Analysis Of Carbon Transfer In The International Trade Of Computer Products

There are more and more scholars both in China and abroad pay attention to embodied carbon emission in international trade.In particular,there are substantial and ever growing embodied carbon emissions both in China and worldwide derived from the information and communications industry,especially for computers.Via the bottom-up process-based life cycle assessment method,this article examined embodied carbon emissions of energy intensive products(computers)in international trade from a product perspective.This paper analyzed embodied carbon emissions transfer among major computer trade regions(China,Taiwan Province,USA,EU,ASEAN,Japan,Rep.of Korea and Australia)during 2002 to 2013.From the perspective of life cycle assessment we found that the unit quality products of greenhouse gas intensity of computer industry is much greater than the traditional energy intensive industries such as steel.The EU and Japan are the two areas of the lowest carbon emissions intensity for computer production.While China and Australia are the two largest carbon emissions intensity countries.The results showed that embodied carbon emissions related to computer were increased sharply in global.China became the largest input country of embodied carbon emissions related to computer trade instead of Taiwan Province after 2003.In 2002,the largest trade flows of carbon emissions embodied in computer were from USA to Taiwan Province(1.65 Mt CO2-eq),followed by the flow from EU to Taiwan Province(1.48 Mt CO2-eq).By contrast,in 2013 the dominant global trade fluxes of GHG emissions were from USA to China(9.09 Mt CO2-eq)and from EU to China(7.05 Mt CO2-eq).The US and EU are the two largest export regions for embodied carbon emissions in computers trade.Besides,the amount increased very fast year by year.Embodied carbon emissions from portable computers were obviously larger than non-portable computers,moreover the difference between them becomes bigger.With the scenario analysis we found that if China's carbon consumption of computer production reach the EU standard,there would be 116.79 Mt CO2-eq carbon reduction for China.China undertook a large number of embodied carbon input.But from the perspective of the global chain analysis,most of the profits in computer trade was owned by developed countries,especially the US who was responsible for computer design,research and marketing management.From the view of fairness and efficiency win-win's point on greenhouse gas reduction,both China and its major trading partners should adopt valid policy to reduce carbon.