China's aggregate embodied CO2 emission intensity from 2007 to 2012: A multi region multiplicative structural decomposition analysis
Abstract The striking disparities among China's provinces suggest the need for regionalized carbon emission intensity mitigation measures. This study extends the aggregate embodied energy/emission intensity measures proposed by Su and Ang (2017) to a national multi region setting, defines the aggregate embodied CO2 emission intensity (AECI) indicators at the aggregate, provincial, and final demand category levels from the demand perspective, and adopts multiplicative structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to identify the driving factors of the historical changes over the 2007 2012 period in China. On the basis of China's latest multiregion input output tables, we find that (a) the AECIs show heterogeneities across the provinces and final demand categories, with the AECIs of inland provinces higher than those of coastal provinces and the AECIs of investment and export higher than those of consumption; (b) the generally downward trends of the AECIs hold at different levels, and the improvements in carbon emission performances are more pronounced in inland provinces, presenting a convergence toward the levels of developed coastal provinces; (c) according to the multiplicative SDA results, the input structure effect and the emission intensity effect generally contribute to the decline of AECIs. By providing a deeper understanding of carbon emission performance and its driving factors at the subnational level, our study finally proposes some policy recommendations.