Drivers for decoupling carbon footprint pressure from economic growth in China’s provinces

作     者：Dongzhe Liang Hongwei Lu Yanlong Guan Liyang Feng Dongzhe Liang;Hongwei Lu;Yanlong Guan;Liyang Feng

作者机构：School of Water Conservancy and Hydropower EngineeringNorth China Electric Power UniversityBeijing 102206China Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface ProcessesInstitute of Geographic Science and Natural Resources ResearchChinese Academy of SciencesBeijing 100101China School of Environmental Science and EngineeringSouthern University of Science and TechnologyShenzhen 518055China State Key Laboratory of Hydraulic Engineering Simulation and SafetyTianjin UniversityTianjin300392China 

出 版 物：《Geography and Sustainability》 (地理学与可持续性（英文）)

年 卷 期：2022年第3卷第3期

页      面：258-267页

学科分类：02[经济学] 0201[经济学-理论经济学] 020105[经济学-世界经济] 

基　　金：We acknowledge funding from the National Key Research and Devel-opment Program of China(Grant No.2019YFC0507801) the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No.41890824) the Chinese Academy of Sciences Interdisciplinary Innovation Team(Grant No.JCTD-2019-04) 

主　　题：Carbon footprint pressure Decoupling indicator Decomposition analysis China 

摘      要：A growing imbalance between energy carbon emissions and vegetation carbon sequestration is a major imped-iment to achieving Sustainable Development Goals. Decoupling the growing imbalance from economic growthneeds a stringent and coordinated package of sustainable policies. Previously, enhancing efficiency and vegeta-tion carbon sequestration were dominant drivers to decouple. However, the role and magnitude of restructuringsin the energy sector and economy in decoupling were underestimated. In this context, China’s 30 provinces wereselected as study areas. By employing a carbon footprint pressure (CFP) indicator to represent the imbalance, awidely decoupling method was adopted to describe the decoupling state and trend of CFP and economic *** extended IPAT equation and the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index method were further used to reveal the roleand magnitude of drivers on decoupling. The findings revealed that the CFP climbed significantly in 26 provincesbetween 2006 and 2015. We discovered that 22 provinces were working toward absolute decoupling, with 15provinces achieving it during the 12-th Five-Year Plan. Our analysis revealed that improving energy efficiencywas the primary driver of absolute decoupling, while substituting natural gas and oil for coal, reducing industryshare, and enhancing carbon sequestration accelerated absolute decoupling. Considering the limited future roleof improving energy efficiency and vegetation carbon sequestration, there is an urgent need to optimize andupgrade the structures of the energy sector and economy to mitigate the future climate risk.