IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v42y2012icp486-497.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

China’s provincial CO2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade

Author

Listed:
  • Guo, Ju’e
  • Zhang, Zengkai
  • Meng, Lei

Abstract

Trades create a mechanism of embodied CO2 emissions transfer among regions, causing distortion on the total emissions. As the world’s second largest economy, China has a large scale of trade, which results in the serious problem of embodied CO2 emissions transfer. This paper analyzes the characteristics of China’s CO2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade from the provincial perspective. The multi-regional Input–Output Model is used to clarify provincial CO2 emissions from geographical and sectoral dimensions, including 30 provinces and 28 sectors. Two calculating principles (production accounting principle and consumption accounting principle, Munksgaard and Pedersen, 2001) are applied. The results show that for international trade, the eastern area accounts for a large proportion in China’s embodied CO2 emissions. The sectors as net exporters and importers of embodied CO2 emissions belong to labor-intensive and energy-intensive industries, respectively. For interprovincial trade, the net transfer of embodied CO2 emissions is from the eastern area to the central area, and energy-intensive industries are the main contributors. With the largest amount of direct CO2 emissions, the eastern area plays an important role in CO2 emissions reduction. The central and western areas need supportive policies to avoid the transfer of industries with high emissions.

Suggested Citation

  • Guo, Ju’e & Zhang, Zengkai & Meng, Lei, 2012. "China’s provincial CO2 emissions embodied in international and interprovincial trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 486-497.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:42:y:2012:i:c:p:486-497
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2011.12.015
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142151101007X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2011.12.015?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Turner, Karen & Lenzen, Manfred & Wiedmann, Thomas & Barrett, John, 2007. "Examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities -- Part 1: A technical note on combining input-output and ecological footprint analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(1), pages 37-44, April.
    2. Shui, Bin & Harriss, Robert C., 2006. "The role of CO2 embodiment in US-China trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(18), pages 4063-4068, December.
    3. Su, Bin & Huang, H.C. & Ang, B.W. & Zhou, P., 2010. "Input-output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade: The effects of sector aggregation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 166-175, January.
    4. Maenpaa, Ilmo & Siikavirta, Hanne, 2007. "Greenhouse gases embodied in the international trade and final consumption of Finland: An input-output analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 128-143, January.
    5. Meng, Lei & Guo, Ju'e & Chai, Jian & Zhang, Zengkai, 2011. "China's regional CO2 emissions: Characteristics, inter-regional transfer and emission reduction policies," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 6136-6144, October.
    6. Lenzen, Manfred & Murray, Joy & Sack, Fabian & Wiedmann, Thomas, 2007. "Shared producer and consumer responsibility -- Theory and practice," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 27-42, February.
    7. Lenzen, Manfred, 1998. "Primary energy and greenhouse gases embodied in Australian final consumption: an input-output analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 495-506, May.
    8. Guo, Jie & Zou, Le-Le & Wei, Yi-Ming, 2010. "Impact of inter-sectoral trade on national and global CO2 emissions: An empirical analysis of China and US," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1389-1397, March.
    9. Dong, Yanli & Ishikawa, Masanobu & Liu, Xianbing & Wang, Can, 2010. "An analysis of the driving forces of CO2 emissions embodied in Japan-China trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 6784-6792, November.
    10. Robbie Andrew & Glen Peters & James Lennox, 2009. "Approximation And Regional Aggregation In Multi-Regional Input-Output Analysis For National Carbon Footprint Accounting," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 311-335.
    11. Thomas Wiedmann & Richard Wood & Jan Minx & Manfred Lenzen & Dabo Guan & Rocky Harris, 2010. "A Carbon Footprint Time Series Of The Uk - Results From A Multi-Region Input-Output Model," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 19-42.
    12. Weber, Christopher L. & Peters, Glen P. & Guan, Dabo & Hubacek, Klaus, 2008. "The contribution of Chinese exports to climate change," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(9), pages 3572-3577, September.
    13. Peters, Glen P., 2008. "From production-based to consumption-based national emission inventories," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(1), pages 13-23, March.
    14. Lin, Boqiang & Sun, Chuanwang, 2010. "Evaluating carbon dioxide emissions in international trade of China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(1), pages 613-621, January.
    15. Ackerman, Frank & Ishikawa, Masanobu & Suga, Mikio, 2007. "The carbon content of Japan-US trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 4455-4462, September.
    16. Wiedmann, Thomas, 2009. "A review of recent multi-region input-output models used for consumption-based emission and resource accounting," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 211-222, December.
    17. Manfred Lenzen & Lise-Lotte Pade & Jesper Munksgaard, 2004. "CO2 Multipliers in Multi-region Input-Output Models," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 391-412.
    18. Wiedmann, Thomas & Lenzen, Manfred & Turner, Karen & Barrett, John, 2007. "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, Elsevier, vol. 61(1), pages 15-26, February.
    19. J. C. Minx & T. Wiedmann & R. Wood & G. P. Peters & M. Lenzen & A. Owen & K. Scott & J. Barrett & K. Hubacek & G. Baiocchi & A. Paul & E. Dawkins & J. Briggs & D. Guan & S. Suh & F. Ackerman, 2009. "Input-Output Analysis And Carbon Footprinting: An Overview Of Applications," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(3), pages 187-216.
    20. Li, You & Hewitt, C.N., 2008. "The effect of trade between China and the UK on national and global carbon dioxide emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(6), pages 1907-1914, June.
    21. Bastianoni, Simone & Pulselli, Federico Maria & Tiezzi, Enzo, 2004. "The problem of assigning responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 253-257, July.
    22. Wyckoff, Andrew W. & Roop, Joseph M., 1994. "The embodiment of carbon in imports of manufactured products : Implications for international agreements on greenhouse gas emissions," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 187-194, March.
    23. Liu, Xianbing & Ishikawa, Masanobu & Wang, Can & Dong, Yanli & Liu, Wenling, 2010. "Analyses of CO2 emissions embodied in Japan-China trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1510-1518, March.
    24. Kander, Astrid & Lindmark, Magnus, 2006. "Foreign trade and declining pollution in Sweden: a decomposition analysis of long-term structural and technological effects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(13), pages 1590-1599, September.
    25. Jiahua Pan & Jonathan Phillips & Ying Chen, 2008. "China's balance of emissions embodied in trade: approaches to measurement and allocating international responsibility," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 24(2), pages 354-376, Summer.
    26. Jesper Munksgaard & Lise-Lotte Pade & Jan Minx & Manfred Lenzen, 2005. "Influence of trade on national CO 2 emissions," International Journal of Global Energy Issues, Inderscience Enterprises Ltd, vol. 23(4), pages 324-336.
    27. Feng, Kuishuang & Hubacek, Klaus & Guan, Dabo, 2009. "Lifestyles, technology and CO2 emissions in China: A regional comparative analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(1), pages 145-154, November.
    28. Sanchez-Choliz, Julio & Duarte, Rosa, 2004. "CO2 emissions embodied in international trade: evidence for Spain," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(18), pages 1999-2005, December.
    29. Zhang, Youguo, 2009. "Structural decomposition analysis of sources of decarbonizing economic development in China; 1992-2006," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(8-9), pages 2399-2405, June.
    30. Wiedmann, Thomas & Wilting, Harry C. & Lenzen, Manfred & Lutter, Stephan & Palm, Viveka, 2011. "Quo Vadis MRIO? Methodological, data and institutional requirements for multi-region input-output analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(11), pages 1937-1945, September.
    31. Manfred Lenzen & Richard Wood & Thomas Wiedmann, 2010. "Uncertainty Analysis For Multi-Region Input-Output Models - A Case Study Of The Uk'S Carbon Footprint," Economic Systems Research, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(1), pages 43-63.
    32. Glen P. Peters & Edgar G. Hertwich, 2006. "The Importance of Imports for Household Environmental Impacts," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 10(3), pages 89-109, July.
    33. Nadim Ahmad & Andrew Wyckoff, 2003. "Carbon Dioxide Emissions Embodied in International Trade of Goods," OECD Science, Technology and Industry Working Papers 2003/15, OECD Publishing.
    34. Su, Bin & Ang, B.W., 2010. "Input-output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade: The effects of spatial aggregation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1), pages 10-18, November.
    35. Munksgaard, Jesper & Pedersen, Klaus Alsted, 2001. "CO2 accounts for open economies: producer or consumer responsibility?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(4), pages 327-334, March.
    36. Zhang, Ming & Mu, Hailin & Ning, Yadong & Song, Yongchen, 2009. "Decomposition of energy-related CO2 emission over 1991-2006 in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 2122-2128, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Misato Sato, 2014. "Embodied Carbon In Trade: A Survey Of The Empirical Literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 831-861, December.
    2. Boya Zhang & Shukuan Bai & Yadong Ning & Tao Ding & Yan Zhang, 2020. "Emission Embodied in International Trade and Its Responsibility from the Perspective of Global Value Chain: Progress, Trends, and Challenges," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(8), pages 1-26, April.
    3. Zhang, Zhonghua & Zhao, Yuhuan & Su, Bin & Zhang, Yongfeng & Wang, Song & Liu, Ya & Li, Hao, 2017. "Embodied carbon in China’s foreign trade: An online SCI-E and SSCI based literature review," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 68(P1), pages 492-510.
    4. Zhang, Zengkai & Guo, Ju'e & Hewings, Geoffrey J.D., 2014. "The effects of direct trade within China on regional and national CO2 emissions," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 161-175.
    5. Hongguang Liu & Xiaomei Fan, 2017. "Value-Added-Based Accounting of CO 2 Emissions: A Multi-Regional Input-Output Approach," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(12), pages 1-18, December.
    6. Liu, Hongguang & Liu, Weidong & Fan, Xiaomei & Zou, Wei, 2015. "Carbon emissions embodied in demand–supply chains in China," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(C), pages 294-305.
    7. Chen, G.Q. & Zhang, Bo, 2010. "Greenhouse gas emissions in China 2007: Inventory and input-output analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(10), pages 6180-6193, October.
    8. Zhang, Bo & Chen, G.Q., 2010. "Methane emissions by Chinese economy: Inventory and embodiment analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(8), pages 4304-4316, August.
    9. Su, Bin & Ang, B.W. & Low, Melissa, 2013. "Input–output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade and the driving forces: Processing and normal exports," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C), pages 119-125.
    10. Xia, Yan & Fan, Ying & Yang, Cuihong, 2015. "Assessing the impact of foreign content in China’s exports on the carbon outsourcing hypothesis," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 296-307.
    11. Zhang, Youguo & Tang, Zhipeng, 2015. "Driving factors of carbon embodied in China's provincial exports," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 445-454.
    12. Qi, Tianyu & Winchester, Niven & Karplus, Valerie J. & Zhang, Xiliang, 2014. "Will economic restructuring in China reduce trade-embodied CO2 emissions?," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 204-212.
    13. Wen Wen & Qi Wang, 2017. "Are Developed Regions in China Achieving Their CO 2 Emissions Reduction Targets on Their Own?—Case of Beijing," Energies, MDPI, vol. 10(12), pages 1-25, November.
    14. Zhou, Dequn & Zhou, Xiaoyong & Xu, Qing & Wu, Fei & Wang, Qunwei & Zha, Donglan, 2018. "Regional embodied carbon emissions and their transfer characteristics in China," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 180-193.
    15. Wiedmann, Thomas, 2009. "A first empirical comparison of energy Footprints embodied in trade -- MRIO versus PLUM," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(7), pages 1975-1990, May.
    16. Su, Bin & Ang, B.W., 2013. "Input–output analysis of CO2 emissions embodied in trade: Competitive versus non-competitive imports," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 83-87.
    17. Liu, Qiaoling & Wang, Qi, 2015. "Reexamine SO2 emissions embodied in China's exports using multiregional input–output analysis," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 39-50.
    18. Youguo Zhang, 2012. "Scale, Technique and Composition Effects in Trade-Related Carbon Emissions in China," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 51(3), pages 371-389, March.
    19. Xu, Ming & Li, Ran & Crittenden, John C. & Chen, Yongsheng, 2011. "CO2 emissions embodied in China's exports from 2002 to 2008: A structural decomposition analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7381-7388.
    20. Ding, Tao & Ning, Yadong & Zhang, Yan, 2018. "The contribution of China’s bilateral trade to global carbon emissions in the context of globalization," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 46(C), pages 78-88.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:42:y:2012:i:c:p:486-497. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.