Study On Calcuation And Impact Factors Of Carbon Emissions From Residents’ Consumption

With the socio-economic development and improvement of residents’ living standards, residents’ consumption has become an important source of energy consumption and carbon emissions, and its contribution to carbon emissions can not be ignored. Therefore, in order to achieve a low carbon development, it isn’t enough that only coordinate well the contradiction between "economic growth" and "energy saving and emission reduction", but also the contradiction between "consumption expand" and "energy saving and emission reduction". However, the current emission reduction policies are mainly on production process and lacks effective emission reduction measures on residents’ consumption. This paper studies on the evaluation and impact factors of carbon emissions from residents’ consumption to provide scientific basis for formulation of emission reduction policies and management measures.The main research contents of this paper include:(1) Constructed the calculation model of carbon emissions from residents’ consumption, then did calculation and analysis on China’s carbon emissions. This paper divided the carbon emissions from residents’ consumption into two categories: carbon emissions from residential energy consumption and carbon emissions embedded in residents’ consumption of goods and services, then constructed the calculation model of the two categories carbon emissions based on the emissions coefficient method and the combination of environmental input output-life cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) and consumer lifestyle approach (CLA) respectively. The urban and rural carbon emissions from residents’ consumption of30provinces in China had been estimated based on the calculation model, then the scale, structure, rule of change, urban and rural difference, regional difference of China’s carbon emissions from residents’ consumption had been described quantitatively. Viewed the carbon emissions from residents’ consumption as an agent index of environmental influences, this paper did decoupling analysis between carbon emissions from residents’ consumption and residents’ consumption expenditure, then evaluated the residents’ consumption pattern of30provinces in China.(2) Constructed model of impact factors of carbon emissions from residential energy consumption based on index decomposition analysis (IDA), examined the influence of factors’ variation of socio-economic and population to carbon emissions from residential energy consumption. Then did empirical research on30provinces in China from2000to2010and proposed suggestions for energy saving and emissions reduction in residential energy consumption based on the empirical results.(3) Constructed model of impact factors of carbon emissions embedded in residents’ consumption of goods and services based on the combination of environmental input output-life cycle analysis (EIO-LCA) and structural decomposition analysis (SDA), examined the influences of factors variations from production system and consumption system to embedded carbon emissions comprehensively. Then did empirical research on30provinces in China and proposed suggestions for energy saving and emissions reduction in residents’consumption of goods and services based on the empirical results.The innovations of this paper mainly reflect in the following aspects:(1) By studying on carbon emissions based on consumption perspective, this paper made up of the shortcoming of attention on energy consumption and carbon emissions from residents’ consumption, and enriched the theories and methods of the study on carbon emissions from residents’ consumption. There were many theories and methods in the researches of carbon emissions based on production perspective. The study which was based on consumption perspective was resolving the problem of "emissions for who", it emphasized the "human" factor and could reflect the real cause of the growth of carbon emissions from the root, thus could help to set up more effective mechanism for "energy saving and emission reduction". But the research of this aspect was very weak at present.(2) Improved the calculate method of carbon emissions embedded in residents’ consumption of goods and services. Consumer lifestyle approach (CLA) was a commonly used method in calculating the embedded carbon emissions, but it ignored the dependence of industries in economic system and only calculated the carbon emissions from industries which were directly related to the production process of goods or services, didn’t consider the carbon emissions in the middle production process. This paper improved the CLA by making use of EIO-LCA, and the calculations were more accurate. In addition, this paper measured carbon emissions from residents’consumption from regional level firstly, and revealed the regional difference of carbon emissions from residents’ consumption in China. (3) Did systematic research on impact factors of carbon emissions from residents’ consumption, and provided theory basis for the formulation of energy saving and emissions reduction in consumption field. The existed researches of impact factors of carbon emissions were focus on production field, and which on residents’ consumption were rare. This paper applied methods of impact factors (index decomposition method and structural decomposition analysis) to the researches of impact factors of carbon emissions from residential energy consumption, proposed new ideas for energy saving and emissions reduction that "In order to achieve effective reduction, it isn’t enough that only implement policy on production system, but should improve the production system and consumption system at the same time"...