The Empirical Research Of China's Carbon Dioxide Emissions And Energy Efficiency Issues

Since reform and opening up, China has made remarkable achievements in economic development, while there have been resource consumption, increased carbon emissions and other issues.The total emissions of carbon dioxide have increased from 1483 million tons to 6896 million tons during 1978 to 2008, an average annual growth of 5.2%.While the emissions of carbon dioxide per capita also have enhanced from 1.5 tons to 5.2 tons during this time,an average annual increase of 4.1%.At present, the academic and government have paid attention to the emission of carbon dioxide.Therefore, this paper conduct an in-depth analysis to the phenomenon of the unreasonable emission growth of carbon dioxide. Actually, carbon dioxide emission is essentially a problem of energy consumption.The effect of energy consumption on carbon dioxide emission has also been decomposed into two levels:the first is the greater the energy consumption, the more emission of carbon dioxide; the second is the efficiency level, the higher energy efficiency, the less of energy consumption per unit of output and the less emission of carbon dioxide. Specific innovations as follows:(1) The total level, in this paper we attempts to examine empirically the increased energy consumption which has resulted in carbon dioxide emissions.That is this paper attempts to examine empirically dynamic causal relationships between carbon emissions, energy consumption, income, and foreign trade in the case of China using the time series data for the period 1971-2008. This research tests the interrelationship between the variables using the bounds testing to cointegration procedure. The bounds test results indicate that there exists one form of long-run relationships between the variables. In the form of long-relationship, carbon emissions are determined by energy consumption, income and foreign trade. The long run elasticity of CO2 emissions with respect to energy consumption is computed asl.28. Similarly, the elasticity of CO2 emissions with respect to income in the long-run found to be 0.522. The impact of foreign trade on CO2 emissions seems to be noticeable. Granger causality tests indicate that Granger causality runs in both directions between CO2 emissions and income both in the short run and long run. Therefore, it is possible to forecast the future levels of these variables from the past levels of each other. The stability of the CO2 emissions equation suggests that policy changes considering the explanatory variables of CO2 emissions equation will not cause major distortion in the level of CO2 emissions.(2) Efficiency level,in this paper we attempt to measure the total factor energy efficiency using two different methods and compare this two results,first,under the case of reduction of CO2 emissions,we estimate the total factor energy efficiency of all regions of China during 2000-20008 by Malmquist-Luenberger index;second, maintaining the same case of CO2 emissions,we also calculate the Malmquist index and its decomposition.The result turns out that the total factor of energy efficiency of all regions of China under the environmental constraints shows the following characteristics:the average annual Malmquist-Luenberger index of Hainan and Ningxia are less than 1 between 2000-2008, indicating that these two elements of energy efficiency in all provinces experienced a negative growth; In addition, Shanxi, Anhui, Henan, the average annual Malmquist-Luenberger index equal to 1, the other provinces, the average annual Malmquist-Luenberger index greater than 1, indicating that all elements of our overall energy efficiency is increasing, the annual growth rate is 2.2%.At the same time,this paper also shows the growth rate of total factor energy efficiency is 1.8% keeping CO2 emissions in the same circumstances.Therefore, from the perspective of the average annual growth rate,the result of under the case of reducing CO2 emissions is better than the result of maintainning the CO2 emissions.This is in line with our country's low-carbon economy planning.Finally, basing on the above findings, this paper provide some policy recommendations:within the framework of sustainable development, China will take measures to optimize the industrial structure, optimize energy structure, ensure energy supply, improve the regional environment, and reduce the social pressure, also will focus the coordination between economic and enviromental, pay attention to the quality of economic growth and efficiency of using resource. With minimal lower material consumption and corresponding carbon emissions to achieve modernization of the development goals, China will continue to make efforts and contributions to mitigate global climate change.