Interprovincial Responsibility Allocation Of Carbon Emission Reduction Based On The Principle Of Common Environment Responsibility

Global warming is a great environmental problem that mankind facing today, to reduce carbon emissions has become the consensus of the international community. However, because of the existence of conflict on interest, for "who will decrease, how much will reduce", the international community exists serious differences, a global agreement has failed to achieve. One of the reasons is that, the international community has not reached a consensus on the ascription of embodied carbon emissions in trade. So, how to share the responsibility of carbon emissions reduction among countries has become the core problem of international climate negotiations. Similar, there is also the responsibility allocation problem among various regions in a country.Since the reform and opening-up, the economy has experienced sustained rapid growth and made remarkable achievements in China. But for a long time, the extensive growth mode brought tremendous pressure to resources and environment in China. The transformation of mode on economic growth has reached a crucial moment; we need to straighten out the relationship between economic growth and environmental protection! In order to achieve national targets of energy-saving and emissions reduction, it needs the active participation and effective cooperation in all regions. However, due to vast territory, the economic development level and industry structure exist great difference among regions. And with the deepening of the reform, the regional economic openness increased significantly, the interprovincial trade is frequent day by day. We face the problem of how to allocate reasonably the embodied carbon emissions in trade among regions.We believe that, to solve this importance problem, the only way is to achieve an emissions reduction agreement that every regions participate actively. And this agreement not only can guarantee the right of the development for the underdeveloped regions, but also can fully mobilize the enthusiasm of emissions reduction for the developed regions, namely, follow the principle of "common environmental responsibility". Therefore, this paper calculated and compared the gross, intensity of carbon emissions and embodied carbon emissions in trade, analyzed the key influence factors of carbon emissions, constructed an interprovincial responsibility allocation scheme based on the principle of "common environmental responsibility", and then carried through the policy simulation, discussed the effect of responsibility allocation on the regional development in the future, tried hard to provide a comprehensive and feasible scheme to promote the transformation of economic development mode, the reasonable allocation of regional reduction responsibility and the harmonious development of regional economy.The dissertation consisted of seven chapters. The main content of each chapter is as follows:Chapter 1:the introduction. This chapter firstly introduced the background and significance of the paper; then reviewed the existing literature, pointed out the research ideas and methods of this paper; finally, showed the basic structure, main contents and innovative works.Chapter 2:the related theories on responsibility allocation of carbon emissions reduction. This chapter aimed to establish the basic theoretical analysis framework of this paper. Firstly, we introduced the origin of the carbon emissions problem, including externalities, asymmetric information, without a clear definition of property rights; then we discussed the way to resolve the problem of carbon emissions:one is the theory of Pigou based on tax and compensation, the other is the Coase theorem based on the definition of property rights.Chapter 3:the calculating on the gross and intensity of carbon emissions. First of all, we calculated and compared the gross and intensity of embodied carbon emissions in production since 1985. Then, using the interprovincial input-output method, we calculated the embodied carbon emissions in regional trade in 2002 and 2007, hereby reckoned the embodied carbon emissions in regional trade in the remainder years, and then got embodied carbon emissions in consumption.Chapter 4:the analysis on the factors affecting the gross and intensity of carbon emissions. First of all, we analyzed qualitatively the factors and mechanism. Then, using the LMDI method, we carried through the decomposition analysis on the key factors from two aspects of industry and region.Chapter 5:the study on the provincial responsibility of carbon emissions reduction. Firstly, we discussed the principle of responsibility allocation, clarified the superiority of the principle of "common environmental responsibility". Then, based on the principle of "common environmental responsibility", we designed an allocation model that have variable weight, and allocated the target of carbon emissions reduction in 2020. We expected to provide the reference data to government in the future.Chapter 6:the study on the effect of responsibility allocation on the regional development. By using econometric models and simulation method, from the aspects of economic growth, fiscal revenue, industrial structure, the structure of energy consumption, we discussed the potential effect of responsibility allocation scheme on the regional development.Chapter 7:the conclusion and prospect. We summarized the main conclusions of each chapter, put forward the corresponding policy space, and prospected the research directions in the future.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The cumulative embodied carbon emissions in production is more in the regions that hold rich energy and better manufacturing, but there are corresponding less in the regions that have sparse population or underdeveloped industry; the quantity of embodied carbon emissions in exported is larger in the provinces that hold rich energy sources, but the quantity of embodied carbon emissions in imported is larger in the coastal or developed provinces. The transfer of carbon emissions mainly occurs among the interior provinces in large regions. (2) The gross of carbon emissions increase rapidly in 1985-1990,1990-1995 and 2000-2005, the other stage is relatively slow; on the industry lay, GDP and the dependence degree of export trade in industry are the two positive factors to the growth of carbon emissions, but industrial energy intensity is the largest negative factor; on the regional lay, GDP is the biggest positive factor, energy intensity is the biggest restriction factor, other factors have less effect on the growth of carbon emissions. (3) The different principles have an important impact on the proportion of responsibility allocation. The allocated proportion on producer responsibility perspective is significantly more than the consumer responsibility perspective in Shanxi, Inner Mongolia etc. While it is the opposite in Beijing, Tianjin. Shanghai etc in the allocation model, the results will change cssentially when the weight(preference) change greatly; by calculated the allocated amount in 2006-2020, we found that:in the objective weight, the allocated amount is most in Shandong province, followed by Guangdong, Qinghai is the least. (4) With the passage of time, the effect of carbon emissions reduction on the economic growth is weakening in most of the regions. In the short term, the price of the carbon emissions reduction may be the expense of economic growth. But in the long term, the carbon emission reduction should not cause too large expense to the economy; the responsibility allocation will bring the biggest expense on tax to Guangdong Province, followed by Shanghai. The expense on tax will be smaller in the western regions such as Ningxia, Gansu, etc. In addition, the responsibility allocation will be beneficial to the optimization of regional industrial structure, energy consumption structure and trade structure.The innovative works of the dissertation mainly include the following aspects:(1) When calculating regional carbon emissions, numerous existing researches calculated ex the CO2 generated in energy processing and conversion, this brought the underestimation to the industrial CO2. In this paper, the CO2 generated in energy processing and conversion was included in the industrial sector, the amount of carbon emissions was accounted more accurately.(2) Numerous existing researches on embodied carbon emissions in trade based on the national lay, the quantitative measurement among the regions was little in China. In this paper, used the interprovincial input-output table of 2002 and 2007, we calculated and compared the embodied carbon emissions in regional trade. At the same time, we reckoned the proportion matrix, analyzed deeply the transfer characters and variation rules of the carbon emission.(3) According to the exportable proportion matrix of 2002 and 2007, we reckoned the matrix in remainder year, hereby got the provincial data of embodied carbon emissions in consumption in 1997-2011. The estimation of missing data overcome effectively the data difficult, especially, the calculation on the embodied carbon emissions in regional trade has provided the important data basis for the research in this field.(4) In order to obtain a more comprehensive understanding, we used the LMDI method to analyze the factors affecting the carbon emissions from two aspects of industry and region. In order to highlight the industry difference, according to industrial particularity and the importance, the analytical emphases was the dependence degree of export trade in industry; at the same time, we fully dug up the available statistical data, extended the variety of energy sources, increased the influence variables, extended the investigative period, the angle of view had innovation a certain extent.(5) We fully demonstrated the superiority of the principle of "the common environmental responsibility". Under this principle, we designed a reasonable responsibility allocation model combined with the principle of fairness and ability. The Comparison of provincial proportion under difference weighting structure can explain the effect of policy preferences on the provincial responsibility.