The Trend And Convergence Analysis Of Global CO₂ Emissions From The Production Side And The Consumption Side

In order to cope with the severe climate challenge,the United Nations has organized a series of global climate conferences since 1979,and reached international agreements such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change,Kyoto Protocol and The Paris Agreement.These global actions to deal with the climate crisis require all countries to actively undertake common but differentiated responsibilities for emission reduction,and reach global peaking of CO₂ emissions as soon as possible with convergent trend for climate security through extensive and in-depth international cooperation.Therefore,it is of great significance to use a fair and effective method to account for the global CO₂ emissions to evaluate the emission reduction efforts of each economy,and identify the dynamic changes of carbon emissions based on convergence analysis.As a result,the global climate governance mechanism will be benefit from deeper understanding of global CO₂ emissions.Based on the global multi-regional input-output model,this paper evaluated the per capita CO₂ emissions of 129 economies during 1995-2015,and identified the CO₂ emission responsibility and reduction contribution of each economy from production side and consumption side.In addition,I identified convergence progress of CO₂ emission on both the production and consumption sides withσconvergence,γconvergence,stochastic convergence,βconvergence and club convergence theory.Hence,the dispersion trend,fluctuation,influencing factors and convergence rate of global CO₂emission were described in detail.Finally,different carbon emission conditions were provided with policy suggestions for the emission reductions.The global carbon emission accounting results show that the per capita carbon emissions from the production side and the consumption side of 129 economies increased by 54.0%and 46.0%to 5.1 tons and 5.8 tons on average from 1995 to 2015.Although the growth trend of carbon emissions on the production side was significantly faster than that on the consumption side,the distribution structure of carbon emission level was basically similar,showing the trapezoidal distribution on the both sides.The high-level CO₂emission units were generally developed economies and energy intensive economies,while the low-level CO₂ emission units were developing economies.Due to the cross-border transfer of emissions embodied in international trade,the distribution of global CO₂ emissions was unbalanced on the production side and the consumption side.Meanwhile,the CO₂ emission trends of the top 30 economies showed a downward trend on both the production side and the consumption side during the study period,by 19.5%and 13.0%respectively.However,there were still large differences in CO₂ emissions between these 30 economies and the rest economies.This caused different performance of the four clubs in this study.OECD and EU,which generally are consisted of developed economies,had the highest CO₂ levels with a slight decline on the production side and basically unchanged status on the consumption side.APEC,because it includes both developed and developing economies,showed great differences in internal emission distribution and obvious fluctuations in the emission trend.The per capita CO₂ emission level on the production side and the consumption side of the rest 80 developing economies（REST80）were relatively low,but gradually rose during the whole study period.All the convergence models verified that the global per capita CO₂ emissions from the production side and the consumption side were convergent during1995-2015.Theσconvergence test shows that the dispersion degree of global production-based and consumption-based CO₂ trend showed a downward trend;theγconvergence model reveals that the rank of 129 emitters have changed significantly during 1995-2015 on the production side and the consumption side.The stochastic convergence model verifies that the fluctuation of carbon emission trend caused by the shocks had only a temperate impact,and the global CO₂ emission trends on both the production and the consumption sides are stable.βconvergence analysis further finds that the convergence rate of CO₂ emissions on the production side was faster than that on the consumption side,and there were significant differences in the effects of economic development level,industrialization progress,industrial structure,energy intensity,international trade and population density on the convergence process of CO₂ emissions on the production side and the consumption side.In the club convergence analysis,OECD,EU,APEC and REST80 showed different pathways to the convergent trends.Each economy should design different policies to face the climate crisis according to their specific background.Finally,based on the results of empirical analyses,this paper provided policy suggestions from five aspects:identifying the main reduction duties,promoting urban population aggregation,focusing on energy transition in developed economies,accelerating industrial structure upgrading in developing economies,accelerating industrial structure upgrading in developing economies and formulating more reasonable international trade strategies,so as to promote the formulation of global climate policies and implementation.