Structural Changes in Provincial Emission Transfers within China

Chinese
provinces ultimately implement China’s national
climate policies. In the 2000s, there were unbalanced emission transfers
(emissions produced in one region but consumed in other regions) between
China’s well- and less-developed regions, mainly related to
demand in the well-developed eastern provinces. In the past decade,
the plateau in China’s exported emissions and changes in its
industrial structure suggest that the features of the provincial emission
transfers could have changed. We construct a Chinese provincial multiyear,
multisector model (multi-regional input–output model) to investigate
the structural changes in China’s provincial emission transfers
from 2002 to 2012. We find that from 2007 to 2012, the international-export-associated
emission transfers driven by eastern provinces decreased by 17% after
the 262% increase in 2002–07, while investment dominated 99%
of the increase in emission transfers. At the sector level, emissions
caused by construction in the east and west, and technology-intensive
manufacturing in the center that largely related to investment were
the major components of the increasing emission transfers in 2007–12,
accounting for 23%, 21%, and 10% of the increase, respectively. Our
findings indicate that attention should be given to committed emissions
from investment and the interaction between non-uniform provincial
climate policies and economic relationships between provinces.