Abstract
This paper proposes an alternative method to decompose carbon emissions changes using distance functions estimated by data envelopment analysis. The proposed approach can measure the effects of technical efficiency change and technical change, the effects of substitution among inputs, and the effects of GDP composition change on the changes in carbon emissions. We apply this method to decompose the carbon emissions at China’s provincial levels. For the 30 provinces as a whole during the 11th Five-Year Plan period (2006–2010), empirical results demonstrated that economic growth and the potential carbon factor changes were the largest contributors to carbon emissions increase, while the good output technical changes and energy usage technical changes were the largest components to carbon emissions reduction. The structure effects represented by GDP composition change was a mild contributor to carbon emissions reduction for most provinces. We found that the substitution effects among inputs existed and contributed to carbon emissions increase for most provinces, but their impacts were limited and differed across provinces. The impacts of the good output technical efficiency change and energy usage technical efficiency changes were extremely limited and different across provinces. The empirical results are beneficial to China’s central and local governments to make regional adaptive policies to carbon emissions reduction.
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Notes
We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing this issue.
The sample in Zhang and Da (2013), including the sample provinces and sample time, is the same as that in this paper.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the anonymous referees and the editor of this journal. The author also benefit from the discussions with Man Li. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 71173075, 71473083 and 71373077), the Beijing Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 9142016), the Beijing Planning Project of Philosophy and Social Science (Grant no. 13JGB054), the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0850), and the Fundamental Research Funds of the Central Universities of China.
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Zhang, Xp., Zhang, Yx., Rao, R. et al. Exploring the drivers to energy-related carbon emissions changes at China’s provincial levels. Energy Efficiency 8, 699–712 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-014-9318-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12053-014-9318-y