Study On The Driving Factors Of Carbon Emission And The Path Of Emission Reduction In The Civil Aviation Department Of China

In recent years,China’s civil aviation industry is developing rapidly.China has been the second largest civil aviation country in the world for Revenue Ton Kilometers（RTK） for several years.Despite that the civil aviation industry has stimulated China’s economic growth,the increasing CO₂ emission in this industry has also brought about serious environmental and climate problems.How to achieve the binding goal of energy conservation and emission reduction under the conditions of“large amounts and high growth rate”would be a realistic issue that China’s civil aviation sector must face both for the present and the future.Taking“decomposition” as the starting point,this paper expects to provide theoretical support for the government and civil aviation sector to take targeted measures to achieve the goal of energy-saving and emission-reduction after effective identification and quantification of drivers of civil aviation CO₂ emission change.The main research work and conclusions include the following aspects:（1）Analyzes the CO₂ emissions of China’s civil aviation sector and its relationship with the development of the industry.Beyond calculating the CO₂ emissions of China’s civil aviation sector from 1996 to 2015,the characteristics and trends of carbon emissions in the civil aviation sector are also discussed in the meantime.Furthermore,to explore the relationship between carbon emissions and the industry development,decoupling analysis is conducted between the transportation turnover and carbon emissions in the civil aviation sector.The empirical results show that:First,although CO₂ emission intensity in China’s civil aviation transport industry declines year by year,the total amount of CO₂emissions is steadily increasing.China’s civil aviation will be faced with enormous challenges on carbon reduction.Second,the correlation between CO₂ emission and transport turnover in China’s civil aviation sector is dominated by dilatation,and it is possible for the decoupling status to recur.Finally,two influencing factors,energy intensity effect and industrial structure effect,are the key factors in promoting the civil aviation sector’s decoupling development.（2）Proposes a production-theoretical decomposition analysis（PDA） model based on variable returns to scale（VRS） and analyze the change of CO₂ emissions in China’s civil aviation.In the condition of VRS,this paper expands the PDA model,in which relevant factors associated with scale efficiency are highlighted.Taking 12 representative Chinese airlines during 2007 and 2013 as samples,this paper empirically studies the main drivers of carbon emissions in China’s civil aviation sector based on the proposed model.The results show that:First,the change of transport turnover is the main driving factor in increasing the CO₂ emissions of the civil aviation sector.It is also the case for most airlines.Second,changes in potential energy intensity have played a leading role in reducing CO₂ emissions in most airlines,especially for those private&joint airlines.Finally,the change in scale efficiency does have an important impact on airlines’CO₂ emissions,and its cumulative effect has a positive impact on curbing CO₂ emissions.（3）Constructs a carbon emission performance evaluation index and empirically study the carbon emission performance of the civil aviation sector in China.This paper constructs a Global Malmquist Carbon Performance Index（GMCPI） that is more applicable to the civil aviation sector.Based on this,the dynamic estimation of aviation carbon emission performance is conducted,and the Bootstrap method was put forward to endow statistical properties to the index.Furthermore,this study decomposes the GMCPI into three components and discussed the differences and convergence among different types of airlines.Finally,based on the gray correlation analysis,the important factors influencing the performance of civil aviation CO₂ emissions are confirmed.The empirical results show that:First,the cumulative GMCPI of sample airlines increased by 11.92% from 2007 to 2013,which is mainly due to the change of technological progress.Second,the carbon emission performance of different types of airlines differs significantly,and there is a tendency of convergence.A"catching-up effect"also exists among airlines with low carbon emissions.Third,the gray correlation analysis shows that the factors influencing the performance of the civil aviation CO₂ emissions in turn are the route distribution,fuel consumption,aircraft utilization and take-off and landing times.（4）Constructs a carbon emission reduction model of China’s civil aviation and analyze the path of energy saving and emission reduction in civil aviation department of China.This paper constructs a carbon emission reduction model of China’s civil aviation sector,and decomposes its CO₂ emissions into four corresponding factors,namely the transportation turnover effect,transportation intensity effect,energy intensity effect and emission coefficient effect.Given this,specific contributions of the four factors to China’s civil aviation CO₂ emissions are quantitatively measured.Then,scenario design based on the influencing factors is made so as to forecast the civil aviation CO₂ emission scenarios in China from both static and dynamic aspects.Apart from the quantitative analysis of the four influencing factors’contributions to the energy saving and emission reduction,this paper qualitatively analyzes the four representative measures for energy conservation and emission reduction in the case of China,discussing potential barriers and possible emission reduction scenarios under these policies.