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Quantified impacts of international trade on the United States’ carbon intensity

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Abstract

After the USA reached its carbon emission peak in 2007, the share of carbon emissions from its energy activities showed a downward trend. As a country that accounts for even close to 80% of the tertiary industry, the final demands from other industries are usually met by other countries in the form of international trade. While trade is realizing economic transfer, it also realizes the transfer of carbon emissions to a certain extent, helping the country achieve the peaks. From the perspective of combining carbon emission transfer and economic transfer, are there transfers and impacts? In this study, the quantified impact of international trade on the USA’s carbon intensity has been investigated by a novel framework, based on a porposed scenario analysis using MRIO. As it gets lower aggregate carbon intensity value under trade scenario, it concludes that international trade is more conducive to the needs of this country for carbon emission reduction and economic development in general. From the different trade patterns, all of them get lower carbon intensity values under trade than no-trade scenario. From trade partners’ perspectives, the positive and negative of the intensity gap cannot be kept uniform for all traders. Sectoral driving factors are decomposed by LMDI method, with the sectoral effect of aggrerate value-added structure and sectoral aggregate embodied carbon intensity. Among obvious carbon-intensive sectors, transport sectors always show a negative effect for the gap, and heavy manufacturing and electricity sectors usually give positive effects. As a major trading country in the world, trade and exchanges with other countries are more conducive to this country with a lower carbon intensity, and it also requires the country to shoulder coresponding responsiblities as a great power while enjoying the benefies. It is conducive to the further strengthening of unity of the international community, to jointly address the challenges of climate change and achieve the subsequent carbon neutral targets.

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Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Abbreviations

MRIO:

Multi-regional input–output analysis

LMDI:

Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index model

\(T\_f\) :

Output and trade in final products

\(T\_i\) :

Traditional trade in intermediate products

\(T\_g\) :

Global value chain related output and trade

\(D\) :

Domestic economic activity

CEE :

Carbon emission embodied in export

VEE :

Value added inducted by trade

CAE :

Carbon emission avoided by import

VAE :

Value added avoided by import

AECI :

Aggregate embodied carbon intensity

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Funding

This work is funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71874203).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang & Xiaoxin Song

  2. School of Economics and Management, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang

  3. Institute for Energy Economics and Policy, China University of Petroleum (East China), Qingdao, 266580, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang & Xiaoxin Song

Authors
  1. Qiang Wang
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  2. Xiaoxin Song
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Contributions

Qiang Wang: conceptualization; methodology; software; data curation; writing—original draft preparation; supervision; writing—reviewing and editing. Xiaoxin Song: methodology; software; investigation; writing—original draft; writing—reviewing and editing.

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Correspondence to Qiang Wang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Responsible Editor: Nicholas Apergis.

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Highlights

• We propose a scenario analysis framework to quantify the impact of international trade on the USA’s carbon intensity.

• For the USA, it concludes that international trade is more conducive to the needs of emission reduction and economic development in general.

• From different trade patterns, all of them get lower carbon intensity values under trade than no-trade scenario.

• By LMDI, transport sectors always show a negative effect for intensity gap, and heavy manufacturing and electricity sectors usually give positive effects.

Appendix

Appendix

Table 2 The sectors in the WIOD
Full size table

2,

Table 3 The LMDI results of the “Discussions of the gap from the trade patterns’ perspective” section
Full size table
Table 4 The LMDI results of the “Discussions of the gap from the trade partners’ perspective” section
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Wang, Q., Song, X. Quantified impacts of international trade on the United States’ carbon intensity. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 33075–33094 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-18315-3

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