Why Are the Carbon Footprints of China’s Urban Households Rising? An Input–Output Analysis and Structural Decomposition Analysis

Xiaoyu Liu,Shuo Wang,Junnian Song,Xian’en Wang,Haiyan Duan

doi:10.3390/su11247157

Abstract

A rise in China’s economy and urbanization has brought about obvious growth in the carbon footprints of urban households over the past years. In this study, input–output analysis was adopted to calculate the carbon footprints of urban households in China. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the impact factors on indirect carbon footprints was carried out by using the structural decomposition analysis at both holistic and sectoral levels. The results showed that the carbon footprints of urban households were 941.37 MtCO2 in 2002, 1498.11 MtCO2 in 2007, and 2139.50 MtCO2 in 2012. Electricity was the main contributor to the direct urban household carbon footprints, accounting for over 40%. The category of “household facilities” contributed the most to indirect carbon footprints (306.00 MtCO2) in 2012, and the “transportation” had the fastest growth rate (395%) during 2002–2012. The industrial sector of “wearing apparel” had the largest increments (139.92 MtCO2) in carbon footprints during the past decade. Generally, consumption level and population size presented positive effects on the increments in indirect carbon footprints, while emission intensity decreased indirect carbon footprints. However, the impact of consumption structure and intermediate demand on indirect carbon footprints varied at holistic and sectoral levels. The mitigation efforts should focus on reducing emission intensity, shifting consumption structure and changing intermediate demand.

Highlights

China’s booming economy during the past three decades has made it the largest CO2 emitter in the world [1,2,3]
Even though the direct carbon footprints of urban households continued to go up every year, they still trailed far behind the indirect carbon footprints, which was an average of approximately 2.75 times higher than the direct ones
It signified that indirect carbon footprints played a primary role in the total urban household carbon footprints in China, and the concentrated mitigation should be facilitated on

Summary

Introduction

China’s booming economy during the past three decades has made it the largest CO2 emitter in the world [1,2,3]. Wang and Yang [34] utilized energy ecological footprint (EEF) to explore the indirect carbon emissions of household consumption in the urban and rural areas of China. They discovered that the EEF of indirect energy use was on the rise for urban residents but was declining for rural residents. They uncovered that population size and per capita consumption were the key drivers of increasing household carbon footprints These studies mainly concentrated on how household consumption affected energy demand and carbon emissions from the demand side. It is significant to explore how household consumption drives the industrial sector to generate carbon emissions, as well as how to mitigate household carbon emissions from the industry perspective

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion