The Factor Decomposition and Periodic Fluctuations of Carbon Emission in China

Adopting a two-stage LMDI model and 1990 to 2005 time series data of China,we divide the factors that influence the carbon dioxide emission coming from the energy consumption into four aspects,production scale,energy structure,carbon emission intensity,and energy intensity. Then we add production structure effect to the model and decompose the driving factor —energy intensity,which has a pivotal effect to reduce the carbon emission. According to the scale of production and the efficiency of energy using,which plays a key role to increase or reduce the carbon emission,we define the following four economic growth modes,i.e. the "high growth with high efficiency","low growth with low efficiency","low growth with high efficiency" ,and "high growth with low efficiency". Based on the result above,we analyze the periodic fluctuating characters of carbon emission in China. The result shows the difference of economic growth mode in the four stages has been the root cause to the fluctuation of carbon emission from the 1990s; especially,the "high input,high emission and low efficiency" economic growth mode between 2000 to 2004 has resulted in the rapid growth of the carbon emission. Thus we suggest that China should change the its economic growth mode to effectively control and reduce the carbon dioxide emission.