Spatial Differences In Carbon Intensity Among Four Municipalities Of China: From The Final Demand Perspective

As the largest developing country and carbon emitter in the world,China is facing great pressure of emission reduction while maintaining high-quality economic growth.Hence,the carbon intensity indicator,which is the ratio of carbon emission and GDP,is widely adopted to set the national mitigation goals.City,as the main contributor of the national carbon emissions,plays a significant role in the national mitigation commitments.On account of a vast territory of China,the spatial differences are generally existed,such as resource endowment,economic development,production structure and so on.In particular,the spatial differences in carbon intensity among the cities are considered critical to the national emission performance.Among the cities,the four municipalities are the national strategic development cities.It is thus of significant to investigate the spatial differences and the drivers of carbon intensities among the municipalities in China.Considering the important role of final demands,this paper adopted the Leontief input-output model and multiplicative spatial structure decomposition analysis(SDA)to study the spatial differences in the carbon intensity of four municipalities from 2007 to 2017 at both the aggregate and final demand category levels.In addition,attribution analysis of carbon emission intensity effect is further carried out to determine the key industry sectors for the spatial difference of carbon emission intensity.The results show that :(1)At the total level,the spatial difference of aggregate carbon emission intensity(ACI)between cities is obvious,and Beijing is the best,followed by Shanghai,Tianjin and Chongqing.The spatial difference is mainly driven by the carbon emission intensity effect.The relative emission efficiency of Beijing is the highest,and Shanghai is proved to have the best production structure.The structure of final demand has a significant impact on spatial difference,which is most significant in Chongqing.(2)From the perspective of final demand,the aggregate embodied carbon intensity(AECI)by all final demand categories showed a downward trend;AECIs of domestic investment and interregional trade is low,while that of domestic consumption is high.The spatial difference of AECIs is mainly driven by emission intensity effect,and the influence is more and more significant.And the driving factors of AECIs divided into final demand categories show heterogeneity.Taking Beijing as an example,the structural effect of final demand helps to reduce the AECI of domestic consumption and investment,but has an opposite effect on inter-regional trade.(3)At the industry level,"electricity,heat production and supply industry"(s13),"oil coking and chemical industry products"(s4),"metal smelting and rolling processing industry"(s6)and "transportation,storage and postal industry"(s17)contribution to the spatial difference is obvious on carbon intensity effect,and the "electricity and heat production and supply" contributed the most.Therefore,city level should pay attention to regional cooperation on carbon efficiency and optimization and adjustment of structure.Also,aggregate embodied carbon efficiency by domestic investment and trade needs to be improved.Industry should pay attention to the emission reduction work of power and heat production and supply industry.