Evolutionary path and driving forces of inter-industry transfer of CO₂ emissions in China: Evidence from structural...

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions are currently a hot topic of global concern. It is of great significance for reducing CO₂ emissions to fully understand the transfer pattern of CO₂ emissions among industries and the key factors affecting CO₂ emissions. This paper uses the structural path analysis model to explore deeply the main paths of inter-industry transfer of CO₂ emissions in China from 2002 to 2017 and applies the structural path decomposition model to analyze the main factors affecting CO₂ emissions in specific paths from the perspectives of CO₂ emission intensity, intermediate product input structure, final demand structure, per capita final demand, and population size. The results show that: (1) China's CO₂ emissions increased from 3500.41 million tons (Mt) in 2002 to 9475.66Mt in 2017, with an average annual growth rate of 6.86%. The growth rate of China's CO₂ emissions slowed down after 2012. (2) Non-metallic mineral industry\electricity industry\metal products industry→(intermediate sector)→investment demand and electricity industry→(intermediate sector)→consumption demand are two types of key paths that affect China's CO₂ emissions, and these paths remain basically unchanged during the study period. (3) The CO₂ emission intensity effect is the main factor in restraining the growth of emissions, and the per capita final demand effect and intermediate product structure effect are the main promoting factors. The effect of driving factors on different industrial paths is different, and the offsetting effect of the driving factor in different paths may lead to the insignificant effect of this factor in the overall decomposition. To effectively reduce CO₂ emissions, China should focus on specific industrial paths and implement upstream and downstream comprehensive governance to achieve a low-carbon industrial chain throughout the whole process.