Decomposing the decoupling relationship between energy-related CO₂ emissions and economic growth in China

In order to explore the decoupling relationship and its influence factors between economic growth and carbon emissions in China, the decoupling elasticity decomposition quantitative model of carbon emissions based on extended Log-Mean Divisia Index and Tapio decoupling models is established in this paper. The carbon emissions induced by household (HOU) sector ranked fifth among the nine sectors; hence, we analyzed the HOU sector with the production (PRO) sector together. The results show that, first, the carbon emissions increased from 3.95 billion tons in 1996 to 10.49 billion tons in 2012, and the contributions of manufacturing sector and electric power, gas and water production and supply sector to carbon emissions account for approximately 81 %. Second, the economic output effect is the main contributor, and the energy intensity effect is the major inhibitor factor to the carbon emissions in both the PRO sector and HOU sector, respectively. Third, the decoupling state of the PRO sector mainly stayed at weak decoupling, while the decoupling state of HOU sector mainly stayed at strong decoupling. Fourth, the impact factors of the carbon emissions and the decoupling elasticity values are in complete agreement. At the end of this paper, we present some policy recommendations for China’s government to realize the decoupling between CO₂ emissions and economic growth in the near future.