Decoupling Industrial Growth From Carbon Dioxide Emissions In Hunan Province

The issue of air pollution has increasingly attracted the attention of the international community.China has become the world’s largest carbon emitter in recent years,and The government is facing unprecedented pressure from the international community to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.The in-depth exploration of the decoupling relationship between regional industrial growth and carbon dioxide emissions as well as its influencing factors has a vital role to play in regional industrial green development,improving clean production levels,and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.This article takes Hunan Province as an example to make the following specific studies:(1)In this paper,we construct the decoupling index to quantitatively evaluate the decoupling relationship between industrial growth and carbon dioxide emissions in Hunan Province from 2007 to 2014.In general,the relationship between Hunan’s industrial growth and carbon emissions shows a trend of weak to strong decoupling.Specifically,the growth rate of Hunan’s GDP fluctuated greatly from 2007 to 2011,but the trend was stable in 2011-2014.(2)Further,using the LMDI method,the change of industrial carbon emission intensity in Hunan is decomposed into three factors:energy structure,energy intensity and industrial structure.The cumulative decrease of carbon emission intensity in Hunan’s industrial sector is as high as 67.41%.Energy intensity,industrial structure and energy structure decreased by 58.41%,15.33%and 2.14%respectively over the study period.Obviously,a decoupling relationship is main caused by significant decline in energy intensity.(3)At last,the contribution of 41 industrial sub-sectors to these three factors is analysed by using the method of attribution analysis.Throughout the study period,the multi-period contribution of energy intensity reached-58.4%,and the single-period average contribution was-6.78%.Manufacture of chemical raw material and chemical products,manufacture of non-metallic mineral products and production and supply of electric power and heat power were the three main contributors to energy intensity decrease.This study suggests that Hunan should not only improve the efficiency of energy use but also speed up the adjustment of industrial structure and energy structure to increase the positive effects of structural change on energy saving.