Research On Embodied Carbon Emission In China’s Export Industry And Reductive Strategies

The deepening of the international division of labor and rapid development ofeconomy led to the take-off of the international trade objectively, the development offoreign trade, in turn, has promoted unprecedented prosperity of the internationalcommunity. However, human beings ignored the bearing capacity of the environmentand ecology in pursuit of trade liberalization, resulting in the increasingly seriousenvironmental pollution and ecological destruction. Since the reform and opening up,China’s export trade has developed rapidly, becoming one of the three engines topromote national economic development. However, the extensive development modeis based on the expense of the environment, which means domestic carbon emissionspresents a significant growth trend with the increase of exports. It has put tremendouspressure on domestic ecological environment, while bringing internationalcondemnation on reducing carbon emissions. The eighteenth National Congress of theCPC stressed the importance of building an ecological civilization, as well as thebasic national policy of resource conservation and environmental protection. Thepaper mainly studies the export of embodied carbon, trying to reveal the carbondioxide emissions of the export products in the entire production process, andobjectively measuring China’s total export of embodied carbon and its influencingfactors. The study will contribute to a correct understanding of environmental impactof China’s export trade, and will provide the basis for adjustment of export industrystructure and the transformation of economic growth mode. Besides, it is helpful tourge the international community to develop a more scientific and reasonable carbonaccountability mechanisms.This paper builds a carbon accounting model to calculate China’s total domesticcarbon emissions from1995to2010based on eight kind of energy. The calculationresult shows that the indicator increases year by year. By analyzing the relationship ofthe export trade and the environment, it is founded that the export product structure,trade patterns and regional characteristics will affect the environment to vary degrees.On the basis of input-output tables of1997,2002and2007, the paper calculatesembodied carbon emissions of China’s export trade. The results show that theembodied carbon emissions of export trade in the year of1997,2002and2007are350million tons,540million tons and15million tons respectively, accounting for the proportion of the total domestic carbon emissions are32%,43%,70%respectively. Itshows that China has produced a lot of carbon emissions in order to meet consumerdemand abroad, which pollutes domestic environment. The paper uses LMDI indexmodel to analysis influencing factors of embodied carbon emissions of export trade.The calculation results show that the scale effect is the most important factor to affectthe embodied carbon of export trade, and there is a positive correlation between thescale effect and the total effect. The scale effect plays an important role in promotingembodied carbon emissions of export trade. The contribution rate of the structuraleffect is smaller, and there is also a positive correlation between the structural effectand total effect, suggesting that the current export structure is not conducive toreducing embodied carbon emissions of export trade and the adjustment of the exportstructure is necessary. There is an in inverse relationship between the intensity effectand total effect which means that the reduction of carbon emission intensity willeffectively inhibit the total embodied carbon emissions increasing. The technologicaladvances play a positive role in improving the domestic environment.Based on the above findings, the paper This paper presents a series of policyrecommendations to reduce embodied carbon emissions, including the adjustment oftrade policy, industrial policy adjustments, promoting energy conservation, andstrengthening international cooperation, which will guide China’s export trade towarda low-carbon emissions, high value-added direction and promote the construction ofenvironment-friendly society.