Driving Factors And Emission Reduction Potential Of Carbon Emissions:an Empirical Study Based On39Industrial Sectors

Since the World Climate Conference has been convened in Copenhagen in2009, the buzzwords "low carbon" has been applied to all areas of the world. Then the world has been entering into the low-carbon era. The Low-carbon economy has even been considered as an engine to cope with the climate change and lead the direction of the future economic development. On the one hand, after the Agricultural Civilization and the Industrial Civilization, the Low-carbon economy is another extraordinary achievement of human beings. On the other hand, the Low-carbon economy, advocating the green economic growth, is an essential way to reduce the carbon emission. The issue, how to take the Low-carbon economy road according to our current status, has become a focus of all society.The thesis uses the optimized Laspeyres index decomposition analysis and LMDI method to analysis the carbon emissions of China’s39industrial sectors from1994to2010. The factors that could influence the carbon emissions include carbon density, energy intensity, economic structure and economic growth. Meanwhile, it elaborates each factor’s potentiality of the carbon emission reduction. Furthermore, it applies LMDI method to predict the carbon emissions of China’s industrial sector in2020by four scenarios, and compare the reduction level of the carbon emission per unit of GDP. Finally, according to our current economic development status and the emission reduction target, we could choose and formulate feasible reduction measures.The results show that during the17years China’s industry carbon emissions per unit of GDP have been decreased by5.59MT. Actually, the energy intensity which is the reflection of the technical progress is the main factor of the carbon emissions reduction, and its contribution rate is75.5%, while the economic structure is26.5%. But the effect of the carbon density which is the reflection of the energy consumption structure is not significant at all, which indicates that the coal-oriented energy consumption pattern has not been improved. Secondly, in terms of each industry, SPFM, RCMCP and NMP are always the main force causing the increasing of the carbon emissions. Finally, the forecast results by LMDI model show that under the first scenario mode the carbon emissions per unit of GDP in2020would be decreased by44%compared with the year of2005. In this case, the carbon emission reduction target that our government has promised could be achieved.