CO2 emission changes of China's power generation system: Input-output subsystem analysis

With the rapid development of economy, China's electric power consumption has increased sharply. Its carbon emissions derived from power generation now accounts for more than 45% of the national emissions. This study employs a structural decomposition analysis based on input-output subsystem model to explore sources for emissions increments in China's power sector from 2007 to 2015. Under this approach, the influential factors are classified into four categories. Quite a few scenarios are designed to further assess the impacts of power mix and the levy of carbon tax. The results show that the consumption is the main driving growth factor of CO2 emissions, and most of the emissions are driven by continuing expansion of large-scale infrastructure, and this trend seems going to change in the future; carbon tax and price policies may be the alternative for reducing the emissions. In addition, both the generation efficiency and internal industrial structure are critical factors in emission reduction. Besides, cleaner energy sources effectively lead to carbon emission reduction but this change performs a relatively small effect. Finally, promoting the development of non-fossil energy power may lead to total CO2 emissions perform decrease trend before 2030.