Empirical study of China's provincial carbon emission responsibility allotment: credit or penalty?

How do Chinese provinces perform in their commitments to carbon emission responsibility? This study extends the carbon emission responsibility allotment proposed by Dietzenbacher et al. (Nat Commun 11:1130, 2020) to a national multi-region setting to analyze provincial, industrial, and bilateral trade emission responsibility allotment in China. This paper uses China's latest multi-region input-output tables in 2012 and 2015, and finds that based on the total amount of ERA carbon emissions, the province with the largest carbon emission responsibility in 2012 is Shandong, followed by Jiangsu and Hebei. From the perspective of industry, the construction is the highest carbon emissions in each province, followed by general and specialist machinery. In the allocation of carbon emissions responsibility in 2015, the credit between Xinjiang and Jiangsu is the largest; Guangdong and Jiangsu have the largest penalty. Among total credits which the province's trade with others, Xinjiang has the highest credit, followed by Shanghai and Jiangsu; among total penalties which the province trade with others, Guangdong Province is the largest penalty province, followed by Guangxi.