Impacts of oriented technologies and economic factors on China's industrial climate mitigation

The industrial sector is characterized by high energy consumption and high carbon emissions. It is of great significance to clarify the determinants of industrial CO2 emissions for emissions abatement policy making. For this purpose, a comprehensive decomposition framework that can quantify the impacts of both oriented technologies and economic factors on CO2 emissions is developed. By applying the proposed decomposition framework, this paper investigates the determinants of China's industrial CO2 emissions. The main findings show that, during the study period, (1) investment scale expansion was the leading factor promoting emissions growth; (2) against our expectations, efforts for energy structure adjustment failed to curb emissions but had marginal promoting effects on emissions growth; (3) energy-oriented and output-oriented technologies were indispensable contributors to emissions mitigation, followed by decreases in investment efficiency, potential energy intensity, and the CO2 emission coefficient; and (4) energy use efficiency and production efficiency changes usually exerted moderate influences on industrial CO2 emissions, and their influencing directions were sensitive in different sub-industries and Five-Year Plan periods. In most situations, the inhibiting effects could not counteract the promoting effects. Based on these empirical findings, policy recommendations to further reduce industrial CO2 emissions are provided. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.