Tracing Energy Conservation and Emission Reduction in China’s Transportation Sector

Abstract

China is a large economy being troubled by excessive energy consumption, serious environmental pollution and carbon emission problems. To reduce energy consumption, pollutant and carbon emission, understanding their trend and their relationships with the socioeconomic development is essential. Among various sectors, transportation sector is energy-intensive and emits a large amount of air toxics and CO2, and therefore deserves primary attention. This study took carbon emission as a proxy of environmental degradation and employed an analytical framework composed of input-output analysis, ecological network analysis and structural decomposition analysis to scrutinize production- and consumption-based energy consumption and carbon emission (ECCE), to analyze effects of final demand elasticity on them, mutualism relationships between transportation sector and other sectors, and pulling/ driving force of trans- portation sector on the ECCE of the whole economy, and to explore the drivers affecting ECCE of transportation sector. Results comprise the increase trend of ECCE of transportation sector, the noticeable relevance of transportation sector to ECCE, the domination of control relationship and the increase of competition relationship between transportation sector and other sectors, the significant effects of final demand structure, per capita final demand, production structure and sectoral carbon emission density on ECCE. According to these results, as for transportation sector, adjusting the energy structure, improving the transportation efficiency and coordinating the relations between the transportation and its relevant sectors are suggested. The analytical framework facilitates ECCE policy devising in transportation sector for China's target of energy conservation and emission reduction and are instructive for other countries' ECCE actions.