Biomass and China's Carbon Emissions: A Missing Piece of Carbon Decomposition

Energy Policy, Vol. 36, pp. 2517-2526, 2008

10 Pages Posted: 29 Oct 2008

See all articles by Chunbo Ma

Chunbo Ma

The University of Western Australia - School of Agricultural and Environment

David I. Stern

Australian National University (ANU) - Crawford School of Public Policy

Date Written: October, 27 2008

Abstract

A number of previous studies on China's carbon emissions have mainly focused on two facts: (1) the continuous growth in emissions up till the middle of the 1990s; (2) the recent stability of emissions from 1996 to 2001. Decomposition analysis has been widely used to explore the driving forces behind these phenomena. However, since 2002, China's carbon emissions have resumed their growth at an even greater rate. This paper investigates China's carbon emissions during 1971-2003, with particular focus on the role of biomass, and the fall and resurgence in emissions since the mid-1990s. We use an extended Kaya identity and the well-established logarithmic mean Divisia index (LMDI I) method. Carbon emissions are decomposed into effects of various driving forces. We find that (1) a shift from biomass to commercial energy increases carbon emissions by a magnitude comparable to that of the increase in emissions due to population growth; (2) the technological effect and scale effect due to percapita gross domestic products (GDP) growth are different in the pre-reform period versus the postreform period; (3) the positive effect of population growth has been decreasing over the entire period; and (4) the fall in emissions in the late 1990s and resurgence in the early 2000s may be overstated due to inaccurate statistics.

Keywords: China, Biomass, Carbon emission, Decomposition analysis

Suggested Citation

Ma, Chunbo and Stern, David I., Biomass and China's Carbon Emissions: A Missing Piece of Carbon Decomposition (October, 27 2008). Energy Policy, Vol. 36, pp. 2517-2526, 2008, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1290765

Chunbo Ma (Contact Author)

The University of Western Australia - School of Agricultural and Environment ( email )

Nedlands, Western Australia 6907
Australia

HOME PAGE: http://www.are.uwa.edu.au/

David I. Stern

Australian National University (ANU) - Crawford School of Public Policy ( email )

ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
J.G. Crawford Building, #132, Lennox Crossing
Canberra, Australian Capital Territory 0200
Australia

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