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CO₂ emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are the primary cause of global warming. Much attention has been focused on the CO₂ directly emitted by each country, but relatively little attention has been paid to the amount of emissions associated with the consumption of goods and services in each country. Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions differs from traditional, production-based inventories because of imports and exports of goods and services that, either directly or indirectly, involve CO₂ emissions. Here, using the latest available data, we present a global consumption-based CO₂ emissions inventory and calculations of associated consumption-based energy and carbon intensities. We find that, in 2004, 23% of global CO₂ emissions, or 6.2 gigatonnes CO₂, were traded internationally, primarily as exports from China and other emerging markets to consumers in developed countries. In some wealthy countries, including Switzerland, Sweden, Austria, the United Kingdom, and France, >30% of consumption-based emissions were imported, with net imports to many Europeans of >4 tons CO₂ per person in 2004. Net import of emissions to the United States in the same year was somewhat less: 10.8% of total consumption-based emissions and 2.4 tons CO₂ per person. In contrast, 22.5% of the emissions produced in China in 2004 were exported, on net, to consumers elsewhere. Consumption-based accounting of CO₂ emissions demonstrates the potential for international carbon leakage. Sharing responsibility for emissions among producers and consumers could facilitate international agreement on global climate policy that is now hindered by concerns over the regional and historical inequity of emissions.

CO₂ emissions from fossil-fuel burning and industrial processes have been accelerating at a global scale, with their growth rate increasing from 1.1% y⁻¹ for 1990-1999 to >3% y⁻¹ for 2000-2004. The emissions growth rate since 2000 was greater than for the most fossil-fuel intensive of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emissions scenarios developed in the late 1990s. Global emissions growth since 2000 was driven by a cessation or reversal of earlier declining trends in the energy intensity of gross domestic product (GDP) (energy/GDP) and the carbon intensity of energy (emissions/energy), coupled with continuing increases in population and per-capita GDP. Nearly constant or slightly increasing trends in the carbon intensity of energy have been recently observed in both developed and developing regions. No region is decarbonizing its energy supply. The growth rate in emissions is strongest in rapidly developing economies, particularly China. Together, the developing and least-developed economies (forming 80% of the world's population) accounted for 73% of global emissions growth in 2004 but only 41% of global emissions and only 23% of global cumulative emissions since the mid-18th century. The results have implications for global equity.

Progress in financial inclusion has played a major role in economic development and poverty reduction. However, the environmental impact of financial inclusion calls for urgent implementation of environmental strategies to mitigate climate change. Financial inclusion forces the policies of developed countries to advance and not affect the present and future development of developing countries. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate the direct effects of information and communication technology (ICT) usage on environment as well as its moderating role on the association between financial inclusion and environmental degradation for six oil exporting countries (United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kuwait, Canada, and the United States), using annual panel data from 1995 to 2019. We also analyze the validity of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) phenomenon for the entire sample, as well as the role of energy consumption and population. Employing the Method of Moments Quantile Regression (MMQR) with fixed effects, this study supported the existence of EKC phenomenon here as linkage amid human development index and carbon intensity. We find that energy consumption significantly increases carbon intensity. The empirical results showed that the application of internet- and mobile use as indicators of ICT usage lead to environmental preservation in the six oil exporting economies. Also, we observe that financial inclusion has mitigating effects on pollutant emissions, contributing to environmental preservation. Interaction between ICT usage and financial inclusion jointly reduces carbon intensity in all quantile distributions. A robustness check using an alternative proxy of the financial inclusion also confirms that ICT usage significantly and negatively moderates the association between financial inclusion and carbon intensity. Based on the findings of this study, the selected oil exporting countries should integrate financial inclusion with environmental policies to reduce carbon intensity.

This paper analyzes the drivers behind the changes of the Aggregate Carbon Intensity (ACI) of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) power sector in five periods between 1990 and 2017. Since 1990 the carbon intensity of the world has been reduced almost 8.8% whereas the carbon intensity of LAC countries only decreased 0.8%. Even though by 2017 the regional carbon intensity is very similar to the one observed by 1990, this index has showed high variability, mainly in the last three years when the ACI of LAC fell from 285 gCO2/kWh in 2015 to 257.7 gCO2/kWh. To understand what happened with the evolution of the carbon intensity in the region, in this paper a Logarithmic Mean Divisia for Index Decomposition Analysis (IDA-LMDI) is carried out to identify the accelerating and attenuating drivers of the ACI behavior along five periods. The proposal outperforms existing studies previously applied to LAC based upon a single period of analysis. Key contributions are introduced by considering the type of fuel used in power plants as well as specific time-series of energy flows and CO2 emissions by country. Results reveal structural reasons for the increase of the ACI in 1995–2003 and 2008–2015, and intensity reasons for the decrease of the ACI in 1990–1995, 2003–2008 and 2015–2017.

A recent study by DeCicco et al. (Climatic Change 138:667–680, 2016) claims that corn used for ethanol should not be considered to be inherently biogenically carbon-neutral because not all that corn was grown additional to the level otherwise. By assessing the extent of carbon neutrality of corn for ethanol using the reference point baseline approach and historical data that study concluded that the carbon intensity of US corn ethanol is 27% higher than that of gasoline. We develop a framework to determine the carbon neutrality of corn for ethanol by assessing the additional carbon uptake by crops using an anticipated baseline approach. We also apply this framework to determine the additional corn produced for ethanol and include the direct life cycle carbon emissions of only that portion of corn in the direct life cycle carbon intensity of corn ethanol. We implement this framework by integrating an economic model of the agricultural sector in the USA with a biogenic carbon model and life cycle analysis to quantify biogenic carbon uptake and direct life cycle emissions with and without corn ethanol expansion over the 2007–2027 period. We find that the combined biogenic carbon emissions and direct life cycle carbon emission intensity of corn ethanol (not including indirect land use related emissions) is 21% lower than gasoline. The lower value of this carbon intensity of corn ethanol compared with gasoline is robust to a wide range of parametric assumptions.

The article describes the approaches to development of an effective regulatory mechanism to manage carbon intensity of Russian resource-intensive industries. The authors focus their attention on the ferrous metallurgy industry as the top emitter of greenhouse gases (GHG) and the second-largest consumer of energy among Russian industrial sectors. Resource consumption wise this sector is well-studies and regulated by the Best Available Techniques (BAT). Establishing the interrelation between carbon intensity indicators and resource consumption metrics, as well as operating costs per unit of consumed resource, forms the basis for developing a comparative analysis (benchmarking) system. This system relies on specialised indicators outlined in the Reference Documents on the Best Available Techniques (BREF). The authors suggest using the BAT concept for devising an approach to ascertain the acceptable level of greenhouse gas emissions and incentivise modernisation through industry-specific indicative carbon intensity parameters in the sector. Such parameters are substantiated for the ferrous metallurgy of the Russian Federation. The article evaluates the anticipated economic impact for both the government and the ferrous metallurgy industry stemming from the adoption of the proposed approaches to regulating carbon intensity in the sector. The practical implementation of the proposed methodology is poised to mitigate the financial burdens associated with the introduction of Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM) around various economies.

•Impact of green industrial transformation on Pakistan's carbon reduction.•Industrial greening reduces carbon emissions.•Regulations, innovation, FDI, R&D increase carbon intensity.•Pollution haven hypothesis confirmed in present & future periods.•Tech innovation drives FDI, R&D, greener industry, and regulations. The industrial sector is vital to economic progress, yet industrial pollution poses environmental and economic concerns. The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of green industrial transformation in reducing Pakistan's carbon intensity between 1975 and 2020. Carbon emissions are considered an endogenous construct, while foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows, technological innovation, green industrial transformation, environmental legislation, and research and development (R&D) investment are possible mediators. The association between variables is assessed using the robust least-squares approach. Green industrial transformation is connected with lower carbon emissions, yet technical innovation, R&D investment, and inbound FDI raise a country's carbon emissions. The findings support the pollution haven hypothesis in a country. The causality estimates indicate that inward FDI contributes to environmental regulations; green industrial transformation directly relates to inbound FDI and R&D expenditures; and technological innovations correspond to inbound FDI, R&D expenditures, industrial ecofriendly progression, and environmental standards. According to the impulse response function, environmental policies are anticipated to have a differential effect on carbon emissions in 2023, 2024, 2028–2030, while they are likely to decrease in the years 2025–2027 and 2031 forward. Additionally, inward FDI and technology advancements would almost certainly result in a rise in carbon emissions over time. Green industrial transitions are projected to result in a ten-year reduction in carbon emissions. The variance decomposition analysis indicates that eco-friendly industrial adaptations would likely have the largest variance error shock on carbon emissions (11.747%), followed by inbound FDI, technological advancements, and regulatory changes, with R&D spending having a minimal impact over time. Pakistan's economy should foster a green industrial revolution to avoid pollution and increase environmental sustainability to meet its environmental goals. [Display omitted]

CO 2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels are conventionally attributed to the country where the emissions are produced (i.e., where the fuels are burned). However, these production-based accounts represent a single point in the value chain of fossil fuels, which may have been extracted elsewhere and may be used to provide goods or services to consumers elsewhere. We present a consistent set of carbon inventories that spans the full supply chain of global CO 2 emissions, finding that 10.2 billion tons CO 2 or 37% of global emissions are from fossil fuels traded internationally and an additional 6.4 billion tons CO 2 or 23% of global emissions are embodied in traded goods. Our results reveal vulnerabilities and benefits related to current patterns of energy use that are relevant to climate and energy policy. In particular, if a consistent and unavoidable price were imposed on CO 2 emissions somewhere along the supply chain, then all of the parties along the supply chain would seek to impose that price to generate revenue from taxes collected or permits sold. The geographical concentration of carbon-based fuels and relatively small number of parties involved in extracting and refining those fuels suggest that regulation at the wellhead, mine mouth, or refinery might minimize transaction costs as well as opportunities for leakage.

International efforts to avoid dangerous climate change aim for global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to be net-zero by midcentury. Such a goal will require both drastically reducing emissions from high-income countries and avoiding large increases in emissions from still-developing countries. Yet most analyses focus on rich-country emissions reductions, with much less attention to trends in low-income countries. Here, we use a Kaya framework to analyze patterns and trends in CO2 emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels in Africa between 1990 and 2017. In total, African CO2 emissions were just 4% of global fossil fuel emissions in 2017, or 1185 MtCO2, having grown by 4.6% yr−1 on average over the period 1990–2017 (cf the global growth rate of 2.2% yr−1 over the same period). In 2017, 10 countries accounted for about 87% of the continent’s emissions. Despite modest recent reductions in some countries’ CO2 emissions, projections of rapid growth of population and per capita GDP will drive future increases in emissions. Indeed, if the continent-wide average growth rate of 2010–2017 persists, by 2030 Africa’s emissions will have risen by ∼30% (to 1545 MtCO2). Moreover, if increases in carbon intensity also continue, Africa’s emissions would be substantially higher. In either case, such growth is at odds with international climate goals. Achieving such goals will require that the energy for African countries’ development instead come from non-emitting sources.

China is the largest carbon emitter in the world, with agricultural carbon emissions accounting for 17% of China’s total carbon emissions. Agricultural carbon emission reduction has become the key to achieving the “Double Carbon” goal. At the same time, the role of the digital economy in achieving the “dual carbon” goal cannot be ignored as an important engine to boost the high-quality development of China’s economy. Therefore, this paper uses the panel data of 30 provinces in mainland China from 2011 to 2019 to construct a spatial Durbin model and a mediation effect model to explore the impact of the digital economy on agricultural carbon intensity and the mediating role of agricultural technological progress. The research results show that: (1) China’s agricultural carbon intensity fluctuated and declined during the study period, but the current agricultural carbon intensity is still at a high level; (2) The inhibitory effect of the digital economy on agricultural carbon intensity is achieved by promoting agricultural technological progress, and the intermediary role of agricultural technological progress has been verified; (3) The digital economy can significantly reduce the carbon intensity of agriculture, and this inhibition has a positive spatial spillover effect. According to the research conclusions, the government should speed up the development of internet technology and digital inclusive finance, support agricultural technology research and improve farmers’ human capital, and strengthen regional cooperation to release the contribution of digital economy space.