Trade Embodied Carbon Emissions And Its Influencing Factors At The Provincial Level Of The Yellow River Basin

The issue of global climate change caused by greenhouse gases has become the focus of attention of all countries in the world,and it is a global consensus to actively respond to climate change and take responsibility for carbon emission reduction.The issue of carbon emission allocation between countries due to embodied carbon emissions from trade and carbon emission transfer has become a hot topic in global climate governance.In order to achieve China’s carbon peak and carbon neutral emission reduction targets,it is necessary to allocate the responsibility for emission reduction to each province.As trade between provinces and regions is frequent in China,the transfer of carbon emissions between regions is increasing,so it is necessary to measure the transfer of carbon emissions arising from trade and reasonably define the carbon emission responsibility to be borne by each province.As an important energy base in China,the Yellow River Basin relied on energy for its crude development,leading to a concentration of pollution and emissions in the region,and faces enormous pressure to reduce emissions.Studying the embodied carbon emissions and their driving factors in the Yellow River Basin is of great significance in promoting ecological protection and high-quality development in the Yellow River Basin.Based on China’s multi-regional input-output data and the MRIO model,this paper measured and analysed the embodied carbon emissions from the production-side responsibility and consumption-side responsibility perspectives in 2007,2012 and 2017 in the Yellow River Basin provinces,and on this basis,decomposed the value added of product outflows in the provinces,constructd a carbon emission responsibility sharing model used the provincial value added share as the sharing factor,and analyses the three responsibility sharing perspectives under the model is based on the decomposition of the value added of product outflows in the provinces.Secondly,the embodied carbon transfer from inter-provincial trade,the direction of transfer between domestic provinces,and analysed the key industrial sectors for embodied carbon transfer in the Yellow River Basin.Finally,based on the LMDI decomposition method,the drivers of embodied carbon emission changes in inter-provincial trade were decomposed into three factors: scale effect,structural effect and intensity effect,and calculated contribution of each influencing factor.The research results show that:(1)the production-side carbon emissions in the Yellow River Basin showed an overall upward trend,and the production-side carbon emissions in each province roughly show a regional pattern of high in the east and low in the west,and most of the provinces had a fast growth in production-side carbon emissions from 2007 to 2012,and the growth rate slowed down or showed a decreasing trend from 2012 to 2017.Domestic carbon emissions and carbon emissions from intermediate products were the main components of production-side carbon emissions in each province.(2)Total consumption-side carbon emissions in nine provinces and regions continued to grow from 2007 to 2017,with Shandong and Henan being the provinces with the largest consumption-side carbon emissions.Domestic carbon emissions and carbon emissions from the transfer of intermediate products are the main components of consumption-side carbon emissions in each province.(3)Under the principle of shared responsibility,the nine provinces in the Yellow River Basin were all responsible for a larger share of the embodied carbon emissions from outward trade and a smaller share of the embodied carbon emissions from inward trade.The nine provinces are in the order of Shandong,Inner Mongolia,Henan,Shanxi,Sichuan,Shaanxi,Ningxia,Gansu and Qinghai in terms of their share of carbon emissions.(4)There is a clear difference between production-side and consumption-side carbon emissions in each province,and the shared responsibility carbon emissions are between production-side and consumption-side carbon emissions.(5)Most provinces in the Yellow River Basin were net carbon transfer out of the region.The transfer of embodied carbon from the nine provinces outside the region mainly went to Jiangsu,Beijing,Guangdong,Zhejiang and Shanghai.The Yellow River Basin provinces transfered in embodied carbon mainly from the provinces within the region and their neighbouring provinces.(6)The production and supply of electricity and heat,metal smelting and rolling processing,coal mining and washing,and other industrial sectors were the main source sectors of embodied carbon emissions transferred out of the Yellow River Basin provinces.(7)Among the factors affecting the embodied carbon in trade in the Yellow River Basin,the scale effect was the main factor driving the growth of embodied carbon emissions and had the greatest influence.The structure effect was different in different provinces in different periods,and the intensity effect was the main factor that inhibits the growth of trade embodied carbon.The scale effect,structure effect and intensity effect were mainly concentrated in Shandong,Henan and Shaanxi in the production and supply of electricity and heat,and metal smelting and rolling processing industries.Based on the research results,this paper makes suggestions for emission reduction in the Yellow River Basin in terms of optimising the energy structure,reasonably defining the responsibility for carbon emissions,strengthening cooperation and exchange of technologies,establishing a compensation mechanism for carbon emission amounts,and reducing the carbon emission intensity of key industrial sectors.