Research On Carbon Emissions Accounting And Low-carbon Development Paths Of Chinese Paper Products

The greenhouse effect caused by carbon emissions is a serious challenge facing the world.China is the country with the highest carbon emissions in the world,and is also the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper products,and an important trading country for paper products.As an energy-intensive industry,China’s paper and paper products industry and its extended industrial chain undoubtedly occupy a pivotal position in the national energy conservation and emission reduction tasks.Therefore,accurately understanding the carbon emission sources at all stages of the paper product life cycle,analyzing its carbon emission characteristics,and exploring the impact factors of carbon emissions in the main stages of the life cycle of paper product are of great significance for the green and low carbon sustainable development of paper products.Based on the consideration of avoiding carbon leakage under the open economy,this paper estimates the carbon emissions of China’s paper products from the perspective of consumer responsibility.First,the life cycle of paper product is divided into raw material acquisition,pulping and papermaking,transportation and waste paper disposal.According to the principle of“who consumes and who bears”,the carbon emissions of paper and paperboard produced for export are deducted.In the raw material acquisition,pulp and paper,transportation and waste paper disposal stages,the carbon emissions were estimated by the grass-grain ratio method,the carbon emission coefficient method,the STIRFDT decomposition model and the first-order decay method.The results show that in 2007-2016,the raw material acquisition phase is the only phase in which carbon emissions are gradually declining throughout the life cycle of paper product.The pulping and papermaking stage is the stage with the highest carbon emissions in the whole life cycle of paper products,and shows an increasing trend.Followed by the waste paper disposal stage,the CO₂ released by unit waste paper incineration is higher than that of landfill.Due to the scarcity of forest resources in China and the low recovery rate of waste paper,the import dependence of papermaking raw materials is high.Therefore,the carbon emissions from the import of papermaking raw materials in the transportation phase are much higher than the carbon emissions from domestic waste paper recycling.Carbon emissions from exporting paper and paperboard increase as paper and paperboard exports increasing.Overall,the carbon emissions of paper products throughout the life cycle are slowly increasing in the past 10 years.Furthermore,this paper combines the LMDI decomposition model and the path analysis method to explore the impact factors of carbon emissions in the highest stage of paper product life cycle,namely pulping and papermaking stage.From the impact factor decomposition and identification results:in 2007-2016,energy intensity is the main inhibitor of carbon emissions.The energy structure has an inhibitory effect on carbon emissions,but due to the high proportion of coal energy consumption,the energy structure has a tendency to exhibit carbon emissions in most years.Economic development is the main driving factor for carbon emissions.In most years,economic growth and carbon emissions are weakly decoupled or even decoupled.The labor supply represents the scale of paper products industry,and has a positive effect on carbon emissions,but the effect is not large.Therefore,the factor was kicked out in the path analysis.According to the estimation of the whole life cycle of paper products and the analysis of carbon emission impact factors in the main stage,this paper puts forward the feasible ways of green and low carbon sustainable development of paper products from four aspects:technology,structure,consumption and system.On this basis,in order to reflect the emission reduction effect of some feasible ways,using scenario analysis to predict the future development of carbon emissions by improving energy structure and increasing waste paper recycling rate.The prediction results show that:improving energy structure and waste paper recycling rate both can reduce carbon emissions,but the efficiency of reducing energy structure emissions is gradually reduced,while increasing the recycling rate of waste paper is the opposite.Compared with improving energy consumption structure,it is easier to reduce carbon emissions by increasing waste paper recycling rate.