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What determines the climate mitigation process of China’s regional industrial sector?

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Abstract

As a major carbon emitter in China, the emission mitigation in industrial sector performs great significance for China to achieve its emission reduction targets. Using the provincial panel data during 2000–2016 of China’s industrial sector, this paper first used a gravity model to study the spatial distribution and center of gravity of industrial CO2 emissions. Then, an integrated decomposition approach based on Shephard distance functions was adopted to study the driving factors of industrial carbon intensity. Results indicate that during 2000–2016, industrial CO2 emissions center of gravity gradually moved to the west. China’s industrial carbon intensity achieved considerable decline, with the annual change rate of 8.27%. The energy intensity decline, technology progresses of both production and energy saving were the most important factors facilitating carbon intensity decline. However, energy structure adjustment exerted positive effects in carbon intensity increase, although its effects were minor. Industrial carbon intensity witnessed decrease in almost all provinces except Xinjiang. The effects resulted from various factors were also different across provinces. Finally, suggestions were proposed to further decrease industrial carbon intensity.

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Data availability

The datasets used in this study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Notes

  1. Potential energy intensity is the energy intensity that removed all potential technical inefficiency.

  2. The Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and Tibet are excluded in this study.

Abbreviations

Industrial carbon intensity:

ICI

Data envelopment analysis:

DEA

Index decomposition analysis:

IDA

Arithmetic mean Divisia index:

AMDI

Logarithmic mean Divisia index:

LMDI

Structural decomposition analysis:

SDA

Production-theory decomposition analysis:

PDA

Carbon dioxide emission factor:

D CEF

Energy structure:

D ECS

Potential energy intensity:

D PEI

Energy use efficiency:

D EUE

Energy saving technology:

D EST

Production efficiency:

D PE

Production technology:

D PTC

Spatial structure:

D SS

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Funding

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72003017), the National Social Science Foundation of China (No. 19ZDA082), the Social Science Planning Project of Chongqing (No. 2018BS54), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Nos. 2019CDSKXYJG0037 and 2020CDXYJG019).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Science and Arts, China University of Petroleum-Beijing at Karamay, Karamay, ,834000, China

    Hong Zang

  2. School of Management, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Miao Wang

  3. School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University, Chongqing, 400030, China

    Chao Feng

Authors
  1. Hong Zang
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  2. Miao Wang
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  3. Chao Feng
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Contributions

Hong Zang: conceptualization, formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft; Miao Wang: data curation, validation, writing—review and editing; Chao Feng: investigation, methodology, project administration, software, supervision, writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Chao Feng.

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Zang, H., Wang, M. & Feng, C. What determines the climate mitigation process of China’s regional industrial sector?. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 9192–9203 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11006-5

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