Abstract
The main objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the key drivers behind changes of CO2 emissions in the residential sectors of the emerging economies, China and India. For the analysis, we investigate to what extent changes in residential emissions are due to changes in energy emissions coefficients, energy consumption structure, energy intensity, household income, and population size. We decompose the changes in residential CO2 emissions in China and India into these five contributing factors from 1990 to 2011 by applying the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. Our results show that the increase in per capita income level was the biggest contributor to the increase of residential CO2 emissions, while the energy intensity effect had the largest effect on CO2 emissions reduction in residential sectors in both countries. This implies that investments for energy savings, technological improvements, and energy efficiency policies were effective in mitigating CO2 emissions. Our results also depict that the change in CO2 emission coefficients for fuels which include both direct and indirect emission coefficients slowed down the increase of residential emissions. Finally, our results demonstrate that changes in the population and energy consumption structure drove the increase in CO2 emissions.
Highlights
Global warming has been regarded as one of the most important environmental problems of our age
Trends and changes in CO2 emissions in such countries are closely associated with their economic growth and changes in energy consumption
India’s residential sector is responsible for 36% of the nation’s total final energy consumption, which is the largest sector in its economy
Summary
Global warming has been regarded as one of the most important environmental problems of our age. The ever-increasing amount of CO2 emissions, which are partly to blame for the greenhouse effect, is aggravating climate change. In an effort to mitigate climate change, the international society has been undertaking numerous efforts to reduce CO2 emissions at the national level. Given their high growth potential, emerging economies significantly affect future emission levels. Among the world’s emerging economies, China and India are the largest CO2 emitters, accounting for almost one-third of the world’s CO2 emissions [1,2]. In recent years, rapid economic growth accompanied by increasing CO2 emissions has focused the world’s attention on China and India in the context of emissions reduction
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