Abstract
As the largest emitter in the world, China has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions intensity (CO2 emissions per unit of output) by 60–65% between 2005 and 2030. CO2 emissions intensity inequality analysis in China can provide a scientific basis for the Chinese government to formulate reasonable regional carbon emission abatement strategies, so as to realize the goal above. This paper adopted the Theil index to study the provincial-level CO2 emissions intensity inequality in China during 2005–2015. The regional decomposition was firstly conducted and then the factors of interregional and intraregional inequalities were explored. The results show: (i) a clear increase in provincial CO2 emissions intensity inequality in China has happened; (ii) this inequality and its increase were both mainly explained by the intraregional component; and (iii) the energy efficiency was the most important and positive contributor in the interregional, Eastern, Central, and Western China inequalities. Energy efficiency was also the key factor that caused the growth in interregional and Western China inequalities. However, most of the Eastern and Central China inequality increments over the whole period were respectively driven by the expanding carbonization gap and the changing GDP share, instead of the trajectory of energy efficiency. According to the results, regional emission mitigation strategies were proposed.
Highlights
With the rapid development of the world economy, the consumption of fossil fuels has increased sharply, which has led to the release of a large amount of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air
Since the Theil index satisfies the axiomatic properties of an ideal inequality index including scale independence, population independence, and the principle of transfers [36] and has more advantage in the capacity to decompose, this paper adopted this index to measure the inequality in CO2 emissions intensity in China
The results showed that the reduction in overall CO2 emission intensity happened with a clear increase in its provincial dispersion
Summary
With the rapid development of the world economy, the consumption of fossil fuels has increased sharply, which has led to the release of a large amount of pollutants and greenhouse gases into the air. Much of the increase in emissions in the last decades can be attributed to the scale effect associated with economic growth. In this sense, and if measures to limit economic growth are not on the agenda, the reduction of global emissions necessarily requires a significant decrease in CO2 emission intensities (CO2 emissions per unit of output). In response to global climate change and to the requirement of economic development, the Chinese government has pledged to reduce CO2 emissions intensity, specifying that emissions intensity will be reduced by 40–45% by 2020 and 60–65% by 2030 compared with 2005 levels [5]
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