Identifying Driving Factors of Jiangsu's Regional Sulfur Dioxide Emissions: A Generalized Divisia Index Method.

Junliang Yang,Haiyan Shan

doi:10.3390/ijerph16204004

Abstract

The Chinese government has made some good achievements in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions through end-of-pipe treatment. However, in order to implement the stricter target of sulfur dioxide emission reduction during the 13th “Five-Year Plan” period, it is necessary to find a new solution as quickly as possible. Thus, it is of great practical significance to identify driving factors of regional sulfur dioxide emissions to formulate more reasonable emission reduction policies. In this paper, a distinctive decomposition approach, the generalized Divisia index method (GDIM), is employed to investigate the driving forces of regional industrial sulfur dioxide emissions in Jiangsu province and its three regions during 2004–2016. The contribution rates of each factor to emission changes are also assessed. The decomposition results demonstrate that: (i) the factors promoting the increase of industrial sulfur dioxide emissions are the economic scale effect, industrialization effect, and energy consumption effect, while technology effect, energy mix effect, sulfur efficiency effect, energy intensity effect, and industrial structure effect play a mitigating role in the emissions; (ii) energy consumption effect, energy mix effect, technology effect, sulfur efficiency effect, and industrial structure effect show special contributions in some cases; (iii) industrial structure effect and energy intensity effect need to be further optimized.

Highlights

According to Su and Ang [41] and Wang et al [42], index decomposition analysis (IDA) has the following advantages compared with structural decomposition analysis (SDA)
The data usage in IDA does not depend on input–output tables
The generalized Divisia index method (GDIM) used in this paper indicates that two factors have a weak impact on the reduction of industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, which means they can still be further optimized

Summary

Introduction

With the rapid development of society, the extent that human beings affect the environment has gradually expanded. Because of the lack of a deep understanding of ecological protection, environmental pollution has become more serious. For China, the problem of air pollution is conspicuous [1], evidenced by the fact that only 35.80% of cities met the air quality standards in 2018 [2]. As one of the air pollutants, sulfur dioxide is the major contributor to acid precipitation [3], which causes heavy damages to human health and social development. The increase of sulfur dioxide emissions raises the mortality caused by respiratory diseases and lung cancer [6]. Sulfur dioxide has always been an important factor in air pollution prevention and control

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion