Decomposition Research Of China’s Carbon Intensity

Since the reform and opening up, China’s economy develops leaps and bounds, but it brings damage to the environment that is shocking. Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels cause a sharp deterioration of the environment, resulting in extreme weather around the world. At the same time, it’s also brought great pressure to our energy supply. The economic development model of damaging the environment for economy development not only wastes our resources and increases the burden on the environment, but also goes against to development goals of building a beautiful China. To deal with global climate change and the energy crisis, we need to resolve the conflict between the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and development of economy. As the world’s largest carbon emitters, and as a newly industrialized developing country, the contradictions between China’s energy conservation and development of economy are more and more prominent. Facing the severe growth situation of greenhouse gas emissions and the pressure on national energy conservation, Chinese government committed in 2009 Copenhagen climate conference that, China will cut carbon intensity(carbon emissions / GDP) in 2020 by 40%-45% than that in 2005. On the one hand, this commitment lets our country establish an image of being a responsible big country in the international community. On the other hand, it also meets our needs of changing extensive economic development.With the increasingly fierce pressure of energy conservation, related research of saving energy consumption and carbon reduction policy has become the focus of attention of domestic academic circles. In this paper, the object of study is carbon intensity, and the author introduces realistic background and significance of research objectives, describes the basic situation of the current domestic and foreign research literature so as provide theoretical support for the paper.. In order to make an analysis of the carbon intensity factors, the author firstly analyzes the China’s energy consumption and carbon intensity by data collection and statistics, and then establishes index decomposition model and structural decomposition model of carbon intensity decomposition analysis to decompose the carbon intensity. As for index decomposition, selected logarithmic mean weight divisia decomposition method(LMDI) for two-stage analysis of carbon intensity during the 1991-2011, to make sure that the drivers of carbon intensity were energy efficiency, industrial structure and energy structure and then combines the object of study and three driving factors for dynamic analysis, so as to prove that there are a long-term and stable co-integration relationship between carbon intensity and energy efficiency, industrial structure and energy structure. In the structural decomposition of carbon intensity, the author selects SDA- input-output analysis, decomposes the carbon intensity from the perspective of the overall and industry sectors economy. The decomposition results show that the carbon intensity of the total economy is affected by the energy intensity, energy structure, investment structure, final demand structure, and the final product structure; the industrial sector is the "critical" sector of energy conservation, the agricultural sector and commercial sectors are "low-carbon" departments; departments carbon intensity are affected by energy intensity, energy mix, and investment structure. Finally, the author summarizes the index decomposition results and structural decomposition results. It is concluded that energy efficiency and energy structure are contributing factors of reducing carbon intensity. Investment structure, the final demand structure and final product structure are obstacles of reducing carbon intensity.Finally, based on the analysis results of this study, combined with the real economic situation and the existing policies and regulations, and based on the degree of influence situation, specific policies are recommended: transfer the extensive model of economic development to resource-saving and environment-friendly development patterns; transfer from the export-driven and export-oriented economic model which relies on investment to internal-oriented economy which is based on consumption, investment and export-driven economic paradigm; transfer from relying on secondary industry collaboration to drive economy development to models relying the three industries and on resources investment and then to relying on technological progress and innovation in management.