Empirical Study On Linkage Carbon Emissions And Responsibility Of Industrial Sectors

Recently, some practical problems including global warming and environmental quality deteriorating are emerging, which make every country in the world focus on the greenhouse gas emissions and environmental conservation. This also reaches an universal agreement to develop low-carbon economy in the world. In the long run, it is a correct choice to reduce carbon emissions, alleviate the trend of global warming and avert weather disasters; in the short run, the carbon reduction more or less affects the economic development of developed and developing countries, which makes an universal agreement fail to reach on carbon emissions requirement according to "common but differentiated responsibilities" among countries in the world.For China, in 2015, the target of reducing 17% carbon intensity of that in 2010 arouses wide attention from all class of society. The industrial activities are an important source of carbon emissions, which make carbon emissions in industrial sectors closely relate to the smooth realization of this target. The experience shows that the attention should be focused on carbon emissions from the prospective of industrial linkage as well as total carbon emissions in industries, carbon intensity in sectors and direct carbon emissions if industrial sectors are closely related to each other. For this reason, some important problems arise in the current field of carbon emission research, such as how to measurement of carbon linkage in sectors, how to balance the carbon emissions flow and transfer created in production, distribution and transfer in sectors and how to define and decompose carbon emissions responsibilities in sectors.On the basis of a systematic review on the industrial linkage theory and carbon emissions theory, this thesis constructs an integrated theoretical framework, which associates linkage carbon emissions, carbon emissions propagation and carbon emissions responsibility in harmony for an organic whole. Then, taking the industrial sectors as object, the industrial linkage as pointcut and the carbon emissions responsibility as foothold, this thesis gives the carbon emissions transfer using the modified hypothetical extraction method and identifies the emission propagation path based on the linkage carbon emissions computation by the environment-input-output analysis framework. With the combination of linkage carbon emission and carbon emission responsibility, the total about demand of emissions and output of emissions are efficiently decomposed, which gives the theoretical basis and methodological support to develop carbon-reduction policies and guide low-carbon behaviors.The empirical analysis is the main body of this thesis. Based on defining the industry sectors as the research object, the total carbon emissions, carbon emission intensity, cumulative carbon emissions are computed, then the changing trend is analyzed.On the existence of carbon emissions flow among different sectors, this thesis presents linkage carbon emissions by hypothetical extraction method, which is defined as the difference between carbon emissions with and without a given sector.In this way, carbon emissions of sectors in procedures of independent production, bidirectional linkage, backward demand and forward supply are presented by internal effect, mixed effect, net backward effect and net forward effect; the net transfer is presented by difference between net backward effect and net forward effect; the demand of emissions are presented by the sum of internal effect, mixed effect and net backward effect; the output of emissions are presented by internal effect, mixed effect and net forward effect. Then, the amount and direction of emissions are obtained by decomposing the net backward effect, net forward effect and net transfer when this sector links to other sectors in the production procedure.From the concept of linkage carbon emissions and deep economic distance between sectors, the propagation of the change of sectors’final demand or original input to other sectors is studied using average propagation length. The comparison between average propagation length and its threshold value can identify the carbon supply sector and carbon demand sector and further identify the carbon propagation chain. To measure the propagation effect of the change of sectors’final demand and original input to other sectors, some indices are used including carbon influence coefficient, carbon sensitivity coefficient and carbon inducing coefficient.Since a sector is both a procedure and consumer, the apportion method of output of emissions and demand’of emissions with a fixed sum is given using ZSG-DEA model, which is guided by the principle of "an unexpected output as an input" and concerned with 17% reduction of carbon emission intensity presented by China. Through iterations, producer responsibility and consumer responsibility of sectors are obtained, which are both ZSG-DEA efficient and BCC efficient. According to a proportionality, producer responsibility and consumer responsibility are further decomposed to the responsibility that sectors should bear in procedures of independent production, bidirectional linkage, backward demand and forward supply. This gives some references for Chinese industrial sectors to make carbon-reduction policies.At last but not least, this thesis gives some countermeasures and suggestions on how to reduce carbon emissions and apportion emission responsibility, and how to fight the initiative in climate negotiations:(1) measure the carbon emission transfer in industry sectors and construct a responsibility sharing system in carbon emission reduction; (2) generalize the low-carbon industrial chain and coordinate the carbon reduction behaviors in sectors; (3)supervise the key sectors of carbon reduction and strengthen the propagation; (4) promote the industrial restructuring and develop strategic emerging industries; (5) optimize the structure of energy consumption and improve energy efficiency in sectors.