PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2014, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (12): 1579-1586.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2014.12.001

• Orginal Article •     Next Articles

Projection of China’s industrial structure change and carbon emission trends

Yongbin ZHU1(), Zheng WANG1,2()   

  1. 1. Institute of Policy and Management, CAS, Beijing 100190, China
    2. Key Laboratory of Geographic Information Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China
  • Online:2014-12-19 Published:2014-12-19

Abstract:

China has been experiencing profound adjustments in its industrial structure. Meanwhile, the industrial upgrade is also an important route to reducing its carbon emissions. This study analyzes the driving force of industrial structure change, that is, the demand of goods of each sector. With China's transition from a developing to a developed economy, the consuming preference of its citizens is expected to converge toward that of developed countries. Based on this assumption, we built a Multi-sector Intertemporal Dynamic Optimization (MIDO) model combining the neoclassic optimal economic growth theory and the input-output production structure model to project consumer preference oriented industrial structure change and carbon emission trends in China based on four scenarios of future development path of China. The simulation result indicates that the share of agriculture as well as food and clothes sectors will shrink, while the other services sector sees its share enlarging under all scenarios. In the business as usual scenario (Scen-China), the shares of heavy-manufacturing, transport, chemicals, and metals sectors continue to increase, while the shares of these energy intensive sectors decrease in the US type of consumption preference scenario (Scen-US). The shares of transport and chemicals will decline slightly in the EU type of consumption preference scenario (Scen-EU); and in the Japan type of consumption preference scenario (Scen-JP) the share of the transport sector will rise and the share of the metals sector will drop. Aggregated energy use of China will show an inversed-U shaped trend due to industrial structure change and energy efficiency improvement. The gross energy use in the Scen-China, Scen-EU, Scen-JP, and Scen-US scenarios will considerably decline from the peak value of 2810 Mtoe to 2166 Mtoe. Accordingly, the accumulated carbon emission will be in the range of 94 GtC to 72.6 GtC. The consuming preference pattern of US, due to its heavy reliance on the services sector, is better than that of JP, followed by EU and China from the perspective of energy conservation and emission reduction.

Key words: industrial structure, carbon emission, consumption preference, MIDO model, intertemporal optimization, China

CLC Number: 

  • F224