Decomposition of carbon intensity in electricity production: Technological innovation and structural adjustment in China's power sector

China's power generation accounted for 24% of the world's total output, ranking first in 2015. As a suitable performance indicator, carbon intensity of electricity reflects a variation in the average level of carbon emissions per unit of electricity generated. As the largest carbon emitter among various industries, power sector is in duty bound to reduce carbon emissions and achieve sustainable development. Great progress has been made in China's power sector, which is reflected by the effects of technological innovation and structural adjustment. With logarithm transformation and integral transformation, three-dimensional decomposition model is proposed to quantitatively measure the changed carbon intensity of electricity due to technological innovation and structural adjustment. In the context of three-dimensional model, the variation of carbon intensity can be decomposed into absolute changes and/or relative changes. Furthermore, accumulative decomposition results are obtained by chain linked calculation rules. Finally, the proposed models are implemented in China's power industry to reveal its historical progress during 1980-2014. Some important conclusions are also found based on the decomposition results.