China's carbon emissions embodied in (normal and processing) exports and their driving forces, 2006–2012

This paper constructed a time-series extended input–output dataset (2006–2012) to analyze China's carbon emissions embodied in both normal and processing exports at a detailed 135-sector level. The structural decomposition analysis (SDA) was further applied to shed light on the driving forces behind the changes in their embodied emissions over the entire time period. This empirical study confirms the importance of using the extended model for analyzing the trade-related embodiment, especially for processing exports. The embodied emissions in both normal and processing exports first increased from 2006 to 2008, then dropped during the global financial crisis (2008–2009), and then rose again after 2009. The embodied emissions as a percentage of total CO₂ emissions were quite stable before and after the global financial crisis, at around 24% over the 2006–2008 period, and 18% over the 2010–2012 period. From 2006 to 2012, emission intensity played the key role in reducing the embodied emissions (around 595 Mt CO₂), while the total export effect contributed the most to the increase in embodied emissions (around 552 Mt CO₂). Similar analysis can be applied to other indicators, such as energy, water, GHG emissions, pollutants and materials.