Driving forces of global carbon emissions: From time- and spatial-dynamic perspectives

Up to date, collective efforts in greenhouse gas mitigation made by the international community have been rather ineffective. A major reason of the unsuccessfulness may be attributed to imprecise comprehension on the sources of greenhouse gas pollution and their changing dynamics. Utilizing the LMDI decomposition method, this paper investigates the time- and spatial-dynamics of drivers governing global carbon emissions. We decompose and quantify the effects of different drivers, that is, population, affluence, energy intensity and carbon intensity, across time on global carbon emissions. Next based on country-level decomposition, we also calculate and track the spatial gravity centers of the effects of the drivers. Our results show that energy intensity effect is the leading contributor for carbon emission mitigation, whereas economic development, carbon emission intensity and population serve as factors accelerating carbon emissions. We also find significant heterogeneities in the spatial dynamics of the contribution of different drivers, implying that differentiated climate change policies should be made at different countries to effectively curb global carbon emissions.