Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects
China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) aims to achieve a national carbon intensity reduction of 17% through differentiated targets at the provincial level. Allocating the national target among China’s provinces is complicated by the fact that more than half of China’s national carbon emissions a...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Technical Report |
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MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
2013
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78301 |
| _version_ | 1826217030485803008 |
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| author | Springmann, M. Zhang, D. Karplus, V.J. |
| author_facet | Springmann, M. Zhang, D. Karplus, V.J. |
| author_sort | Springmann, M. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) aims to achieve a national carbon intensity reduction of 17% through differentiated targets at the provincial level. Allocating the national target among China’s provinces is complicated by the fact that more than half of China’s national carbon emissions are embodied in interprovincial trade, with the relatively developed eastern provinces relying on the central and western provinces for energy-intensive imports. This study develops a consistent methodology to adjust regional emissions-intensity targets for trade-related emissions transfers and assesses its economic effects on China's provinces using a regional computable general equilibrium model of the Chinese economy. This study finds that in 2007 China's eastern provinces outsource 14% of their territorial emissions to the central and western provinces. Adjusting the provincial targets for those emissions transfers increases the reduction burden for the eastern provinces by 60%, while alleviating the burden for the central and western provinces by 50% each. The CGE analysis indicates that this adjustment could double China's national welfare loss compared to the homogenous and politics-based distribution of reduction targets. A shared-responsibility approach that balances production-based and consumption-based emissions responsibilities is found to alleviate those unbalancing effects and lead to a more equal distribution of economic burden among China's provinces. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:56:57Z |
| format | Technical Report |
| id | mit-1721.1/78301 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:56:57Z |
| publishDate | 2013 |
| publisher | MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/783012019-04-11T00:17:26Z Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects Springmann, M. Zhang, D. Karplus, V.J. China’s Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015) aims to achieve a national carbon intensity reduction of 17% through differentiated targets at the provincial level. Allocating the national target among China’s provinces is complicated by the fact that more than half of China’s national carbon emissions are embodied in interprovincial trade, with the relatively developed eastern provinces relying on the central and western provinces for energy-intensive imports. This study develops a consistent methodology to adjust regional emissions-intensity targets for trade-related emissions transfers and assesses its economic effects on China's provinces using a regional computable general equilibrium model of the Chinese economy. This study finds that in 2007 China's eastern provinces outsource 14% of their territorial emissions to the central and western provinces. Adjusting the provincial targets for those emissions transfers increases the reduction burden for the eastern provinces by 60%, while alleviating the burden for the central and western provinces by 50% each. The CGE analysis indicates that this adjustment could double China's national welfare loss compared to the homogenous and politics-based distribution of reduction targets. A shared-responsibility approach that balances production-based and consumption-based emissions responsibilities is found to alleviate those unbalancing effects and lead to a more equal distribution of economic burden among China's provinces. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this work provided by the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change through a consortium of industrial sponsors and Federal grants, and by the AXA Research Fund which is supporting Marco Springmann's doctoral research. We further thank Eni S.p.A., ICF International, Shell International Limited, and the French Development Agency (AFD), founding sponsors of the China Energy and Climate Project. We also grateful for support provided by the Social Science Key Research Program from National Social Science Foundation, China of Grant No. 09&ZD029 and by Rio Tinto China. We would further like to thank John Reilly, Sergey Paltsev, Henry Jacoby and Audrey Resutek for helpful comments, discussion and edits. 2013-04-08T21:12:04Z 2013-04-08T21:12:04Z 2013-03 Technical Report http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78301 Report 241 JP Report Series;241 An error occurred on the license name. An error occurred getting the license - uri. application/pdf MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change |
| spellingShingle | Springmann, M. Zhang, D. Karplus, V.J. Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title | Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title_full | Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title_fullStr | Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title_full_unstemmed | Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title_short | Consumption-Based Adjustment of China's Emissions-Intensity Targets: An Analysis of its Potential Economic Effects |
| title_sort | consumption based adjustment of china s emissions intensity targets an analysis of its potential economic effects |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/78301 |
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