Abstract
There are industry lock-in and regional lock-in phenomena in China’s manufacturing industry carbon emissions. However, the existing researches often focus on global carbon emissions, which is not adverse to finding the main problems of manufacturing industry carbon emissions. The biggest contributions of this study are the identification of the industry lock-in and regional lock-in of China’s manufacturing industry and the finding of the regional factors that affect the carbon lock-in of the manufacturing industry, which points out the direction for the low-carbon transformation of the local manufacturing industry. This paper is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) carbon emissions coefficient method and energy consumption data from 2000 to 2016 to count the manufacturing industry carbon emissions of 30 provinces in China (except Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet). On this basis, the paper uses a spatial–temporal geographical weighted regression (GTWR) model to analysis the regional influencing factors of the high-carbon manufacturing industry. Results demonstrate that China’s high-carbon manufacturing industry mainly concentrates on the ferrous metal processing industry, non-metallic mineral manufacturing industry and other sectors. In addition, the carbon emissions of high-carbon manufacturing industries are mainly concentrated in Bohai Bay and the North China Plain. The industrial structure and economic scale are the main reasons for the regional carbon lock-in of the high-carbon manufacturing industry, and the strength of the lock-in has continued to increase. Resource endowment is a stable factor of carbon lock-in in high-carbon regions. Technological progress helps to unlock carbon, while foreign direct investment results in the enhancement of carbon regional lock-in. This study focuses on the regional factors of carbon lock-in in the manufacturing industry, hoping to provide decision support for the green development of China’s manufacturing industry.
Highlights
China is undergoing rapid industrialization and the rigid demand of economic growth for energy consumption maintains a high growth trend
We found that researchers usually covered the whole manufacturing industry in terms of the carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry and few scholars studied the issue of the carbon emissions industry lock-in of the manufacturing industry, which leads to the lack of pertinence of research and is not conducive to the carbon unlocking of the high-carbon manufacturing industry
Market factors in many regions will gradually surpass resource endowment, which has a significant impact on the production layout of the high-carbon manufacturing industry, but at the same time, the energy consumption structure dominated by fossil energy will not be fundamentally improved and the carbon emissions of the manufacturing industry will form a new round of regional lock-in (Figure 1)
Summary
China is undergoing rapid industrialization and the rigid demand of economic growth for energy consumption maintains a high growth trend. Carbon emissions in energy consumption may bring great pressure on the sustainable development of economy, society and environment. The manufacturing industry is the main driving force of industrial economic growth in China. It produces strong negative feedback to the environment while bringing high economic benefits. How to achieve the carbon emissions reduction of the manufacturing industry has become an urgent problem. The carbon emissions of China’s manufacturing industry have a significant industry concentration and lock-in. It is of great practical significance to clarify the causes of carbon lock-in in these high-carbon manufacturing industries and to analyze the factors of carbon emissions regional lock-in
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