The driving factors of China's embodied carbon emissions: A study from the perspectives of inter-provincial trade and international trade

Abstract

Based on China's regional extended input-output tables from 2002 to 2012, we built non-competitive input-output models in order to measure China's embodied carbon emissions (ECEs) from international trade and inter-provincial trade, while also using a structural decomposition analysis (SDA) approach to examine the driving factors of variation in ECEs from international trade and inter-provincial trade. The findings were as follows. First, the ECEs of China's 30 provincial administrative regions all first increased and then decreased under four modes of trade. Second, there was notable carbon leakage in both international trade and inter-provincial trade, and this was particularly severe in terms of the transfer of ECEs in inter-provincial trade. Third, judging from both a consolidated perspective and using the SDA of driving factors of ECEs under four modes of trade, intermediate production technology, trade structure, and total trade volume all promoted the growth of ECEs. Specifically, total trade volume was the primary driving factor of the growth of ECEs, whereas the direct carbon emission coefficient had a significant inhibiting effect on the growth of ECEs.