An Empirical Study On Regional Disparity Of Low Carbon Development Level In The Yangtze Economic Zone

With global warming, the environmental issues have become increasingly prominent in each country and the low-carbon economy has become the hot topic among scholars. Since twenty-first Century, the problem of environmental pollution has also become one of the most serious challenges in China, and the Chinese government has been committed to exploring China’s own low carbon development road.Running through Chinese East three regions of nine provinces and two municipalities, Yangtze Economic Zone is an important link to promote China’s economic layout from east to west which has been put on the highest agenda by Chinese central authorities recently. And as an important ecological barrier of China, the protection of the ecological environment of Yangtze valley is significant for the major provinces and cities along, and even the whole country. Therefore Yangtze Economic Zone is facing the contradiction of ecological environmental protection and economic development. So it will make a great practical sense to do a comparative analysis of low carbon development level and explore the development potential of the Yangtze Economic Zone from two aspects of industry and region.In this paper, the carbon footprint and low carbon level has been redefined by analyzing literature. First of all, through the calculation of the 2003-2012 regional carbon footprint, the Yangtze Economic Zone of the carbon footprint evolution and differences has been analyzed and also the carbon emission structure of different regions. It has been found that the regional carbon footprint value of 10 year average gradually increases from upstream to downstream, while the growth rate from upstream to downstream gradually diminishes, and the carbon footprint of different areas gradually appears a trend of convergence.In the next place, the traditional input output model has been extended to the carbon footprint of input-output table.With the carbon footprint of effect of industry newly defined, a comprehensive comparative analysis of low carbon development level of the 29 industries has been made among Chongqing, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces in 2007 separately as the representatives of the upstream, midstream and downstream. The result shows that a significant differences exists in the carbon footprint intensity between different industries in different regions, and different regions have both advantages and disadvantages on the aspect of industrial low-carbon efficiency.The Heating and Power Processing sector is the core department in carbon emission system.Furthermore, the variance of carbon emissions from energy consumption of Yangtze Economic Zone has been quantified with the Theil Index, which can be decomposed into inter group and intra group differences. Then by Kaya model the contribution of three key factors: GDP per capita, energy intensity and carbon emission coefficient to the variance has been analyzed further. It shows that the per capita GDP exerts the maximum impact on carbon emissions, energy intensity secondly, and the variance of carbon emissions come mainly from intra group difference.Finally, a summary of the analysis has been made based on which several corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward. A vision for future on research has been shared too.