Carbon Emission of Guangxi’s Major Industries and Measures for Low-carbon Economic Development

Abstract

Guangxi’s economic development mainly relies on major industries such as electric power, steel, cement, nonferrous metallurgy, papermaking, sugar, starch, and glass industry. With continuous development of the economy, the situation of carbon emission reduction of these industries is not optimistic. In this paper, carbon emission of Guangxi’s major industries in 2012 was calculated using Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) method, and then, the situation of carbon emissions was analyzed. The results showed that carbon emission of Guangxi’s major industries mainly came from energy consumption, but carbon emissions in the technological process also should not be ignored; carbon emissions were mainly from industries such as steel, cement, thermal power, and nonferrous metallurgical and chemical industry where energy consumption is high and energy efficiency is low. The key factors that influence carbon emissions of these industries included irrational energy consumption structure and energy processing, the overall low utilization efficiency, and the increasing demand with the rapid economic growth. In order to realize a low-carbon economy and sustainable development in these major industries, the following measures were proposed such as formulation of low-carbon development planning and regulatory standards in these industries, management strengthening of the energy consumption in existing enterprises, optimization of the industrial and energy structure, and actively carrying out industrial upgrade, vigorous promotion of the use of new energy, establishment of the financing and policy guaranteeing system, and improvement of the processing and utilization of energy resources.