Exploring the characteristics of production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions of major economies: A multiple-dimension comparison

Abstract

Addressing climate change requires the efforts of all countries with common but differentiated responsibilities. The mitigation responsibilities one country takes greatly depends on its national emission inventories. As a good complement to the production-based accounting (PBA) principle, consumption-based accounting (CBA) principle has been widely concerned. However, few studies focus on emissions equity issues temporally and spatially. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of production-based and consumption-based CO2 emissions for 14 major economies through multiple-dimension comparisons to get insight into the emissions equity comparisons among major emitters. In particular, four categories of economies with different dynamic features are divided based on their percentage differences between PBA and CBA emissions. Demographical and economic variables are additionally taken into consideration. The results indicate that France and Russia hold extreme characteristic on evaluating the emission difference between two principles, while China and Chinese Taiwan reveal uniquely increasingly larger gaps between two principle emissions. Besides, the per capita CBA emissions grows more prominently and possesses a more obviously positive correlation with their own per capita GDP which confirms that CBA principle is potentially attractive for estimating national emissions.