Embodied Carbon in China’s Export Trade: A Multi Region Input-Output Analysis

With the rapid growth of China&rsquo:s export trade and increasing pressure of domestic carbon emission reduction, the issue of carbon embodied in export trade has attracted increasing attention from academic circles. This paper has constructed a calculation model for embodied carbon in China&rsquo:s export trade by using the multi-region input-output model and the international input-output data from the World Input-Output Database (WIOD) database in order to calculate the amount of embodied carbon. Our objective is to analyze the main source industry and specific sectors of embodied carbon in China&rsquo:s export trade, and to provide a quantitative basis for emission reduction under the &ldquo:carbon neutrality&rdquo: strategy. The findings reveal that the embodied carbon in China&rsquo:s export trade mainly comes from the secondary industry, which accounts for more than 90% of the total embodied carbon in export trade, while the proportions of embodied carbon in the primary industry and the tertiary industry are relatively low, about 1% and 5&ndash:7%, respectively. In terms of specific sectors, the crop and animal production and hunting sectors have the largest share (over 60%) of embodied carbon in the export trade of the primary industry: in the export trade of the secondary industry, the main sources of embodied carbon are the manufacturing sector and the power, gas, steam and air-conditioning supply sectors, respectively accounting for around 50% and 45% of the total embodied carbon in the export trade of the secondary industry: as for the tertiary industry, the transport and storage sectors have the largest share of embodied carbon in the export trade, which is around 70%. Based on the above research results, this paper has provided relevant policy recommendations, which are optimizing the export structure, improving the energy consumption structure and the carbon emissions trading system.