Search

Global warming and the rapid growth of carbon emissions have attracted the attention of governments and academia throughout the world. In 2006, China surpassed the United States as the emitter of the greatest volume of carbon, the largest contribution of which is derived from China&rsquo, s industrial sector. This study investigated the evolution of industrial carbon shadow prices (CSPs) in China at the provincial level to assess the opportunity costs in terms of value added foregone owing to decreasing carbon emissions. A dual formulation of the by-production data envelopment analysis (DEA) model was applied to estimate the industrial carbon abatement costs in China during 2003&ndash, 2017. This study represents the first attempt to apply the dual by-production DEA model for this purpose. Empirical results showed that industrial CSP increased by 3.83% annually and that the average provincial CSP was approximately $562.43 USD/ton. A significant upturn in the CSP occurred after 2006. Furthermore, disparities of changes in industrial CSP over time were checked using the test of sigma convergence. Regional divergence was observed for the period 2011&ndash, 2017. Policy implications were derived from the empirical results in terms of improvements regarding carbon abatement.

As the world's largest carbon emitter, China has set stringent mitigation targets. The Five-Year-Plans have been an important administrative tool for China in climate change mitigation. However, the emissions transfer inside China has raised the problem of pollution haven affect and challenges to the effectiveness of the mitigation policies. This study examines whether mitigation policies can promote emissions reduction and whether it causes the pollution haven effect in China. It establishes an Extended Provincial Input-Output Model to calculate province production-based emissions, consumption-based emissions, and emissions transfer from 2005 to 2015. The results show that: (1) The mitigation policy is effective as a 1% increase of the completeness of the mitigation target is related to a 0.118% decrease of production-based emissions. (2) Stringent mitigation policies increase net emissions outflow as a 1% increase of the completeness of the target is related to an 18.5% increase of the net emissions transfer. (3) Subsequent policy enforcement will weaken once the mitigation goal is accomplished. This study reputes that the mitigation policy effectively controls emissions, especially production-based emissions, while it still needs refined policy designing considering the pollution haven effect inside China.