Targeted opportunities to address the climate–trade dilemma in China
Abstract
International trade has become the fastest growing driver of global carbon emissions, with large quantities of emissions embodied in exports from emerging economies. International trade with emerging economies poses a dilemma for climate and trade policy: to the extent emerging markets have comparative advantages in manufacturing, such trade is economically efficient and desirable. However, if carbon-intensive manufacturing in emerging countries such as China entails drastically more CO_2 emissions than making the same product elsewhere, then trade increases global CO_2 emissions. Here we show that the emissions embodied in Chinese exports, which are larger than the annual emissions of Japan or Germany, are primarily the result of China's coal-based energy mix and the very high emissions intensity (emission per unit of economic value) in a few provinces and industry sectors. Exports from these provinces and sectors therefore represent targeted opportunities to address the climate–trade dilemma by either improving production technologies and decarbonizing the underlying energy systems or else reducing trade volumes.
Additional Information
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Limited. Received 12 May 2015; accepted 18 August 2015; published online 28 September 2015. This work was supported by China's National Basic Research Program (2014CB441301), the State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SKLURE 2015-2-6), and Natural Science Foundation of China project (41328008). Z.L. acknowledges the National Natural Science Foundation of China-NSFC 41501605, the China Sustainable Energy Program of Energy Foundation (G-1407-21749), the Giorgio Ruffolo fellowship and the support from Italy's Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea. S.J.D. acknowledges support from the Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences Fellowships for Young International Distinguished Scientists. S.L. acknowledges the support of the Dow Sustainability Fellows Program. D.G. acknowledges the Economic and Social Research Council funded project 'Dynamics of Green Growth in European and Chinese Cities' (ES/L016028) and his Philip Leverhulme Prize. Contributions: Z.L., K.F. and S.J.D. designed the research. Z.L., K.F. and S.J.D. conceived the paper. K.F. and J.L. provided the data. Z.L., S.J.D., K.F. and K.H. performed the analysis. S.J.D. drew the figures. All authors contributed to writing the paper. The authors declare no competing financial interests.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - nclimate2800-s1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 64384
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20160210-144704707
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 2014CB441301
- State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology
- Chinese Academy of Sciences
- SKLURE 2015-2-6
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 41328008
- National Natural Science Foundation of China
- 41501605
- China Sustainable Energy Program
- G-1407-21749
- Giorgio Ruffolo fellowship
- Ministero dell'Ambiente e della Tutela del Territorio e del Mare
- Institute of Applied Ecology
- Dow Chemical Company
- Resnick Sustainability Institute
- Economic and Social Research Council
- ES/L016028
- Leverhulme Trust
- Created
-
2016-02-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-10-17Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Resnick Sustainability Institute