Study On Calculation And Driving Factors Of Embedded Carbon Footprint In Chinese Urban Residents

In recent years, the issue of global climate change has become the global hot spot. From the perspective of IPCC, global warming is resulted from human activities. Therefore, one of the fundamental measures to solve the climate problem is to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. As to carbon emissions, China is a major country in the world. China’s emission reduction has attracted the whole world’s attention. Chinese government promises that per unit of GDP carbon emissions in2010will be reduced by40%-45%compared with the carbon emission intensity in2005at United Nations Climate Change Conference. In order to achieve the goal of carbon reduced emissions, China has to shoulder heavy responsibilities.Accompanied by the socio-economic development and improvement of residents’ living standards, residential consumption has become a new major growth point of carbon emissions. However, current emission reduction policies aimed at industries of high energy consumption, ignores effective emission reduction measures on residents’ consumption. In this paper, a carbon emission input-output model is built to calculate the Embedded Carbon Footprint (ECF) of Chinese urban residents. And quantitative analysis has rendered on the ECF of Chinese urban residents, including its’ current situation and trends. In addition, this paper aims to investigate the factors affecting carbon emissions from the perspective of residential consumption based on Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI). Thus, residential energy consumption is an important field for energy conservation, which indicates that understanding underlying drivers of the increase of carbon emissions from this field sheds light on China’s future energy and carbon emission policy.The main contents of this paper include the following aspects:(1) The model of Embedded Carbon Footprint is constructed to calculate and analyze the ECF of Chinese urban residents. In this paper, residential consumption will be divided into eight categories and calculated simultaneously. And quantitative analysis has rendered on the ECF of Chinese urban residents, including its’ current situation, structure and trends.(2) The model of impact factors of Embedded Carbon Footprint from residential consumption is constructed to investigate effects using a long-mean Divisia index (LMDI) framework. Embedded Carbon Footprint of Chinese urban residents is decomposed into selected three driving factors, including the effect of per capita consumption expenditure, the effect of consumption structure, the effect of carbon intensity. This paper examines the influence of social and economic factors on ECF of Chinese urban residents from2002to2010. Basing on the empirical results, the present study will assist China to put forward suggestions.The main conclusions of this paper include the following aspects:The results show that:the top four residential consumption items are home furnishing consumption, health care consumption, food consumption and transportation consumption among all eight categories. A high proportion of home furnishing consumption structure and high carbon intensity associated with home industries lead to the highest home furnishing ECF, From the perspective of growth rate, the top three residential consumption items are transportation consumption, entertainment consumption and home furnishing consumption. The dramatic economic development and increase in residents’disposable income have resulted in the change of Chinese resident lifestyle from satisfaction with an adequate provision of food and clothing to a quality of life characterized by high quality food, comfortable living and health care. In term of carbon intensity, these industries dominated by fossil fuels have high carbon intensity, such as machinery and equipment manufacturing, fuel production and supply industry, and so on. The Chinese government should encourage these industries to implement low-carbon measures.Embedded Carbon Footprint change is decomposed into three factors clarifying the main determinants. The results show:Firstly, the effect of per capita consumption expenditure plays a more crucial role in Chinese urban residential ECF increase, contributing to273%in the total ECF. Secondly, the effect of consumption structure is a relatively minor positive effect, contributing to15%in the total ECF. Finally, the effect of carbon intensity alleviates the growth rate of ECF, contributing to-173%in the total ECF.