regional comparative analysis
Ecological Economics
(2009) - et al.
The drivers of Chinese CO2 emissions from 1980 to 2030
Global Environmental Change
(2008) - et al.
Impact of inter-sectoral trade on national and global CO2 emissions: an empirical analysis of China and US
Energy Policy
(2010) - et al.
Foreign trade and declining pollution in Sweden: a decomposition analysis of long-term structural and technological effects
Energy Policy
(2006) Primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in Australian final consumption: an input–output analysis
Energy Policy
(1998)- et al.
Shared producer and consumer responsibility—theory and practice
Ecological Economics
(2007) - et al.
The effect of trade between China and the UK on national and global carbon dioxide emissions
Energy Policy
(2008)
Evaluating carbon dioxide emissions in international trade of China
Energy Policy
CO2 embodied in China’s foreign trade 2007 with discussion for global climate policy
Procedia Environmental Sciences
Analyses of CO2 emissions embodied in Japan–China trade
Energy Policy
Greenhouse gases embodied in the international trade and final consumption of Finland: an input–output analysis
Energy Policy
China’s regional CO2 emissions: characteristics, inter-regional transfer and emission reduction policies
Energy Policy
CO2 accounts for open economies: producer or consumer responsibility?
Energy Policy
From production-based to consumption-based national emission inventories
Ecological Economics
Pollution embodied in trade: the Norwegian case
Global Environmental Change
CO2 emissions embodied in international trade: evidence for Spain
Energy Policy
The role of CO2 embodiment in US–China trade
Energy Policy
Input–output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade: the effects of sector aggregation
Energy Economics
The contribution of Chinese exports to climate change
Energy Policy
A review of recent multi-region input–output models used for consumption-based emission and resource accounting
Ecological Economics
Examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities—Part 2: review of input–output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade
Ecological Economics
Quo Vadis MRIO? Methodological, data and institutional requirements for multi-region input–output analysis
Ecological Economics
The embodiment of carbon in imports of manufactured products: implications for international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions
Energy Policy
Decomposition of energy-related CO2 emission over 1991–2006 in China
Ecological Economics
Structural decomposition analysis of sources of decarbonizing economic development in China: 1992–2006
Ecological Economics
Approximation and regional aggregation in multi-regional input–output analysis for national carbon footprint accounting
Economic Systems Research
China Energy Statistical Yearbook, National Bureau of Statistics of China, National Development and Reform Commission
Cited by (173)
Global trade-driven transfer of atmospheric polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon emissions and associated human inhalation exposure risk
2024, Journal of Environmental ManagementMapping the heterogeneity of global methane footprint in China at the subnational level
2023, Journal of Environmental ManagementGreen financing strategy for low-carbon economy: The role of high-technology imports and institutional strengths in China
2023, Journal of Cleaner ProductionCarbon productivity and value-added generations: Regional heterogeneity along global value chain
2023, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics