A Study On Carbon Dioxide Emissions In China From Consumption Perspective

At present, the increasing greenhouse gas emissions represented by carbon dioxide has become global economic, political and social issues. However, countries around the world have actively committed to a policy framework to address climate change, a worldwide agreement of greenhouse gas emissions reduction has not been reached a consensus yet, and the fundamental reason is that "consumption emissions" has not been included in the analytical framework to examine the status and responsibilities of the national carbon emissions assigned. From an economic point of view, the ultimate goal of production is to meet the demand of consumption. Consequently, carbon dioxide emissions generated in the production process can be allocated to the relevant domestic or foreign consumption. As the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, China's increasing carbon emissions are not only attributable to the domestic consumer demand, foreign consumption through exports has transferred huge amounts of embodied carbon emissions to China. Under this background, the present dissertation investigates the carbon emissions caused by domestic consumption and foreign consumption, and re-defines the responsibility of China's carbon emissions based the consumption principle. Then, the corresponding emission reduction policies and paths are proposed.This dissertation first discusses four main carbon emission issues related to consumption theoretically, including carbon emissions brought by domestic consumption, carbon emissions brought by foreign consumption, carbon emissions responsibility related to consumption and carbon emission reduction policy, on the basis of which, the empirical research has been made by improving the traditional input-output model.Firstly, carbon emissions associated with domestic consumption include the direct consumption emission and indirect consumption emissions, and the latter are3times higher than the former between the year1997and2007. In terms of composition, carbon missions produced by household consumption have become the leading cause for the increase of domestic consumption emissions. Furthermore, the urban residents' consumption emissions are much higher than rural residents owing to the dual structure of urban and rural areas. Compared with the rural residents'survival consumption emissions, such as food, clothing, daily necessity, carbon emissions of urban residents'consumption are developed in housing, transportation, entertainment.Meanwhile, using structural decomposition analysis (SDA), this paper also investigates the driving forces and to what extent these driving forces influence the domestic consumption emissions. The results indicate that technology advancement of energy is the exclusive factor which contributes to the reduction in indirect carbon emissions, while the consumption level, intermediate production technology and population scale are the main important factors for the growth of consumption carbon emissions. In addition, the influence brought by transformation of consumption structure and consumption proportion changes from negative effect in1997-2002to positive effect in2002-2007.Secondly, carbon emissions associated with foreign consumption always be named as export embodied carbon emissions. Within the method of input-output analysis, this paper estimates the carbon emissions embodied in exports between the year2002and2007. The results indicate that about12%-18%of China's total emissions were caused by providing goods for the foreign markets driven by China's expanding exports, and90%of the emissions in exports are mainly concentrated in the processing and manufacturing sector from the export of carbon emissions are concentrated in the processing and manufacturing sector. In addition, massive carbon emission have transferred to China by U.S., EU, Japan and other developed countries in the process of consuming our export products or services, which make a huge loss of carbon pollution be hidden in China's foreign consumption.Thirdly, domestic and foreign consumption are considered into a unified analytical framework in this paper and a consumption-based carbon accounting system of has been established, in order to redefine the responsibility of China's carbon emissions. Furthermore, to compare China's carbon emission responsibility with its actual carbon emissions calculated by production-based accounting system, a new indicator named "carbon loss/benefit" has been presented. The results indicates that China has become the net lossing country in the discharge of carbon dioxide, while about190million tons of carbon emission responsibility in China has been exaggerated under the existing production-based carbon accounting system, and part of the blame should be beard by developed countries. Both carbon emission responsibility and carbon loss of China have shown a higher degree of industry concentration, and nearly80%of the carbon transfer concentrated in the industries featured by "heavy energy consumption, heavy pollution and resource-related" and "Made in China". Although some carbon-intensive industries have gained little carbon benefit through import trade, a majority of industries in China are still facing a huge amount of carbon loss owing to the enormous exports as well as the higher energy consumption and heavy pollution of industrial production.Finally, based on the former empirical analysis, this paper puts forward the consumptive carbon tax policy suitable for China's carbon dioxide emission reduction. In the meantime, some specific development paths to carbon reduction are proposed from the views of residents'consumption model, export trade structure, industrial structure, technological innovation and sharing of the international carbon emission responsibility.