Investigating the drivers of energy-related CO2 emissions in China's industrial sector: From regional and provincial perspectives

This paper utilizes the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) to quantify the contributions of various factors on industrial CO2 emissions (ICE) at both the regional and provincial levels, and then analyzes the decoupling index and its components. The main results include: (1) Industrial activity was the leading promoting factor in ICE, while energy intensity was the decisive factor for controlling ICE in most provinces. (2) Energy structure change only had a marginal impact on ICE and varied considerably across provinces. (3) The effects of various factors are distinctly diverse in different provinces; generally, the inhibiting effects only partly offset the promoting effects. (4) Most provinces exhibited weak decoupling effect, energy intensity decline was the crucial factor in their decoupling progress, while energy structure switch only played a negligible role in decoupling progress, even exerted an opposite effect in emission mitigation in some provinces, and therefore dragged down their decoupling progress.