This paper analyzes the change of aggregated CO2 in China from 1957 to 2000 based on a complete decomposition approach—the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) method. The study indicates that China has achieved a considerable decrease in its CO2 emissions mainly due to improved energy intensity. In addition, fuel switching and renewable energy penetration also exhibit positive effect to the CO2 decrease.
In the 1990s, the environmental impact associated with energy use attracted wide concern as a result of the new evidence leading to an increasing debate regarding global climate changes [1]. Among the various gases implicated, carbon dioxide (CO2) is the dominant contributor to the greenhouse effect. Investigation of how energy-related CO2 emissions change over time becomes, thus, a major issue in formulating both energy and environmental policies. A number of studies have been conducted along this direction [2], [3], [4], [5]. In particular, recent studies have been directed towards examining the underlying CO2 emission components so as to identify the driving forces influencing the variation of energy-induced CO2 emissions.
There are various methods available for analyzing the breakdown of the changes in emissions into explanatory factors, for example, the econometric regression and the decomposition approach. Based on the number of studies reported, decomposition analysis is now a widely accepted and the most applied approach for those studies [4], [6], [7], [8], [9]. More than 100 case studies on decomposition analysis now exist [10]. A decomposition analysis may be a periodwise or a time-series one. A periodwise analysis compares emissions between the first and the last year of a time period for a given country (or region, industry, etc.) without considering the details for the intervening years. As shown in the survey by Ang in 1995 [25], periodwise analysis is more applied, especially in multi-country analysis, because less data is needed. A time-series analysis involves yearly decomposition using time-series data, and its results show how the impacts of pre-defined explanatory factors have evolved over time. As the national time-series data are often readily available and the method is valid to work out relevant expected insights, it is also common that the decomposition studies are highly detailed in terms of the time periods by annual time steps, especially in national or sectoral analysis [25]. The studies carried out by Sun [22], Choia and Ang [8], Alcantara and Duro [9], etc. are recent examples that used this method.
With the advantages of sound theoretical foundation, high degree of adaptability, ease of use, and ease of understanding and result presentation [15], the application of decomposition analysis has increased substantially in scope over the years since the late 1970s. There are, however, only a limited number of studies concerning decomposition of the industrial energy-induced CO2 emissions in China [6], [7], [11]. The studies that do exist focus only on CO2 emissions in the manufacturing industry. For example, Ang and Pandiyan decomposed changes in the aggregate CO2 intensities in the manufacturing industry in China between 1981 and 1993 [6]. It is not clear what the aggregated energy-related CO2emissions are over the entire national economy; nor is the long-term evolution of China’s CO2 emission.
In this paper, we first extend the current studies to quantify the contributions of several pre-defined factors to changes in total energy-related CO2 emissions in China, and then proceed to give a historical analysis on how the contributing effects have evolved over the period between 1957 and 2000. The CO2 emissions are calculated based on the intersovern mental panel on climate change (IPCC) method [12] and the variations are attributed to the factors of inter-fuel switching, carbon-free renewable energy penetration, energy conservation, economic growth, and population expansion via the logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI). This method is able to give a perfect decomposition, i.e. ensures the decomposition results obtained do not contain a residual term [11], [21]. The results indicate that China has made a significant contribution to reducing global CO2 emissions, though none of these carbon savings have resulted from conscious domestic climate mitigation policies.
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