The Study On The Evaluation And Factor Decomposition Of Household Carbon Emissions Under Urbanization Process

The IPCC (2007) Fourth Assessment Report has been pointed that more than90%possibility of global warming caused by human activity, which mainly emergedin city. China’s urbanization process, which has been accelerating, is facing not onlythe rigid requirements of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, but alsothe international pressure to reduce emissions and the increasingly severe resourceand environmental constraints.Developing low-carbon economy is imperative. Butthe "low carbon" concerns not just production field, but also the household andconsumption field. The carbon emissions induced by household and consumption istoo much to be ignored. In fact, studies have shown that in some developed countriesthe residents’ carbon dioxide emissions can reach about80%of the total.The source of residents’ carbon emissions can be divided into two categories—the direct emissions caused by energy consumption and the indirect emissions causedby the consumption of goods and services. In order to analyze the features ofresidents’ carbon emission, this article studies resident’s carbon emissions in theoryon the basis of China’s urbanization process. In the empirical part, carbon emissionfactors method and the input-output model method is used to evaluate the directemission, the indirect emissions and the total emissions, and decompose the factors.The results show that， from1992to2007， the proportion of residents’ carbonemissions to the total carbon emissions in China fluctuated between31%-46%, andthe proportion of indirect emissions accounted for between63%-72%among them.During the development of accelerated urbanization, the volumes of consumer directand indirect carbon emissions both increased rapidly. Within the eight categories ofconsumer expenditures, housing and transportation and communication are the mostcarbon intensive consumptions. The residents’ consumption emissions show obviousdifference between urban and rural—the direct carbon emissions per capita of urbanresidents was about1.8to3.0times of rural residents;，and the indirect carbonemissions per capita of urban residents was about2.4-3.9times of rural residents.What’s more, the difference has been expanding gradually.Thus, the structural decomposition analysis method is used to analyze thefactors of residents’ carbon emissions in urbanization. It turns out that it is affectedmainly by three aspects——production, consumption and population. The change of intensity of the carbon emissions in production sector is the most favorable factor tosuppress the carbon emissions, while final consumption spending is the mostimportant contributing factor. The conclusions of the study supply some theoreticalbasis for the relevant department to provide carbon emission reduction measures, andpropose reasonable policy recommendations.