Abstract
Industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions are mainly derived from fossil energy use, which is composed of procedures involving extraction of energy from the natural system as well as its exchange and consumption in the social system. However, recent research on low-carbon transitions considers the cost of energy commodities from a separate perspective—a biophysical or monetary perspective. We introduce the energy intensity ratio (EIR), which is a novelty perspective combining biophysical and monetary metrics to estimate the cost of energy commodities in the low-carbon energy transitions. This combination is essential, since the feedback of energy into the biophysical system will influence the performance of energy in the economic system and vice versa. Based on the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI), we developed the EIR-LMDI method to explain the changes in CO2 emissions. The changes in CO2 emissions caused by the EIR are the net energy effect. In China, the net energy effect kept CO2 emissions at a compound annual growth rate of 6.15% during 2007–2018. Especially after 2014, the net energy effect has been the largest driver of the increase in CO2 emissions. During the study period, high net energy usually indicated high CO2 emissions. Coal is the most important energy commodity and dominates the net energy effect; the least volatile component is the EIR of natural gas. The EIR affects CO2 emissions by the price crowding-out effect and the scale expansion effect, which make the process of low-carbon transition uncertain. The results illuminate that policymakers should monitor the net energy effect to prevent it from offsetting efforts to reduce energy intensity.
Highlights
After the Paris Agreement, governments have struggled to balance the rate of economic growth and the amount of industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions
By putting the energy intensity ratio (EIR) into the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI), we extract the effects of net energy on CO2 emissions
When data are too scarce to perform the original type of net energy analysis, the EIR offers a valid simulation of the trend for biophysical net energy
Summary
After the Paris Agreement, governments have struggled to balance the rate of economic growth and the amount of industrial carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. From the perspective of energy consumption, the integrated CO2 emission factor of energy and the integrated energy intensity of the economy drive changes in CO2 emissions over time. The integrated energy intensity is defined as the energy consumption per unit of gross domestic product (GDP) in an economy. G. Ortega-Ruiz introduces types of energy sources, sizes of the economic sectors, and value of the gross domestic product as the indicators affecting CO2 emissions, and believes that India’s CO2 emissions increased due to the rapid economic growth and decreased due to the change in energy intensity [3]. The previous systems of indicators are updated by introducing the energy intensity ratio (EIR) to obtain a new perspective on industrial CO2 emissions
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