关键词: 城镇居民碳排放, 居民消费, 投入产出分析

Abstract:

Generally the living standards of households in China have improved significantly as a result of rapid socio-economic growth. The rapid growth, especially in the urban areas has been one of the sources of carbon emissions. Therefore, the carbon emissions from the urban households should be taken into account. From the consumption point of view, the study analyzed the total, direct and indirect carbon emissions of Chinese urban households. Further, the coefficient variations of the total and per capita carbon emissions were also calculated and subsequently, adopted the structural decomposition analysis to explore the effects of energy structures, industrial structures, and consumption structures between 2003 and 2012. The results indicated that there were significant differences of carbon emissions from urban households between provinces. As compared to that of 2003, the total carbon emission of the urban households has increased while the per capita carbon emission has decreased in 2012. The study revealed population as one of the main source for decreasing regional differences of carbon emission in the urban households. Most provinces with high carbon emissions of urban households could be attributed to large scale of economy. However, some provinces with small scale of economy still have relatively high carbon emissions. Overall, the provinces with high carbon emission from urban household consumption could either be attributed to its rich natural resource base or to the size of its economy. From the geographical perspective, the areas with high carbon emission from the urban households are mainly distributed in the northern provinces and coastal areas. This can be substantiated by the presence of rich coal resources in the northern areas and the presence of either heavy industries or large economy of scale in the coastal areas. Therefore, it is quite evident that the trend of carbon emission from the urban households will keep increasing given the pace of current socio-economic growth. While analyzing carbon emission from the urban households, data were categorized into six different sectors, including agriculture, industry, construction, transport, storage and post, wholesale and retail trades, hotels and catering services, and other industries. The factors including consumption structure, energy structure, and industrial structure have impacts on carbon emission from the urban households in 30 provinces in a descending order (consumption structure>energy structure>industry structure). Among these three structures, although the energy consumption in productive sectors, input-output turnovers and product purchases of the secondary industry were the key effects on local per capita carbon emissions of urban households, different provinces presented their own complex characteristics of driving factors. The government should formulate a policy in dealing with carbon emission from the urban households by engaging all relevant stakeholders, following the above analysis results.

Key words: carbon emissions, Chinese urban household consumption, input-output analysis