Decomposition Study Of China’s Carbon Emissions Intensity:An Extended Kaya Identity

With the rapid rising of global average temperature, global warming has become one of the most important environmental problems for mankind. China is the largest developing country, largest energy consumer and carbon emitters in the world. China’s carbon emissions has become a focus of many countries. China is in the late stages of industrial development, and the mode of China’s economic development is extensive. China’s economic development relies heavily on energy consumption. However, China has an ambitious target to reduce carbon emissions intensity by 40-45% by 2020, from 2005 levels on the Copenhagen Climate Conference. The analysis of factors affecting carbon emissions intensity constitute a vital part of transformation of economic development mode and reducing carbon dioxide emissions intensity to achieve emission reduction targets. This paper extends Kaya identity and builds carbon intensity LMDI model to measure the effects of economic development, energy structure, energy intensity etc. to China’s carbon emissions intensity from production sector and residents consumption sector. Some appropriate policy recommendations is proposed according to the analysis conclusions.Firstly, we calculate China’s carbon emissions and analyze its trends based on energy consumption data from 1995-2011. The reason for rapidly increasing carbon emissions is Coal-based energy structure and Industry-based industrial structure. Then, the decomposition model of China’s carbon emissions intensity is established based on the Kaya equations, LMDI decomposition Model and data from 1995 to 2011 to analyze the impact of energy structure, energy intensity and economic development etc. on China’s carbon emissions intensity from production sector and residents consumption sector. According to the decomposition results, the most significant factor in decreasing and increasing carbon emissions intensity the energy intensity effect and industrial structure effect, respectively, and the effect of industrial structure is heavily outweighed by the effect of energy intensity in production sector. In residents consumption sector, the most significant negative effect, consumption energy intensity, is heavily outweighed by the most significant positive effect, economic development. Finally, some policy recommendations is proposed to reduce China’s carbon intensity effectively according to the decomposition results.