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The excessive carbon emissions not only intensify the global climate change, but also seriously restrict the sustainable development of social economy. However, improving industrial carbon emissions efficiency is the most directly effective way to reduce emissions. Therefore, accurate measurement and analysis of carbon emissions efficiency and evolution characteristics of China's industrial system is the basis for China to improve carbon emissions efficiency. Based on this, we adopted energy consumption method and input-output method to calculate and analyze the industrial carbon emissions efficiency and evolution characteristics of China from 2002 to 2015. The results show that (1) If carbon emissions from cement production are ignored and only energy-related carbon emissions are considered, the calculation results of carbon emissions efficiency of heavy industry will be overestimated about 30%. (2) Compared with 2002, China's industrial carbon emissions efficiency increased by about twice in 2015. Specifically, the optimization of carbon emissions efficiency in agriculture, construction, light industry and service industry is very obvious, which has increased by 5.65, 5.00, 4.69 and 4.68 times respectively; The optimization of carbon emissions efficiency in power sector, heavy industry, transportation and chemical industry was obvious, which increased by 2.55, 2.01, 1.86 and 1.47 times respectively; The carbon emissions efficiency of the fossil energy sector has decreased by 0.36 times. (3) The carbon emissions efficiency of various industries has significant differences. Among them, agriculture, service industry, light industry and construction industry are generally industries with higher carbon emissions efficiency, while power sector, fossil energy sector, transportation industry, chemical industry and heavy industry are generally industries with lower carbon emissions efficiency, especially power and fossil energy sectors. Based on these, this paper provides policy implications and scientific evidence for accurately improving carbon emissions efficiency from the perspective of carbon emissions efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a forecast and analysis of population, economic development, energy consumption and CO2 emissions variation in China in the short- and long-term steps before 2020 with 2007 as the base year. The widely applied IPAT model, which is the basis for calculations, projections, and scenarios of greenhouse gases (GHGs) reformulated as the Kaya equation, is extended to analyze and predict the relations between human activities and the environment. Four scenarios of CO2 emissions are used including business as usual (BAU), energy efficiency improvement scenario (EEI), low carbon scenario (LC) and enhanced low carbon scenario (ELC). The results show that carbon intensity will be reduced by 40–45% as scheduled and economic growth rate will be 6% in China under LC scenario by 2020. The LC scenario, as the most appropriate and the most feasible scheme for China’s low-carbon development in the future, can maximize the harmonious development of economy, society, energy and environmental systems. Assuming China's development follows the LC scenario, the paper further gives four paths of low-carbon transformation in China: technological innovation, industrial structure optimization, energy structure optimization and policy guidance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]