Decomposition analysis of China's chemical sector energy-related CO <sub>2</sub> emissions: From an extended SDA approach perspective
Yang Yu, Jie Hou, Atif Jahanger, Xiang Cao, Daniel Balsalobre‐Lorente, Magdalena Radulescu, Tangyang Jiang
Abstract
The excessive growth of carbon emissions (CO 2 E) from industrial energy use not only exacerbates global warming and severely curbs the sustainable development of the economy and society. As a high energy-consuming sector second only to the fossil energy division, the power and heavy division, China's chemical industry should have received more attention for its CO 2 E. However, there are limited literatures on energy CO 2 E in China's chemical sector at present. Based on this fact, this current paper uses the energy utilization approach, the input–output analysis approach, and the extended structural decomposition method to evaluate the energy-related CO 2 E of China's chemical sector from 2007 to 2017. (1) China's chemical sector energy-related CO 2 E showed a trend of first growth and then a slow decline, demonstrating that the rapid growth of China's chemical sector energy-related CO 2 E has been effectively controlled; However, it should be noted that the chemical industry is still dominated by high-CO 2 E energy-related CO 2 E at the current stage. (2) Input structure and energy intensity effects have a reduced influence on the growth of energy-related CO 2 E in China's chemical sector. This is due to upgrading energy use technology and optimizing the generalized technology progress rate in the chemical sector. (3) Energy structure and final demand effects have encouraged the growth of the chemical sector's energy-related CO 2 E. It shows that the industrial system's demand for chemical products is constantly expanding, and the chemical products still have the characteristics of high carbonization. Also, the chemical sector's supply-side energy utilization structure has not been significantly enhanced.