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Decoupling without outsourcing? How China’s consumption-based CO2 emissions have plateaued

Mi, Z; Zheng, J; Green, F; Guan, D; Meng, J; Feng, K; Liang, X; (2021) Decoupling without outsourcing? How China’s consumption-based CO2 emissions have plateaued. iScience , 24 (10) , Article 103130. 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103130. Green open access

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Abstract

The shift of China’s economy since 2013, dubbed the “new normal”, has caused its production and consumption emissions to plateau, with the country seeming to embody the tantalizing promise of decoupling its economic growth from carbon emissions. By using multi-region input-output analysis, we find that China’s relative decoupling in the new normal is technology driven, evidenced by the narrowing gap between its technology-adjusted and non-adjusted consumption emissions. By applying structural decomposition analysis, we further explore the driving forces behind the slowdown in China’s imported emissions growth, finding that it is attributable to restructuring of import patterns resulting from changes in the structures of domestic demand. These changes could have been caused by China moving along the global value chain and rebalancing its industrial linkages toward trade in carbon-efficient goods to avoid transferring emissions-intensive production to other regions, indicating a shift to less emissions-intensive trade rather than pure outsourcing.

Type: Article
Title: Decoupling without outsourcing? How China’s consumption-based CO2 emissions have plateaued
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103130
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.103130
Language: English
Additional information: © 2021 The Author(s). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of Political Science
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10135819
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