Evolution of carbon emissions in China's digital economy: An empirical analysis from an entire industry chain perspective

Abstract

Accompanied by the increasing scale of the digital economy, the evolution of carbon emission analyses is becoming increasingly prominent. In this study, we constructed a digital economy input-output model and proposed a carbon emissions measurement framework from an industrial chain perspective. Based on this, we empirically calculated and analyzed the carbon emissions of China's digital economy and its evolution from 2007 to 2017. Moreover, we explored the driving factors of the evolution through a multi-layer nested SDA method. The results reveal that the (1) embodied carbon emissions of the digital economy are more significant than its direct carbon emissions, mainly due to intermediate inputs from non-digital sectors; (2) carbon emissions of China's digital economy are driven by export and investment, primarily gathering in the energy-intensive sectors of the upstream industrial chain and digital-intensive sectors of the downstream industry chain; and (3) expanding demand has led to an increase in carbon emissions from the digital economy while energy use and production processes are the leading drivers for the decrease in embodied carbon. Moreover, the role of demand expansion and energy use has weakened while the role of production processes has increased. This study offers scientific guidance for regulating the development of the digital economy and scientific carbon reduction.