| Sustainable development requires treat global problems beyond the barriers of culture and history. However, since the industrial revolution, the use of fossil fuels also reached a new height along with the progress of society and economy. Because of the combustion of the large number of fossil fuels, the concentration of greenhouse gas is continuing to rise and the climate is changing dramatically. Except the seawater becomes warmer and the sea level rises, the change has brought drastic changes of environment such as drought and species extinction related to human life. In the face of the global situation that carbon emissions was growing fast and the climate change had been obvious, the international community carried out long and hard discussions.Finally, for the common development of mankind, various countries had made concessions and compromises. China is a rapidly developing country and also a big country of fossil energy use and carbon emissions. Facing the present situation of global warming and the pressure of the task and duty of reduction, China needs a series of micro and macro research, analyzing China’s current situation, structure and the influence of carbon emission from the view of history and current situation urgently, so as to implement the responsibility of emission reduction and develop low carbon economy.This study suggests that the added value is the value of the products of each industry in each province while the carbon emissions is the environmental cost various regions and industries paid. Therefore, the paper can get the appropriate degree of each industry and each industry structure in each region through the comparison of the environmental cost which is carbon emissions intensity each region and industry paid. On this basis, this study reviewed the carbon emissions of the whole China firstly. And through analyze the factors affecting carbon emissions, the paper explored the relationship between China’s economic structure and regional carbon emissions taking economic structure as the starting point in order to understand the role and the effect of the regional economic structure in regional carbon emissions. In detail, the study calculated the carbon emissions of 43 sectors of each province in 2010 mainly through the energy consumption. Then with the data of GDP, the paper calculated the carbon emissions intensity of each industry of each province or municipality to sort out the carbon emission of the 43 industries in each province clearly. Based on these calculations, the paper proposed two kinds of methods to judge regional competitive industries in carbon emissions. And the research shows that on one hand the regional carbon emission intensity is imbalances. And on the other hand, some industries are not suitable for industrial transferring and industrial restructuring due to various limitations such as resources, technology and market. What’s more, the two classification methods of economic restructuring and competitive industries selection based on the comparative advantage theory not only have the focus, but also have emphasis and some limitations of each other. Therefore, they should be used as needed.However, due to the complex structure of China’s economic system and the close links between the various industries, when the regional economic structure was adjusted, it would have an impact not only on its own economic attributes, but also on other industries’ economic attributes. At the same time, the changes of the economic attributes would react on the industry, forming a chain reaction. Therefore, this research studied carbon emissions of the industrial chain through industry classifications based on carbon emissions and the comparative advantage theory. Through the analysis of the input-output table of Beijing in 2010, the research explored a new approach to analyze the carbon emissions of the whole industrial chain. And the results showed that while the carbon intensity of the general sense and the carbon emissions of the whole industrial chain had a certain consistency, they were not identical. For example, in Beijing, even though some industries had a higher carbon intensity of production processes, but its carbon intensity of its industrial chain was low. And it showed that such industries had advantages people didn’t know before. At the same time, some industries’carbon intensity of production processes was not high while its carbon intensity of its industrial chain was high. The development of this industry was to reduce carbon emissions. But in fact, it indirectly increased carbon emissions. Therefore, people should focus on the overall carbon intensity of the industrial chain, when starting the overall layout of the industrial chain in the region.All in all, China is still in the period of rapid development. And there is still a certain gap between China’s people’s living standards with the developed countries’. Thus, although the total economy is the main factor affecting carbon emissions, it is not feasible to reduce carbon emissions by controlling the total economy. Except the introduction of new energy and new technologies and marketing high-tech equipment and technology, as one of the important factors that affect carbon emissions, adjustment of the industrial structure has great potential. This research focused on the relationship between the economic structure and the carbon intensity. And based on comparative advantage theory, the study also tried to answer which industrial structure and regional structure could be more efficient to reduce carbon intensity while ensuring economic development in order to achieve a win-win result. However, due to the missing data, etc., there are still many imperfections in the research. The paper just attempted to provide a basis for studies of the methods of developing the potential of carbon emissions reduction through economic restructuring. |
