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Factors influencing embodied energy trade between the Belt and Road countries: a gravity approach

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Abstract

Against the backdrop of current global collaboration on mitigating carbon emissions, how to reduce the energy uses in the Belt and Road Initiative area becomes an urgent and big challenge facing the global community. Using the Eora input-output database, this paper accounts the embodied energy trade between Belt and Road countries in 2015, followed by an investigation of the factors influencing the embodied energy trade through a panel gravity model. Global value chain participation and position are two newly considered factors in analyzing the determinants of embodied energy flow. We find that the main bilateral embodied flow paths are from South Korea to China, China to South Korea, Singapore to China, Ukraine to Russia, and Malaysia to Singapore. Five percent embodied energy flow paths account for 80% of the total bilateral embodied energy flow volume between Belt and Road countries. The gravity model results indicate that gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, population, global value chain participation are the key drivers of bilateral embodied energy trade, while the industrial share of GDP and global value chain position are negatively related to the trade. Energy intensity plays a crucial role in reducing the bilateral embodied energy flow. These results are useful in the policymaking of sustainable development for the Belt and Road Initiative.

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Data availability

The authors declare that data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Notes

  1. Eora has been widely used in the time series studies of energy and energy-related carbon emissions. For example, Lan et al. (2016) quantified drivers for changes in global energy footprints from 1990 to 2010. Han et al. (2020b) comprehensively analyzed the carbon inequality and regional development and compared the carbon emissions in and outside the Belt and Road area from 1990 to 2015. Onat and Kucukvar (2020) conducted a time series analysis of construction industries’ carbon emissions from1995 to 2012. Wang et al. (2020a) evaluated the environmental performances of global supply chains in manufacturing sectors from 2005 to 2014. Li et al. (2021) analyzed evolution of the global oil supply chain using the Eora database from 2000 to 2015. Energy consumption data are usually used in environmental input-output analysis, which may suffer from the updating frequency of energy dataset. Some efforts are made to address this time-lag issue by adopting system input-output analysis approach and using energy exploration data from IEA, see Li et al. (2021) for instance and more methodology discussions in Chen and Wu (2017). Unfortunately, their energy/emission datasets are not directly shared in their publications. Sharing more information could promote relevant studies.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Prof. Haizhong An, Dr. Weiqiong Zhong, Dr. Xiaojia Liu, Dr. Meihui Jiang, Dr. Qing Guan, and Prof. Ronald Ripple for their insightful comments and language checks to improve this paper. Meanwhile, we are thankful to Dr. Mengjiao Wang for her help in the panel data analysis. Finally, we are incredibly grateful to the reviewers who help us improve this paper a lot.

Funding

We much appreciate the financial supports from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41901246), the Humanities and Social Sciences Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China (Grant No. 20YJC790110), and the Basic and Applied Research Co-Foundation under the Science Technology Department of Guangdong (Grant No. 2019A1515110693).

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  1. The Institute for China’s Overseas Interests, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, Guangdong, China

    Xiaoqi Sun & Qing Shi

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  1. Xiaoqi Sun
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  2. Qing Shi
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Dr. XS is responsible for conceptualization, methodology, formal analysis, software, and revising the introduction, and Dr. QS is responsible for writing original and revised draft, and visualization.

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Correspondence to Qing Shi.

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Appendix

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Table 5 List of BRI countries
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Sun, X., Shi, Q. Factors influencing embodied energy trade between the Belt and Road countries: a gravity approach. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 11574–11589 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-16457-y

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