Analysis Of Carbon Dioxide Emissions And Impacts In Northwest China Based On MRIO

Along with global warming featured by rising temperature,greenhouse gas(GHG)emissions have received increasing attentions.As the main greenhouse gas,carbon dioxide(CO₂)contributes about 2/3 to the greenhouse effect and plays an important role in global climate change.Since the industrial revolution,rapid growing application and consumption of fossil fuels have led to a huge amount of carbon dioxide emissions.Given widespread concerns on increasing CO₂ emissions,international organizations and societies have been calling for global actions to reduce CO₂ emissions and slow down climate warming.Anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are closely related to energy production.Whereas,energy production is connected with a series of production and trade activities during the course of industrialization and economic development.Globalization enables developed countries and regions to take advantage of reducing local carbon dioxide emissions by relocating high-carbon-intensive industries,products or intermediate products to developed countries.This effectively reduces CO₂emissions in those developed countries but enhance the emissions in developing countries,resulting in inter-regional"environmental inequality"and"energy justice"issues.Since the reform and opening up to overseas,China's economy and industrialization gained rapid development.This great revolution also caused large differences between eastern and western China from a perspective of industrialization and urbanization in these two parts of China,creating the regional"environmental inequality"and"energy justice"between eastern and western China.Northwest China is featured by energy and mineral-abundant natural sources,vast geographic area,low population density,and the lack of high-value-added industries.Under the guidance of China's energy policy and"Transportation of electric from North to South"strategy,Northwestern China has become the largest national energy,and,as a result,yielding large amount of GHG emissions.This study employed a multi-regional input-output(MRIO)method,combining with available CO₂ emission data in Northwestern China,and calculated local CO₂ emissions caused by domestic inter-regional trade and exports,aiming to assess the GHG emission and climate forcing embodied in the transmission of energy and mineral product from west to east,thereby to help government agencies to take necessary actions in GHG emission reduction in this part of China,and to solve local"environmental inequity"problem.To do so,we also used an earth system model OSCAR to simulate the impact of CO₂ emissions on radiative forcing caused by Eastern China's demands to energy and mineral products from Northwestern China.The result will provide new perspectives and effort for assessing and studying climate change in Northwestern China.Based on these results,major findings are summarized below:(1)Provincial CO₂ emissions Northwestern China embodied in interprovincial energy and mineral product trade have increased significantly during 2007 and 2012.Among the six provinces in Northwestern China,Inner Mongolia,Xinjiang,and Shaanxi released a large amount of CO₂ in both 2007 and 2012,respectively.Of which,rapid growing CO₂ emissions from 2007 to 2012 were observed in Inner Mongolia,Xinjiang,and Ningxia.Lowest CO₂ emissions and growing rate from 2007 to 2012were identified in Qinghai Province.North China's products and service imports from Northwestern China contributed largest CO₂ to total CO₂ emission in Northwestern China.It was found that Central and Southwestern China's imports of carbon emission intensive products from Northwestern China illustrates more rapid CO₂ emission.However,Northeastern China's energy and mineral product imports from Northwestern China did not show significant increase from 2007 to 2012,which reduced the contribution of this region to Northwestern China's total CO₂ emission.the southern coastal area is far from the northwestern region,Southern seaboard region in China made lowest contribution to CO₂ emission in Northwestern China via product and service trade,likely because this region is far away from Northwestern China.The lowest trade activities between the Southern seaboard region and Northwestern China also was accompanied with weak impact on CO₂ climate forcing in Northwestern China.It is noted that the product and service export to overseas contributed highest trade-induced CO₂ emissions in Northwestern China in 2007 and 2012,respectively.(2)During 2007 and 2012,among traded product and services,the energy industry in Northwestern China contributed to CO₂ emissions.Inner Mongolia,Xinjiang,Shaanxi,and Ningxia as important energy production bases also ranked top provinces contributing to energy production and eastward transport induced CO₂ emissions.Following energy products,metal and non-metal products,chemical industrial products,transportation,and mineral mining also contribute significant amount of carbon emissions in Northwestern China.Eastern seaboard area has the most demand to these products in 2007,followed by Central China.The demands to these industrial products in Eastern China in 2012 increased markedly from 2007.(3)From the results of OSCAR model simulation,in 2007,about 62%of carbon dioxide emissions in Northwest China related to export and domestic trade to other regions,contribute about 7%of nation radiative forcing;similarly,in 2012 about 55%of carbon dioxide emissions in Northwest China caused by export and domestic trade to other regions,contribute about 11%of nation radiative forcing.Compared two years,effect of radiative forcing from CO₂ emissions in Northwest in 2012 is more powerful than it in 2007.