Evaluation Of Low-carbon Index In End-use Sectors And Industrial Carbon Emission Impacts In Henan Province

With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization, the issues ofclimate change, environmental pollution and energy crisis have become restrictingfactors to the social economic development in the world. For this reason, manycountries have taken a lot of countermeasures, and low-carbon economy came intobeing. As the largest developing country and the largest carbon dioxide emitter in theworld, China is facing great pressure to mitigate the climate change. Therefore, it isurgent to transform the existing economic development mode in China. Besides, asthe main area of the Central Plains Economic Zone, Henan Province is in the stage ofrapid development, whose total energy consumption and carbon emissions willcontinue to rise in the future. In this situation, it is significant to develop thelow-carbon economy in Henan Province, in order to coordinate the relationship ofeconomic development, energy consumption and environmental pollution.Firstly, we analyzed the current status of economic development, energyconsumption and carbon emissions in Henan Province, to emphasize the importanceand necessity of developing low carbon economy in Henan Province. Then weestablished macroeconomic indicators and energy consumption indicators of end-usesector and analyzed the differences of low-carbon economy level in18prefecture-level cities in Henan province. The result shows that industry has thegreatest influence on Henan’s low-carbon economy development. On this basis, wecalculated the industry carbon emissions in Henan Province, and used Logarithmicmean divisia index method to deeply analyze the impact factors of the high carbonemissions industry. Finally, according to the low-carbon economy development leveland the carbon emission impact factors of various industries, we pertinently found outthe appropriate path to develop low-carbon economy in Henan Province.From this study, the following conclusions can be drawn. First of all, theeconomic development in Henan Province mainly depends on the secondary industry,and the tertiary industry is developing slowly. The total energy consumption grows too fast, and the energy production of Henan can not meet its own consumption. Andthe energy consumption structure mainly depends on coal, which leads to a rapidincrease in carbon emissions. According to the environmental Kuznets curve, the totalcarbon emissions in Henan province has not yet appeared so-called "turning point",carbon emissions will continue to increase. Secondly, both macro indicators andend-use sector indicators show that there are big gaps in low-carbon developing levelsof different cities in Henan Province. Low-carbon development areas in relativelyhigher level in Henan Province are mainly concentrated in areas south of the YellowRiver and western regions. Low-carbon development areas in relatively lower levelare mainly concentrated in the northwest regions. This distribution is consistent withthe distribution pattern of the industrial economy in Henan Province. And wecompare the five end-use sector indexes and find that industry is the biggest factoraffecting the level of low-carbon development in Henan Province. Thirdly, we useLogarithmic Mean Divisia Index method to analyze carbon emission affecting factorsof the industrial sector in Henan Province. The results show that the changes ofeconomic scale contribute the largest carbon emission increase and it increasescarbon emission265.79million tons, which accounts for99.65%of the total carbonemission growth. The change of industrial internal structure is the most importantfactor in reducing carbon emissions in Henan Province, reducing by73.4million tonscarbon emissions. The energy restructuring of the industry in Henan Province haslittle effect on carbon emissions changes, which indicates that the energyconsumption structure needed to further optimize in Henan Province. The industrieswhich have large carbon emissions in Henan Province are mainly coal mining,petroleum processing, chemical raw materials manufacturing, electricity, ferrous andnon-ferrous metals. They are energy-intensive industries in the national economy.Lastly, to achieve low-carbon economy in Henan Province, we should adjust theindustrial structure and implement low-carbon technologies. We should consider thelocal specialties of18prefecture-level cities in Henan while developing low-carboneconomy in the overall province level.