تجزیه و تحلیل تجزیه سازه از منابع کربن گیری توسعه اقتصادی در چین، 1992-2006

To analyze and understand decarbonizing economic development in China, this paper undertakes a structural decomposition analysis of the historical change in energy-related carbon intensity in China between 1992 and 2006. The results show that the energy-related carbon intensity in China decreased by about three-fourths between 1992 and 2006 and reduced carbon emissions by about two billion tons. The decline in the energy-related carbon intensity was mainly caused by changes in production pattern, especially changes in energy intensity within each sector between 1992 and 2002. However, the most important driving force of carbon intensity from 2002–2006 was not the energy intensity within each sector but the input mix. On the other hand, changes in demand pattern pushed up the carbon intensity. To further decarbonize the economy in the future, it is important for China to further enforce policies on shaping the production pattern, such as reducing energy intensity, and pay more attention to increasing the sustainability of the demand pattern at the same time.

Climate change is not only an environmental issue, but also an issue closely related to economic development. The Report to the Seventeenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (RSNCCPC) of Oct. 15, 2007 wrote that enhancing China's capacity to respond to climate change and contribute to protecting the global climate is now essential to promoting the sound and rapid development of the national economy. How has China contributed to protecting the global climate, by how much, and how can China continue to make such contributions? To partly answer the above questions, it is useful to undertake a decomposition analysis of the historical change in energy-related carbon intensity in China since energy-related CO2 is the most important man-made greenhouse gas in China (Zhou et al., 2003). An increasing number of studies on energy-related carbon intensity decomposition have been reported in recent years; most of these studies have been conducted in developed rather than developing countries. However, it is more important to analyze the carbon intensity change in developing countries because this would aid in optimizing the fuel mix and economic structure (Fan et al., 2007). Among these studies, Fan et al. (2007) focused on the energy-related carbon intensity of China. The authors quantified two driving forces of primary energy-related carbon intensity and four driving forces of the material production sectors' energy-related carbon intensity from 1980–2003. Four kinds of fuel (coal, petroleum products, natural gas and electricity) and three aggregated industries (primary industry, secondary industry and tertiary industry) were included in their analysis. Their results show that more than 99% of the decline in primary energy-related carbon intensity was attributable to real energy intensity declines. However, they argued that policies to improve the decline of carbon intensity should focus not only on the decline in energy intensity but also on the change in the primary energy mix.

Unlike the previous studies like the one by Fan et al. (2007) that used IDA to decompose the change in carbon intensity, this paper applies a structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to identify the sources of carbon intensity changes in China between 1992 and 2006 using a 26-sector environmental–economic input–output model. Demand sources and production sources together with interactions between sectors have therefore been taken into account at the same time in this paper. However, this type of analysis has not been done in previous studies. In addition, more detailed information of fuels and sectors has been used in this paper compared to the previous study of Fan et al. (2007). The results show that the Chinese economy has displayed an obvious decarbonizing trend between 1992 and 2006, largely because of the transformation of their mode of economic development. The comprehensive carbon intensity and carbon intensities of each final demand category each decreased by about three-fourths. Fan et al. (2007) also pointed out that such a change in carbon intensity was the opposite of those recorded in developed countries from 1980–2003. This may be regarded as a significant contribution to protecting the global climate. However, the decline of carbon intensity in China mainly occurred between 1992 and 2002. It slowed down sharply between 2002 and 2006.