Empirical Study of Decomposition of Emission Factors in China

China’s CO2 emissions increase has attracted world’s attention. It is of great importance to analyze China’s CO2 emission factors to restrain the CO2 rapid growing. The CO2 emissions of industrial and residential consumption sectors in China during 1980–2010 were calculated in this paper. The expanded decomposition model of CO2 emissions was set up by adopting factor-separating method based on the basic principle of the Kaya identities. The results showed that CO2 emissions of industrial and residential consumption sectors increase year after year, and the scale effect of GDP is the most important factor affecting CO2 emissions of industrial sector. Decreasing the specific gravity of secondary industry and energy intensity is more effective than decreasing the primary industry and tertiary industry. The emissions reduction effect of structure factor is better than the efficiency factor. For residential consumption sector, CO2 emissions increase rapidly year after year, and the economy factor (the increase of wealthy degree or income) is the most important factor. In order to slow down the growth of CO2 emissions, it is an important way to change the economic growth mode, and the structure factor will become a crucial factor. 1. Introduction At Copenhagen Conference in December 2009, China’s CO2 emissions attracted the world’s attention, not only the rapid increase of CO2 emissions but also the leading position of China’s CO2 emissions in the world. This has exerted considerable pressure upon China in CO2 emissions reduction. It is becoming more and more significant to acquire quantity and feature of CO2 emissions by all sectors and regions in China. As the first major carbon emitters and the largest developing country in the world, China’s CO2 emissions will increase in a long period. The Chinese State Council or cabinet said that China would aim to cut carbon intensity—the amount of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product—by a range of 40% to 45% by 2020. However, the acceleration of China’s urbanization process and the improvement of the living standard contribute to the rapid increase of CO2 emissions. As a result, analysis should be made on the causes for CO2 emissions in China. CO2 emissions are determined by the economic development, technical level, energy structure, economic structure, population structure, and many other factors. However, their contributions to CO2 emissions are not of the same significance, and many types of models have been used to acquire quantity and feature of CO2 emissions. The economic development