Decomposition analysis of CO2 emissions in the Mexican industrial sector

The paper presents a decomposition analysis to identify the factors that have influenced the changes in the carbon dioxide emissions in the Mexican industrial sector as a whole, and from sixteen representative industrial branches during the period 1965–2003. By means of the Refined Laspeyres Index method for decomposing carbon dioxide emissions proposed by Sun (1998), the changes in CO2 emissions from energy use are evaluated according to five effects: activity, structure, energy intensity, end-use fuel mix, and fuel mix to generate electricity. The analysis results show that effects of activity, structure, and fuel mix to generate electricity contributed to increase the CO2 emissions by 71.1, 11.8, and 1.7 million tons of CO2 equivalent respectively from 1965 to 2003; while energy intensity and end-use fuel mix mitigated them by 32.2, and 5.9 million tons of CO2 respectively. The analysis is carried out in three stages: 1965–1982, 1982–1994, and 1994–2003 to show the influence of circumstances such as Mexican oil boom, economic crises, variation in oil prices and Mexico's opening up to international free trade on the growth of CO2 emissions. The results show that industrial branches as petrochemical, chemical, iron and steel, cement, among others played a significant role in the total increase of 250% of industrial emissions of CO2 from 1965 to 2003.

► Mexico's industrial sector grew their CO2 emissions by 250% from 1965 to 2003.
► The activity effect was the main causal factor in CO2 emission increases.
► The energy intensity effect mitigates the CO2 growth into the industrial sector.