Empirical Study of Decomposition of CO2 Emission Factors in China

Abstract

China’s CO2 emissions increase has attracted world’s attention. It is of great importance to analyze China’s CO2 emission factors to restrain the CO2 rapid growing. The CO2 emissions of industrial and residential consumption sectors in China during 1980–2010 were calculated in this paper. The expanded decomposition model of CO2 emissions was set up by adopting factor-separating method based on the basic principle of the Kaya identities. The results showed that CO2 emissions of industrial and residential consumption sectors increase year after year, and the scale effect of GDP is the most important factor affecting CO2 emissions of industrial sector. Decreasing the specific gravity of secondary industry and energy intensity is more effective than decreasing the primary industry and tertiary industry. The emissions reduction effect of structure factor is better than the efficiency factor. For residential consumption sector, CO2 emissions increase rapidly year after year, and the economy factor (the increase of wealthy degree or income) is the most important factor. In order to slow down the growth of CO2 emissions, it is an important way to change the economic growth mode, and the structure factor will become a crucial factor.