Calculation And Study On The Driving Factors Of Embodied Carbon In Export Of China’s Forest Products

The main source of greenhouse gases is carbon emissions.In the past two decades,about 25% of global carbon emissions originate from the embodied carbon emissions in export trade,further aggravating global warming.In response to the continuous deterioration of climate change,international organizations and countries around the world have issued a series of strict policies and regulations.Therefore,by measuring the embodied carbon emissions in export trade,it has become one of the focuses of international climate negotiations to clarify the carbon emission responsibilities of each country.As the largest developing country in the world,China has made a solemn commitment to "peak CO2 emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060" in the context of addressing climate change,which fully demonstrates the consciousness of a responsible power.Meanwhile,it also makes China’s export trade under the constraints of the "dual carbon" goal,and it is urgent to seek new entry points and power points.China is the largest country in the production,consumption and trade of forest products.The vigorous development of forestry economy is an important driving force for China’s economic growth,but China also bears huge embodied carbon emissions due to the international export trade of this industry.Therefore,it is very important to clarify the current situation and driving factors of the embodied carbon in exports of the forest products industry.This can not only reveal the emission reduction responsibility of forest products industry in export trade,but also provide an important scientific basis for formulating effective emission reduction policies.Firstly,this paper analyzes the current situation of the overall export trade of China’s forest products industry,and subdivides the forest products industry into paper products industry,timber and furniture products to further analyze the export product structure.Secondly,this paper reclassifies,integrates and matches the energy consumption data of each industry in the China Statistical Yearbook,the export trade volume of each industry in the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database and the latest input-output tables in the World Input-Output Database(WIOD).Combined with the multi-regional inputoutput(MRIO)model,this paper estimated the embodied carbon emissions of China’s export of forest products industry as a whole,paper products,timber and furniture products from1992 to 2020.In order to observe the trend of embodied carbon emissions in China’s export of forest products industry in a longer time range,it will provide necessary expansion and supplement for the literature on embodied carbon in forestry economics.Based on the measurement data of the embodied carbon emissions in the forest products industry,this paper further investigates the driving factors of the embodied carbon emissions in exports.Firstly,this paper establishes panel data from five major trading partner countries or regions of China’s forest products industry exports,and uses unit root tests to test the stationarity of the data.Secondly,through the Hausman test,the random effect panel regression model is determined as the baseline regression model.This paper explores the driving factors of China’s export embodied carbon of forest products industry from the supply side and the demand side,and conducts in-depth analysis from the perspective of paper products industry,timber and furniture products.In addition,this paper uses the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator(LASSO)model in machine learning to further explore the priority and heterogeneity across the industries of driving factors.Finally,as a robustness test of the regression results,this paper explores the country-specific heterogeneity of factors affecting the export of forest products industry by establishing time series data of five major trading partner countries.Through a series of empirical studies,the conclusions of this paper are as follows:Firstly,the overall embodied carbon emissions of export in the forest products industry increased by 4.14 times from 1992 to 2020.Among them,the increase and value of the embodied carbon in exports of the paper products industry is much higher than that of the timber and furniture products,and it is the main source of the embodied carbon emissions of export in the forest products industry.Secondly,from the perspective of supply-side,the proportion of coal consumption in the production of products,the degree of trade liberalization in China,and whether China’s accession to the World Trade Organization have significant positive effects on the embodied carbon in the export trade of China’s forest products industry.From the perspective of demand-side,the increase of export volume and the degree of trade liberalization of trading partners will increase the export carbon implicit of China’s forest products industry the increase in the export trade volume of the industry and the degree of trade liberalization in the trading partner countries will increase the embodied carbon in exports of China’s forest products industry.Thirdly,the volume of export trade and technological progress are the two most important driving factors of the embodied carbon emissions of export trade in China’s forest products industry.Fourthly,there is heterogeneity in the driving factors of embodied carbon emissions of export among forest products’ sub-sectors.For example,the proportion of coal consumption has a significant impact on the carbon embodied in exports from the paper products industry,but has no impact on timber and furniture products.In addition,the driving factors of carbon embodied in exports of China’s forest products industry are also heterogeneous among different countries.Based on the research conclusions,this paper puts forward the following policy suggestions: Firstly,policy makers should pay attention to the forest products industry with a large space for emission reduction,and guide the production and export of forest products towards a low-carbon and sustainable development path to maximize the efficiency of emission reduction.Secondly,the export trade structure of the forest products industry should be adjusted.For example,while keeping the total export volume of the forest products industry unchanged,China should reduce the export of energy-intensive products such as paper products and switch to the export of low-carbon-intensive products.