Empirical Study On Estimate Of Embodied Carbon In Guangdong Province Foreign Trade And Analysis Of The Factors

The global climate change which mainly characterized by global warming and the environmental problems caused by it already become the focus of the world attention. As one of the world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters, China’s emission reduction pressure is huge, and the rapid development of foreign trade plays a promoting role in it. The foreign trade relies on the investment of energy and environmental resources, going the extensive development road and a large proportion of carbon emissions are generated by high energy consumption while promoting the rapid development of the economy. Guangdong Province is the largest one in China’s foreign trade, and its total import and export volume is national first, therefore clearly understanding the flow of embodied carbon in its foreign trade and clarifying the key drivers is conducive to playing the role of foreign trade on energy saving and emission reduction from the system and policy perspective and safeguarding the sustained and healthy development of foreign trade, which provides experience and guidance to the development of low-carbon trade.Firstly, this paper uses the Input-Output Analysis to calculate the embodied carbon emissions in import and export trade of Guangdong Province in1997-2011, which is the basis for the next Structural Decomposition Analysis. The results show that the embodied carbon in exports and imports of Guangdong Province emerges the curve volatility state during this period, but it remains at a stable level and the total is still huge, which relatively concentrates in several high-emission industries. Then, the paper uses the Structural Decomposition Analysis to study the reasons for the growth of carbon emissions from three aspects, which is scale effect, technical effect and structural effect. The empirical results show that the technical level of Guangdong Province is rising and the technical effect plays a significant role in reduction. But duing to the strong impact of the scale effect, the total embodied carbon emissions are still high. In addition, the structural effect is of both positive and negative, so industry structure and trade structure needs to be further optimized. Finally, it presents some policy recommendations, such as optimizing the industrial and trade structure, promoting the transformation and upgrading of processing trade, using advanced technology and adopting some new measures on trade and environment.