Driving factors of carbon emissions embodied in China–US trade: a structural decomposition analysis

Abstract Based on the environmental multi-regional input–output model, this study employed structural decomposition analysis to investigate the driving factors of carbon emissions embodied in China–US trade over the period of 1995–2009. Effective driving factors were classified into six groups, and each group included both factors at home and abroad. The results show that, factors “trade structure of intermediate products at home” and “export market shares of final products at home” presented the largest positive impacts to increments in carbon emissions embodied in Chinese exports to the US. While the majority of negative impacts was generated by changes in “energy intensities at home.” The increment in carbon emissions embodied in US exports to China was mostly contributed by “total demands abroad.” Impacts of other driving factors were much smaller. At the sectoral level, both positive and negative impacts of driving factors were largely limited to a few sectors (e.g., “Textiles Products,” “Machinery,” “Transport Equipment,” and “Electrical Equipment”); here, positive impacts were mostly contributed by “export market shares of final products at home” and “total demands abroad,” and negative impacts were mainly contributed by “energy intensities at home.” Policy implications deduced from the results were discussed.