Abstract
The launch of the national carbon emissions trading market in China is a policy to carry out the Beautiful China initiative and to establish a low-carbon economic development system that promotes carbon emission and waste reduction. In order to detect the carbon metabolic processes of the pilot and nonpilot municipalities or provinces in the northern region of China, the theory of urban carbon metabolism and the methods of input-output analysis and ecological network analysis were introduced and used. The results showed that the direct carbon emissions of Beijing and Tianjin had decreased, but their embodied carbon emissions had increased since 2012. The direct and embodied carbon emissions of the pilot sectors in Beijing and Tianjin had the same trend; specifically, the emissions of the sectors of mining and washing of coal, extraction of petroleum and natural gas, and manufacture of non-metallic mineral products decreased significantly, but the sectors of production and supply of electric power and steam with high carbon emission increased. The same trend of the embodied carbon emission intensities of sectors with that of their embodied carbon emissions verified that the embodied added values were not growing with the promotion of the carbon emission trading market. Subsequently, the embodied carbon emission of the pilot sectors in all the municipalities and provinces of the northern region were all contributed mainly by the emissions embodied by a path length less than 6; therefore, it showed that more attention should be paid to the trade among sectors with a path length less than 6 and reducing their carbon emissions. Furthermore, from 2007 to 2012, products or service trading among sectors mostly concentrated on sectors within one municipality or province, and these products or services had the characteristics of low carbon emission. Since 2012, the integration development of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration and the new regional economic patterns established in the northern region both promoted the trading across provinces and across sectors. This research is based on the background of the carbon emission trading policy and aims to build a methodology to identify the key actors and paths in a metabolic system. This could provide a scientific basis for regional policy implementation and regional long-term sustainable development.
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