• Energy Research

Abstract This paper uses an optimal interregional input-output model to focus on how interregional industrial shifts alone might enable China to reduce carbon intensity instead of national shifts. The optimal industry shifts assure integration of all regions by regional products and goods in which carbon emissions are embodied via energy consumption. Generally speaking, high-tech industries concentrate in affluent regions to replace construction. Selected services increase output shares across most of regions. Meanwhile, energy-intensive manufacturing, rather than agriculture, decrease their shares to achieve the national annual growth constrained by nation’s carbon targets. Due to the need to decelerate energy use, carbon intensity goal puts particularly extreme pressure on less-developed regions to shutter heavy industries. Explicit shifts toward cleaner resources and renewable energy appear to be quite important for coal mines in Central China.

Abstract This paper integrates two lines of research into a unified conceptual framework: trade in value-added and embodied emissions in trade. This allows both value-added and emissions to be systematically traced at the country, sector, and bilateral levels through various routes in global value chains. By combining value-added and emissions accounting in a consistent way, the potential environmental cost along global value chains can be estimated from different perspectives like production, consumption, and trade. Using this unified accounting framework, we trace value-added and CO 2 emissions in global production and trade networks among 41 economies in 35 sectors from 1995 to 2009 based on the World Input–Output Database, and show how they improve our understanding of the impacts of cross-border production sharing on the environment.

Abstract To date, the burden of CO2 emissions reductions has been largely confined to large enterprises in China. Using new data with firm ownership and size information included, we show that micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) produced 53% of China’s CO2 emissions in 2010. Detailed supply-chain analysis reveals that final demand for products made downstream by domestic-private MSMEs, along with exports made downstream by foreign-owned MSMEs, are the main drivers of China’s CO2 emissions. Most of these emissions occur upstream in the electricity and heat sector, which is mainly controlled by large, state-owned enterprises with the highest carbon intensity, and the non-metallic mineral sector, which consists of a very large number of domestic-private MSMEs with lower levels of enforcement of emissions regulations. Overall, MSMEs induced 65% of China’s CO2 emissions through their supply chains. Our conclusion is that understanding the role of firm size for China is important in developing emissions reduction policies: given the very high per-enterprise overhead of emissions trading systems, and the abundance of MSMEs, our results clearly favour taxation.

Carbon tax and energy tax are among the hot discussions in China. This study conducts simulation studies on them with a CGE model and analyzes their economic impacts, especially on the energy-intensive sectors. The Chinese economy is affected at an acceptable level by the two taxes in different scenarios. The import and export of energy-intensive industries are changed, leading to improved domestic competitiveness. Compared with implementing a single tax, a combined carbon-energy tax reduces more emissions with relatively smaller economic costs. For China, the sooner such taxes are launched, the smaller the economic costs and the more significant emission reductions.

In this study, we apply the inter-regional input–output model to explain the relationship between China’s inter-regional spillover of CO2 emissions and domestic supply chains for 2002 and 2007. Based on this model, we propose alternative indicators such as the trade in CO2 emissions, CO2 emissions in trade and the regional trade balances of CO2 emissions. Our results do not only reveal the nature and significance of inter-regional environmental spillover within China’s domestic regions but also demonstrate how CO2 emissions are created and distributed across regions via domestic and global production networks. Results show that a region’ sC O2 emissions depend on its intra-regional production technology, energy use efficiency, as well as its position and participation degree in domestic and global supply chains. & 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Abstract As the world's largest carbon emitter, China has set stringent mitigation targets. The Five-Year-Plans have been an important administrative tool for China in climate change mitigation. However, the emissions transfer inside China has raised the problem of pollution haven affect and challenges to the effectiveness of the mitigation policies. This study examines whether mitigation policies can promote emissions reduction and whether it causes the pollution haven effect in China. It establishes an Extended Provincial Input-Output Model to calculate province production-based emissions, consumption-based emissions, and emissions transfer from 2005 to 2015. The results show that: (1) The mitigation policy is effective as a 1% increase of the completeness of the mitigation target is related to a 0.118% decrease of production-based emissions. (2) Stringent mitigation policies increase net emissions outflow as a 1% increase of the completeness of the target is related to an 18.5% increase of the net emissions transfer. (3) Subsequent policy enforcement will weaken once the mitigation goal is accomplished. This study reputes that the mitigation policy effectively controls emissions, especially production-based emissions, while it still needs refined policy designing considering the pollution haven effect inside China.

Population and economic growth pose unique challenges in securing sufficient water, energy, and food to meet demand at the sub-national (regional), national, and supra-national level. An increasing share of this demand is met through trade and imports. The unprecedented rapid growth, extent, and complexity of global value chains (GVCs) since the 1980s have reshaped global trade. The GVCs – and new economic patterns of regionalization – affect the demands on water, energy, and food within countries and across global supply chains. East Asia is of particular interest due to the region’s rapid economic growth, substantial population size, high interdependence of the region’s economies, and varying degree of resource availability. While greater interdependence across the region has increased the efficiency of production and trade, these activities require the input of water-energy-food and generate disturbances in the environment. The transnational inter-regional input-output approach is utilized in a tele-connected Water-Energy-Food Nexus (WEFN) analysis of the East Asia GVC to assess competing demands for these resources and environmental outcomes. \ud \ud This analysis demonstrates the hidden virtual flows of water, energy, and food embodied in intra-regional and transnational inter-regional trade. China’s current national export oriented economic growth strategy in East Asia is not sustainable from the WEFN perspective. In terms of water-energy-food, China is a net virtual exporter to Japan and South Korea. China’s prioritization of economic growth and trade in low value added and pollution intensive sectors consumes a great amount of water-energy-food within its territory to satisfy consumers’ demands in Japan and South Korea. Japan’s Kanto and Kinki regions and South Korea’s Sudokwon region were the major beneficiaries while China bore the environmental burden associated with the production of exports. For example, net virtual exports from China’s East region included over 1.2 billion m3 of scarce water and 61.3 million metric (CO2 equivalent) tons of greenhouse gases (i.e. CO2, NH4, and N2O) and 2 million metric tons of SOx emissions.\ud \ud Trade is an important mechanism for overcoming resource bottlenecks, but, taking into account environmental linkages, regional specialization is not necessarily mutually beneficial. This analysis demonstrates a mismatch between regional water-energy-food availability and final resource consumption and the lack of attention for environmental impacts in national economic growth strategies. Resource scarce countries like China must, therefore, incorporate trade-off decisions between pursuing national economic growth, incurring environmental degradation, and food security into strategic regional development policies.

Abstract This study proposes an alternative input–output based spatial structural decomposition analysis to elucidate the importance of domestic regional heterogeneity and inter-regional spillover effects in determining China's regional CO 2 emissions growth. Our empirical results, based on the 2007 and 2010 Chinese inter-regional input–output tables, show that changes in most regions' final demand scale, final expenditure structure, and export scale have positive spatial spillover effects on other regions' CO 2 emissions growth; changes in most regions' consumption and export preference help reduce other regions' CO 2 emissions; changes in production technology and investment preferences may exert positive or negative effects on other region's CO 2 emissions growth through domestic supply chains. For some regions, the aggregate spillover effect from other regions may be larger than the intra-regional effect in determining regional emissions growth. All these facts can significantly help provide a better, deeper understanding of the driving forces behind the growth of regional CO 2 emissions and can thus enrich the policy implications concerning a narrow definition of “carbon leakage” through domestic inter-regional “trade” as well as a relevant political consensus about responsibility sharing between developed and developing regions inside China.