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In an effort to address climate change, in 2013 China launched the world’s largest government-driven carbon emission reduction programme, the National Low Carbon Industrial Parks Pilot Programme (LCIPPP). This paper analyses this newly developed pilot program. To deepen our understanding of the causes and the impact of industrial park CO 2 emissions, we use the STIRPAT (Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology) model and data from 20 pilot industrial parks involved in the LCIPPP for the period 2012–2016. This study quantitatively evaluates the effect of CO 2 emissions on output, energy structure, energy intensity, industrial structure, R&D intensity, and population change in different regions and nationally through an elasticity coefficient method. The results confirm that an increase in output and energy intensity is a dominant contributor to the growth of CO 2 emissions whereas an increase of the share of tertiary industry and R&D intensity has significant effects on reducing CO 2 emissions. The elasticity of energy intensity and renewable energy consumption on CO 2 emissions in the eastern region of China is the highest, indicating that using renewable energy to reduce CO 2 emissions for the industrial parks is more effective in the eastern region as compared to the central and western regions of the country. The elasticity of population is significantly negative in both the central and western areas while it is positive in eastern part of China, thereby illustrating that promoting labour intensive industries will be an effective way to reduce CO 2 emissions for the industrial parks in China’s central and western regions. Our study reveals that differentiated low carbon development pathways should be adopted. Concrete policy implications for reducing CO 2 emissions are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately understanding the real situation of China’s carbon emissions at the provincial level is not only crucial for realizing carbon mitigation in China, but also of great importance for tackling climate change on a global scale. This paper uses detailed energy consumption data subdivided within each fuel type and sector-specific emission factors, to calculate both direct and indirect energy-related CO 2 emissions for China’s provinces, and offers provincially-targeted policy proposals on emission reductions. The results uncover large divergences in calculation of provincial CO 2 emissions between production-based and consumption-based accounting approaches. Considering the large amount of interprovincial CO 2 emission transfers embodied in secondary energy deployment, the consumption-based accounting performs better in reflecting the actual features and responsibilities of carbon emissions in the provinces of China. From the consumption perspective, Shandong, Hebei, Jiangsu, Inner Mongolia, Guangdong, Henan, Liaoning and Shanxi contributed to the majority of China’s carbon emission growth during the period of 1996–2013, while Xinjiang, Sichuan, Anhui, Tianjin and Hunan were playing an increasingly important role. These two groups of provinces should be regarded as the key regions for national emissions abatement. Meanwhile, the energy industry was the top sectoral contributor to CO 2 emissions growth in most provinces, while service and household sectors made increasingly significant impacts on driving up provincial emissions. Together with ongoing efforts in the energy sector, the mitigation of CO 2 emissions in service and household sectors deserves much more attention, especially in the transportation and urban household sectors. Furthermore, the temporal trends of carbon emissions in various provinces, as well as their factor and sectoral driving forces, varied greatly with each other. Therefore, each of the provinces should formulate emission reduction policies according to their own situation, and target the key driving factors and sectors of carbon emissions at the current stage or in the near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Addressing climate change requires the efforts of all countries with common but differentiated responsibilities. The mitigation responsibilities one country takes greatly depends on its national emission inventories. As a good complement to the production-based accounting (PBA) principle, consumption-based accounting (CBA) principle has been widely concerned. However, few studies focus on emissions equity issues temporally and spatially. In this paper, we explore the characteristics of production-based and consumption-based CO 2 emissions for 14 major economies through multiple-dimension comparisons to get insight into the emissions equity comparisons among major emitters. In particular, four categories of economies with different dynamic features are divided based on their percentage differences between PBA and CBA emissions. Demographical and economic variables are additionally taken into consideration. The results indicate that France and Russia hold extreme characteristic on evaluating the emission difference between two principles, while China and Chinese Taiwan reveal uniquely increasingly larger gaps between two principle emissions. Besides, the per capita CBA emissions grows more prominently and possesses a more obviously positive correlation with their own per capita GDP which confirms that CBA principle is potentially attractive for estimating national emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, several mitigation strategies for the industrial sector are needed to achieve global mitigation scenarios that include: carbon intensity, energy intensity, material intensity, product-service intensity, and the global demand for services. Under this contextual, this paper presents a decomposition analysis of energy related carbon dioxide emissions from the steel produced to manufacture new automobiles. The novelty of this analysis is that it links energy related carbon dioxide emissions from service demand to material production, breaking changes in demand for services measured as passenger-kilometers driven by new automobiles either for replacement or for new demand; steel content in new automobiles (material intensity); production process (structure); final energy intensity; and carbon intensity. The study boundaries include direct and indirect steel imports (contained in automobile imports). This analysis is applied to the Mexican case from 1993 to 2011. The results show that an increase in the pass-km followed by the growth in the vehicle size is the most important factors influencing carbon dioxide emissions. The rise of fuels with higher carbon contents in countries that export vehicles and steel to Mexico is also an important variable that had increased emissions. A projection for CO 2 emissions for 2025 was developed to understand the significance of the different variables in the reduction of CO 2 emissions related to the steel production for new automobiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]