Comparative Study On The Embodied Carbon Emissions Of China And Major Trading Partners

In the face of the rising global greenhouse gas emissions,the issue of climate change has become increasingly urgent.With the vigorous development of international trade and deepening of international division of labor,the carbon emissions embodied in trade are also increasing.Under the background of economic globalization,the development of international trade separates production from consumption,and the damage to the environment in the process of export remains in the exporting country,while the importing country does not have to bear the consequences of its own environmental pollution and damage.Rapid economic development has made China the world's biggest trading nation,but also the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide.As a world factory,China has focused on the export of resource-intensive products and an extensive pattern of foreign trade growth for a long time that has won by quantity,while producing high-energy and high-pollution products for the developed countries at the same time.Large amounts of domestic resources are consumed.Behind this overgrowing international trade lies high environmental costs.With the expansion of China's trade scale,the amount of embodied carbon transfer will continue to increase,and China's greenhouse gas emissions will inevitably maintain a certain degree of growth,and China's domestic environmental pressure will become greater and greater.Many studies have shown that while China benefited from a trade surplus,the imbalance resulted in China assuming carbon emissions from other nations such that domestic carbon emissions are seriously inconsistent with carbon consumption.Therefore,it is greatly significant to analyze the relationship and differences between China and her main trading partners from the perspective of carbon flow.This analysis can not only help establish China's energy-saving emission reduction policies in the post-Kyoto era and allocate international emission reduction obligations reasonably,but also provide reference for trade and emissions mitigation policies of other developing countries,such as Russia,India and South Africa.This paper takes the European Union,the United States,Japan as the developed countries and China,Russia and India as the representatives of the developing countries,and takes the other countries and regions of the world as the comparison group.An empirical analysis of embodied carbon dioxide flows in international trade using a multi-regional input-output model is carried out.In this paper,we compared embodied carbon emissions intensities of above six economies,and emissions from different economic activities,such as production and consumption,import and export are also calculated and analyzed accordingly.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:(1)China,Russia and India have higher carbon emission intensity than the European Union,the United States and Japan.Among them,the basic metals and metal products industry,electricity,gas and water supply industries,non-metallic minerals and other industries have a large gap.There are big technical differences between developed and developing countries.(2)In the period between 2000 and 2014,the European Union,the United States,Japan,China,Russia and India showed an increasing trend of carbon emissions of imports and exports.The emissions embodied in exports of European Union,United States,Japan are smaller than emissions embodied in imports respectively,net trade carbon emissions are negative,indicating that the European Union,the United States and Japan are typical net carbon emissions importing countries.China,Russia and India have also shown an increasing trend in carbon emissions embodied in imports and exports(except for Russia's export carbon emissions),the increase is significantly larger than that of developed economies,and carbon emissions in exports is larger than import,indicating that developing economies China,Russia and India are net exporters of carbon emissions.(3)The European Union,the United States,Japan,China,Russia and India have similarities and differences in the proportion of embodied carbon emissions in imports and exports in different sectors.A small number of sectors(mostly heavy industry)occupy the absolute proportion of embodied carbon in import and export.Unlike other economies,the same thing is that Russia's carbon emissions in imports in light industry is significantly different,such as textiles,leather,footwear manufacturing imports embodied carbon has a large share.(4)Both production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions in European Union,the United States and Japan showed no marked changes,fluctuated up and down only at a certain level.And the consumption-based carbon emissions were higher than production-based emissions,indicating that the resource and environment effects of the final demand activities are greater than those of its domestic production activities,while its effects on the foreign environment are realized through direct import effects and indirect trade effects.China,Russia and India,on the other hand,have shown an increasing trend in their production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions,especially in China and India,where the growth rate is very high,and the three countries' production-based carbon emissions are generally higher than the consumption-based carbon emissions.It showed that part of the resource and environment load served the final demand of foreign countries.(5)Domestic self-supporting effects account for the main part of the carbon emissions on the production-based emissions,followed by intermediate products or final products,and finally is feedback exports.The external demand emissions of the United States and Japan were relatively stable throughout the study period,and the intermediate product induced effects were always greater than the final product-induced effects.Most of the carbon emissions from China,Russia and India were domestic emissions,that is,the carbon emissions resulting from their final demand occur mainly at home,with only a small proportion of emissions from outside the country.China and India are seeing rapid growth in external demand emissions,and intermediate product demand accounts for a large proportion of external demand emissions,results in 'consumption in developed countries,pollution in developing countries".The current international climate regime does not take into account the transfer of emissions from trade.However,it is unfair for China and other exporting countries to calculate the responsibility of carbon emissions solely on the basis of production side emissions.(6)Compared with developed and developing economies,which are based on the sectoral composition of production-side carbon emissions,there is no doubt that all economies are electricity,with the gas and water sectors accounting for an absolute share of production-side emissions.Even in some countries,they account for half of the world.In addition,developed economies can see that emissions from other sectors are more uniform in terms of sectoral breakdown,and that their share of production-side carbon emissions is not particularly prominent.And light industry and service industries can be seen to account for a certain proportion.Although developing economies are also more developed in light industry,the relative proportion of carbon emissions from heavy industrial production is not prominent.Heavy industry,especially electricity,Gas and water supply,basic metals and metal products,coal mining and coal mining and separation industries in their respective countries,the proportion of carbon emissions is significantly higher than in developed economies.