Value-added involved in CO2 emissions embodied in global demand-supply chains

Abstract

Embodied carbon emissions research is an important branch of climate change study. Some scholars have noted the value-added chains associated with the carbon emissions embodied in international trade. But they have not covered the global scale and the entire demand-supply chains. This paper tries to investigate this issue and answer how much value-added is gained by countries, especially developing regions that are the main carbon emissions suppliers in the world, and how this value-added changed during 2000–2014, based on the multi-regional input-output table. The conclusions are, on a global average, the value-added gained per unit of carbon emissions embodied in the global demand-supply chain had increased, but it had not brought net value-added to developing regions but instead caused them a net loss of wealth, mainly because developing regions should pay more value-added for their increasingly external demand.