Intersectoral Burden Sharing Of Carbon Dioxide Mitigation In China Based On Multi-criteria

On November 27, 2009, the Chinese government committed to reduce its national carbon dioxide?CO₂? intensity?CO₂ per unit of gross domestic product? by 40–45% by the year 2020. The aim of this paper is to provide a sector-based method for carbon dioxide emissions control and to disaggregate China's national CO₂ mitigation burden at the sectoral level. Firstly, this paper evaluates the emission efficiencies of China's various sectors based on the Undesirable SBM model. Then based on three burden sharing criteria—fairness, feasibility and efficiency and corresponding indicators, this paper derives a mitigation burden index to suggest which economic sectors should bear more?or less? mitigation burden. An target allocation model of sectoral CO₂ intensity control is constructed to determine each sector's mitigation target for 2020. The main findings are:?1? Allocation results based on multi-criteria are more acceptable and practical than those based on only one criterion;?2? Policy maker's preference for criteria has a significant effect on allocation results;?3?The carbon dioxide emission intensities and the carbon dioxide emission efficiencies vary a lot within China's different sectors, which is mainly related to energy consumption demand and input-output condition. Sectors like agriculture, construction, wholesale and retail trade, catering and other services, have low carbon dioxide emission intensities and high emission efficiencies, and the development of these sector should be encouraged to promote the realization of China's low carbon economic transformation;?4?The three sectors, manufacture of raw chemical materials and chemical products, manufacture of non-metallic mineral products, smelting and pressing of ferrous metals consistently bear the highest mitigation burden. The Chinese government should strictly regulate the development of these sectors.