Research On Driving Mechanism And Regulating Pathway Of Manufacturing Carbon Emissions In Jilin Province

Low carbon economy is not only an academic research focus all over the world,but the control of carbon emissions,the equity of carbon reduction,the evaluation system of low carbon developing level and a series of issues have even been written in China’s “13th Five-Year Plan”.So low carbon economic development idea has been elevated to a new level.Jilin Province,as an old industrial base,still has a big problem that its economic growth is very relying on energy consumption due to the industrial structure,and it’s really difficult to solve.However,considering China’s firm attitude towards energy saving,emission reduction and excess capacity reducing,the future economic growth in Jilin Province will face more and more pressures from many aspects.Under this background,this paper focused on the power source of economic growth and the concentrated sector of energy consumption in Jilin Province–manufacturing industry,referring to low carbon economic theory,path dependence theory and sustainable development theory,taking regional low carbon development road for foothold,using diverse quantitative and qualitative analysis methods,and then analyzed driving mechanism of manufacturing carbon emission changes at industrial level.Furthermore,this paper also forecasted manufacturing economic and carbon emission trends in the future five years through scenario simulation,some regulating pathways has been proposed based on above research results.This paper was divided into seven sections:The first chapter illustrated the theoretical and practical significance of this study,from three aspects: the global context of low carbon research,China’s current attitudes toward low carbon development,and the manufacturing industry developing environment in Jilin Province.And then a research framework for this paper had been built through domestic and foreign research reviews.In the second chapter,some relative and important concepts had been clearly defined,and some relative and important theories had been explained as well as some inspirations for this study.According to manufacturing characteristics,this paper also analyzed some theoretical issues in terms of carbon emissions.The third chapter reviewed the history of manufacturing industry development in Jilin Province.First,manufacturing economic scale of Jilin Province was at the medium level among 31 regions in China.The problem of industrial structure singleness was more prominent as its industrial diversity is very low.In addition to manufacture of transportation,other industries were almost resource-dependent industries.Second,it described the development path of manufacturing industry in Jilin Province during 2004 to 2014.Processing of food form agricultural products,manufacture of medicines and non-metallic mineral products,these three industries extended rapidly,and processing of food form agricultural products had become the second largest industry.Declines generally occurred in the energy-intensive industries,and equipment manufacturing industry developed slowly except manufacture of transport equipment.A strong dependence on energy consumption still existed in the process of economic growth.Finally,it compared manufacturing industrial development in different regions in Jilin Province.The central region was still the core area of manufacturing industry.Except manufacture of transport equipment in Changchun and manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products in Jilin,manufacture of textile in Liaoyuan had achieved a leading position in China.Owing to the resource advantage,manufacturing development relied on processing of food form agricultural products in western region,and timber processing,bamboo,wood,palm,rattan and straw products in eastern region.In the fourth chapter,this paper analyzed the characteristics of manufacturing carbon emissions and its driving mechanism in Jilin Province.First of all,in 2004-2010,carbon emission increase was mainly due to economic scale expansion.But after 2011,the growth rate had slowed down.A significant decrease in manufacturing carbon emissions came out,and this downward trend had been maintained in 2011-2014.Carbon emissions varied widely between manufacturing industries and mainly concentrated on two industries--manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products,and smelting and pressing of ferrous metals.Secondly,it had built two models for the analysis of carbon emission driving mechanism from two research perspectives.One was based on the industrial output value and the other one was based on the industrial enterprise above designated size.The results showed that,economic scale expansion was a major cause of carbon emission increase,and the inhibiting effect of energy intensity was more obvious than others’.Impact by industrial structure on carbon emissions had some differences at different time,but there was a large potential in the future to reduce carbon emission according to the performance in recent years.The reactions of various industries by those four influencing factors were quite different.Energy intensity factor had taken a significant effect on carbon emissions of some energy-intensive industries,while industrial structure factor had taken a significant effect on carbon emissions of some industries with a rapid expansion.In the fifth chapter,this paper had set three scenarios—path dependence mode,path optimization mode and path breakthrough mode.Under the path dependence mode,though the prediction of economic scale and carbon emissions had passed the statistical test,the results of various manufacturing industries went against the conclusions in the fourth chapter.The path breakthrough mode could be taken as an “upgrade” mode from the path optimization mode,and the main differences were some adjustments for energy-intensive industries.The forecasting results showed that,carbon emissions would decrease in both modes,and they could also promote industrial structure adjustment,revitalizing the equipment industry and raising the coordination level between industrial structure adjustment and carbon emissions.Considering the current developing trend of Jilin Province,path optimization mode is more appropriate than others.In the sixth chapter,firstly this paper brought out an overall thinking of the regulating pathway for carbon emissions;and then made plans for several key industries;finally set three different regulating pathway for eastern,western and central regions,respectively,based on their regional characteristics and developing requirements.In the seventh chapter,several main conclusions had been summarized,and some deficiencies such as the lack of research depth and data collection problems had also been pointed out.As those inadequacies,this paper had put forward some improvement measures and research directions in the future.