Factor Analysis On Carbon Emissions And Studies On Energy Price Policy In China

Together with its potential adverse impacts on the earth and the humankind, the global climate change, which is partially caused by the greenhouse gases with carbon dioxide as the most part charged by human beings, has been drawn much attention from all over the world. China has already been the second largest carbon dioxide emitter and energy consumption, which is the main contributor to carbon dioxide emissions, is shooting up and has a bottleneck effect on economic development in recent years. Carbon dioxide reduction is not only an environment technical problem, but also an international political focus in the negotiations of global climate change. However, fundamentally, it is an economic issue. The dissertation aims at factors involved in carbon dioxide emissions, and then puts forward policies on energy saving and carbon reduction, in which the energy price policy is paid much attention to.The thesis quantifies the contributions of each pre-defined factors, which are fixed based on a decomposition model at first, to the change of carbon dioxide emissions over the last twenty years. In these factors energy efficiency is further focused and regression models are built to analyze the impact of energy prices on energy efficiency, which introduces the discussion of energy price policy. Lastly, an input-output model is used to analyze the influences of changes of energy prices on consumer price index as well as other sectors.The innovations here includes: (1)in the decomposition model, energy consumption of production and energy consumption of living are combined while energy structure and industrial structure are integrated; (2)the effects of energy prices on energy efficiency are analyzed in both production and living; (3)an input-output model is introduced to quantify the impacts of changes in energy prices on consumer price index as well as other sectors; (4)the biggest innovation is a reasonable research framework which integrated the three parts above.The empirical studies show that economic increase and energy intensity are the two most important factors affecting carbon dioxide emissions over the period 1984-2006, the former of which decreased the carbon dioxide emissions largely while the latter of which increased the emissions even more greatly. Moreover, there is less and less room for the decline of energy intensity promoted by technological progresses in the field of energy. Industrial structure and energy structure are keys to energy saving and carbon reduction in the future. There are great improvements in the adjustment of industrial structure which can be made to save energy and reduce carbon emissions while energy structure is dependant on energy endowments in China to a large degree.Energy intensity in production is elastic and there are substitutions between energy and capital, energy and labor. In terms of consumption, the elasticity of energy consumption of living per capita to energy prices is positive, although it is lack of elasticity. The rise of energy prices improves the energy efficiency in both energy intensity and living consumption. And with the reform of state-owned enterprises and the development of private enterprises, there are greater incentives for them to reduce the cost in energy consumption. To be concluded, the market-based reform of energy prices will be a strategic policy on energy saving and carbon reduction in the future. The impacts of energy prices on consumer price index as well as other sectors are transmitted through the relationships among sectors and there are clear distinctions because of different energy types. On consumer price index, the change of electricity price has the largest impact of 6.64%,followed by the change of oil product price, and the impacts of coal and oil are the smallest, approximately reaching 3%.The effects of the rise of energy prices on enterprises and households cannot be neglected. Consequently, the market-based reform of energy prices should be implemented step by step. Before energy prices are fully liberalized, a variety of policies can be carried out to affect energy prices locally by region or sector.