Provincial Differences of Consumption-based Carbon Emissions in Northeastern China
东北三省消费型碳排放的差异分析

Carbon emission is the main cause of global warming and has great impacts on biophysical environment and human existence. At present, carbon emission quotas and responsibility division of carbon emission have attracted immense attention from all countries in the world. Compared to production-based carbon emissions accounting system, consumption-based carbon emissions accounting system has several advantages, for example, it can better solve the problem of carbon leakage in international trade and transport and can be more equitable. As a country with strong trading development as well as enormous carbon emissions, China has complex trade relations among domestic provinces. Therefore, it is fair and objective to analyze carbon emissions of each province from the perspective of consumption. This paper has elaborated the accounting methods of domestic inter-provincial carbon emissions based on summarizing the recent advances in consumption-based carbon emissions in international trade and analyzed the spatial variability of consumption-based carbon emissions in the three northeastern provinces. The study shows that there are obvious differences of carbon emissions among the three provinces, and consumption-based carbon emissions are far lower than production-based carbon emissions; carbon emissions embodied in exported and transferred goods account for 46% ~53% of the total production-based carbon emissions; the high proportion of exports and transferred goods should be responsible for the large amounts of carbon emissions of the three northeastern provinces. The paper has also put forward some suggestions to reduce carbon emissions, for example, the three northeastern provinces should be encouraged to conduct trade of low-carbon products and strengthen the low-carbon technology. This paper could contribute to the current academic conversation on issues of relationship between global warming and climate change, and specifically will provide reference for the carbon emissions accounting and energy saving made by provincial administrative units.