Impact of non-fossil electricity on the carbon emissions embodied in China's exports

Abstract

Abstract Embodied carbon emissions have been particularly high in Chinese exports due to the domination of coal consumption in China's electricity mix. In order to decarbonize China's electricity system, the government of China embarked on a large-scale, national roll-out of non-fossil electricity (NE). Thus, understanding the carbon impacts of NE may help facilitate China's efforts to reduce emissions embodied in exports. This study builds a hybrid, energy-economic, multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model to investigate the impact of NE development on emissions embodied in exports by comparing the observed NE expansion against a counterfactual scenario without NE deployment. The total contribution of NE expansion between 2002 and 2014 is decomposed into three factors: intra-regional, electricity transmission as well as inter-regional supply-chain. Our results show that NE expansion reduced carbon emissions embodied in exports by 203 Mt (million tonnes) in 2007, 243 Mt in 2010 and 259 Mt in 2014. These mitigated emissions accounted for 11.3% in 2007, 14.9% in 2010 and 19.5% in 2014 of the total emissions embodied in exports. The intra-regional effect accounted for approximately 60% of those CO2 savings during 2007–2014. The effect of electricity transmission accounted for more than 20%, and the remainder of emission reductions resulted from inter-regional economic linkages.