Decomposing The Change Of Carbon Emissions At China’s Provincial Level

In recent years, global climate issue has received highly attention from the international community. A large number of studies have confirmed that carbon emission is the biggest driving force contributing to climate change. Therefore, to explore the driving factors of carbon emissions change has a considerable significance for policy makers.Based on the theory of production, Shephard distance function, Malmquist index analysis, generalized Fisher index analysis and data envelopment analysis, this paper proposes an alternative decomposing method to identify the forces driving carbon emissions change. The proposed approach is established on the production theory framework. In addition, capital, labor force and energy are considered as the input elements while GDP is regarded as the desirable output element. By using distance function with Malmqusit index and generalized Fisher index, the contribution to carbon emissions change tends to be decomposed into nine components, including:potential carbon factor change effect, capital-energy ratio change effect, labor-energy ratio change effect, GDP composition change effect, economic growth effect, energy use technical efficiency change effect, energy use technical change effect, desirable output technical efficiency change effect and desirable output technical change effect. Then, this paper applies data envelopment analysis to estimate the values for each effect.Upon the alternative model proposed, this study decomposes the carbon emissions at China’s provincial level during the period of2006-2010. For the sample provinces as a whole, empirical results display that economic growth change and potential carbon factor change play the dominant role in carbon emissions increase. Energy use technical change and desirable output technical change are the two crucial factors in shrinking carbon emissions. Combining the empirical results and the actual situation in China, we put forward some mitigation strategies about carbon emissions in six aspects.