Accounting carbon emission changes under regional industrial transfer in an urban agglomeration in China's Pearl River Delta

Industrial sectors account for a large part of urban carbon emissions. To address this, regional industrial transfer has recently been proposed in China, especially for areas consisting of urban agglomerations. In this manuscript, by applying LMDI method to the industrial transfer theory, driving forces of carbon emission changes from manufacturing industries were evaluated in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) of China. Firstly, the theories of industrial transfer were thoroughly analyzed to systematically study the pattern and trend. Then, a multi-region LMDI model was made to simulate the effect of the driving forces of regional transfer on carbon emissions, considering the production element flows of capital, labor, and technology under the background of industrial transfer through the cities. Finally, using the integrated model with spatial analysis, the temporal and spatial characteristics of carbon emission changes were quantified. The results revealed that the economic growth triggered the high speed of carbon increases, while industrial structure effect especially for labor-intensive industries and technology-intensive industries, help to prevent the carbon emissions from ever increasing. The developed cities effectively reduce high energy consuming industries, mainly the capital-intensive industries, by transferring to the developing places, causing the inequality distribution of carbon emissions of manufacturing industries in the PRD. The results may implied the adjustments of coordinated development to reduce the carbon disparities.