Identifying The Driving Forces Of Regional And Provincial CO₂ Emissions In China:Based On Temporal And Spatial Decomposition Analysis

Nowadays,climate change is one of the most serious environmental issues worldwide.The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report points out that greenhouse gas emissions and human activities are the main causes of climate change since the middle of the 20th century.At present,China is the world's largest CO₂ emitter and faces enormous pressure about reducing CO₂emissions.Chinese government commited to“reach the peak of CO₂ emissions around2030 and strive to achieve its peak as early as possilbe”;China also announced the goal of reduction in carbon intensity of 18%during the 13th Five-Year Plan.Due to China's vast territory and significant regional differences in economic development,energy consumption,resource endowments,CO₂emissions among regions also varies largely.Analyzing the characteristics and driving forces of CO₂ emissions in regional and provincial levels are helpful for China to assess the emission reduction potential.The conclusions of this paper also provide data support and policy suggestions for the government to formulate targeted energy saving and emission reduction policies and to achieve China's CO₂ emission reduction targets.This paper uses the data on CO₂ emissions and energy consumption during 2000-2015from China Emission Accounts and Datasets(CEADs)to study the CO₂ emission characteristics and driving forces of 4 regions and 30 provinces in China.First,this paper analyses distribution characteristics and differences of China's CO₂ emission at the national,regional and provincial level.Second,this paper divides the changes and differences of CO₂emissions of various provinces and regions in China into 9 types:carbon intensity effect,economic scale effect,energy intensity effect of the production sector,energy intensity effect of the household sector,industrial structure effect,energy structure effect,population scale effect,urbanization effect and income effect.Accordingly,this paper explores the changes of regional and provincial CO₂ emissions in China from 2000 to 2015 using the Log Mean Divisia Index decomposition model(LMDI),and analyzes and quantifies the eight main driving forces.Additionally,multi-regional(M-R)spatial decomposition model is used to decompose the differences of CO₂ emissions between the provincial level and the national average from 2000 to 2015,and ranks the effects of various driving forces of each region and province from big to small,to investigate the social-economic development status and the potential of emission-reduction of China's 30 provinces.The results show that:(1)China's CO₂ emissions increased from 3.40 billion tons in2000 to 9.22 billion tons in 2015,with a growth rate of 171.43%.According to the growth rate of CO₂ emissions,2000-2015 years are divided into four stages.(2)In different periods,economic scale effect is the main positive driving force leading to the increase in CO₂emissions at both national and provincial level from 2000 to 2015.Energy intensity effect in the production sector is the dominant driving force which contributes to the reduction of CO₂emissions.Energy structure effect is a negative driving force of CO₂ emissions,but its impact is less important than that of energy intensity effect during the whole study period.(3)From a spatial point of view,energy intensity effect and economic scale effect of production sectors are the main driving forces responsible for the differences in CO₂ emissions among regions.Industrial structure effect and energy structure effect are also important driving forces which results in the increasing differences in regional and provincial CO₂ emissions.In contrast,energy intensity effect,urbanization effect,population scale effect,and income effect in the household sectors have relatively smaller driving effects on the differences.Energy-intensive and underdeveloped regions have greater potential for emission reductions.On the basis of research results,this paper puts forward targeted policy suggestions for China to achieve emission reduction targets at both national and provincial levles.