Research On Regional Differences Of Fossil Fuels Carbon Emissions In Guangdong

Just before the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, China made a commitment to the world: by 2020 China's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will have dropped by 40%-45% compared to that in 2005. According to China's commitments to the international community, and the targets for reducing emissions during the period of the"Twelfth Five Years Plan", by the year 2011, energy consumption per unit of GDP and the emissions intensity of carbon dioxide will have dropped by 3.5% compared to that in 2010, the types of control total amount of major pollutants will be increased to four by two, and the whole emissions reduction will be reduced about 1.5%. At the same time, the Chinese government stressed the need to establish a perfect system of greenhouse gas emissions and statistical monitoring of energy conservation and pollution reduction, to adhere to common but differentiated responsibilities, and to carry out actively international cooperation on climate change. Similarly, as one of China's biggest provinces in economy and industry, Guangdong has a long way to go in energy-saving and emission reduction.Therefore, the analysis of the changes in carbon emissions, the regional differences and its influence factors in Guangdong Province will have far-reaching significance for the development of Guangdong's economy.In this paper, the author focuses on the carbon emissions problems resulted by fossil fuel energy consumption in Guangdong Province, studying the variation of carbon emissions, regional differences and their factors within the time-series from 2000 to 2009 in Guangdong. The results shows: (1) During 2000-2009 in Guangdong Province the total carbon emissions had great changes and it increased at a faster pace, which showed three characteristics in the time series: rapid, steady and stable growth; carbon emissions in Guangdong was mainly from industrial plants and different industry had obviously different characteristics. (2)There were remarkable space-time differences in carbon emissions in prefectural-level cities in Guangdong. Total carbon emissions and emissions intensity differenced obviously in time. Meanwhile, changes in carbon emissions presented a "center - periphery" structure in space, showing the evolution rules of clustering to spread; by the global and local spatial autocorrelation analysis of carbon emissions in Guangdong it is found that carbon emissions in most cities in Guangdong showed the characteristics of HH (high - high) or LL (low - low) spatial distribution. Gathering or diffusion effect was remarkable. In addition, polarization effect existed at the same time. (3) By the LMDI decomposition the factors which influenced carbon emissions in various industries in Guangdong Province are analysed, which showed that energy consumption structure, energy consumption intensity, economic development and population growth were the main factors which were concerned with the carbon emissions in overall energy consumption in Guangdong, among which economic development and population growth played the important parts in carbon emissions in Guangdong; while energy structure and energy intensity played less important parts in carbon emissions, which were the two major factors to curb carbon emissions . Also it is found that economic development,energy consumption intensity and technology progress were the decisive factors which caused larger differences in various industries. In addition, economic development, industrial structure, import and export trade and regional economic policy are major factors leading to the regional differences of carbon emissions in Guangdong.