School of Economics and Management, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China.
Research Center for China's Oil and Gas Industry Development, China University of Petroleum, Beijing, 102249, China.
Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2020 Jun;27(17):20889-20903. doi: 10.1007/s11356-020-08567-w. Epub 2020 Apr 5.
China, known as the largest carbon emitter and the second largest economy worldwide, has continued to put effort into the understandings of the main drivers of carbon emission and their decoupling statuses from its economic growth. Considering the significant differences of natural and social environments in different regions of China, this paper presents a regional-scale decomposition of energy-related carbon emission and its decoupling from economic growth by using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) and the Tapio decoupling method. The decoupling results indicate that carbon emissions in all regions show a stable decoupling trend from their economic development, which means that China is now on the right road for achieving a low-carbon economy. However, the decoupling status by the end of 2016 also indicates that most of the regions are still in the states of expansive coupling or weak decoupling, especially in Northwest (NW), which implies that the speed of decarbonization process is still not high enough. The decomposition results show that in all regions except NW, GDP per capita is the most influential factor leading to increasing carbon emissions, while energy intensity is the largest factor in reducing carbon emissions. In NW, both GDP per capita and energy intensity drive the increase in carbon emissions. The results in this paper could benefit China's regional policy-making and national strategies.
中国是全球最大的碳排放国和第二大经济体，一直致力于深入了解碳排放的主要驱动因素及其与经济增长的脱钩状况。考虑到中国不同地区自然和社会环境的显著差异，本文采用对数平均迪氏指数（LMDI）和 Tapio 脱钩方法，对能源相关碳排放及其与经济增长的脱钩进行了区域尺度的分解。脱钩结果表明，所有地区的碳排放与经济发展均呈现稳定脱钩趋势，这意味着中国目前正在实现低碳经济的正确道路上。然而，截至 2016 年底的脱钩状况也表明，大多数地区仍处于扩张性耦合或弱脱钩状态，尤其是在西北地区（NW），这意味着脱碳进程的速度还不够高。分解结果表明，除西北地区外，人均 GDP 是导致碳排放增加的最主要因素，而能源强度是减少碳排放的最大因素。在西北地区，人均 GDP 和能源强度均推动了碳排放的增加。本文的研究结果可为中国的区域政策制定和国家战略提供参考。
