Managing Carbon Efficiency and Carbon Equity: What Information Do We Have From Embodied Carbon Emissions?

Introduction

China attaches great importance to climate cooperation and actively shoulders the responsibility of emissions reduction. At the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Conference, the government pledged to reduce carbon intensity by 40%-45% by 2020, with non-fossil energy accounting for 16%. In 2015, China reaffirmed its commitment to peak carbon emissions by 2030, with a target of reducing carbon intensity by 60%-65% and increasing the share of non-fossil energy to 20%, as stated in its nationally determined contributions (NDC) submitted during the Paris Climate Conference. In 2020, China further articulated its goal of striving for a carbon emissions peak before 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060, with a focus on carbon intensity reduction.

Carbon efficiency and carbon equity serve as crucial allocation criteria for achieving carbon emissions reduction (Jia, Lin, & Liu, 2023; Jia, Wen, & Wang, 2023). Carbon Efficiency refers to the effectiveness and productivity of processes or actions aimed at reducing carbon emissions. It measures how well a particular economic activity, technology, or policy can achieve emission reductions relative to the amount of carbon emissions produced. High carbon efficiency means achieving significant emission reductions with minimal carbon emissions (Lin & Guan, 2023b; Peng, Lu, Gupta, & Wang, 2022). Carbon Equity, on the other hand, pertains to the fairness and just distribution of the burden of reducing carbon emissions among different regions. It ensures that the responsibility for reducing emissions is distributed in a way that considers historical contributions to emissions, economic capacity, and development needs (Jia, 2023; Lin & Zhao, 2023). Carbon equity seeks to address disparities in emissions and their consequences, aiming for a more balanced and equitable approach to regional emission reductions. In this paper, carbon equity carries an additional layer of meaning: it involves setting emission reduction targets based on consumption-based carbon emissions generated by each region's actual economic development, rather than relying solely on production-based carbon emissions. In practice, governments face the dual challenge of promoting economic development while mitigating the negative economic impact of emissions reduction. Simultaneously, they must ensure the fairness of emission reduction task allocation among regions to alleviate conflicts between economic development and emissions reduction in certain areas. Achieving China's “peak carbon emissions” and “carbon neutrality” goals necessitates coordinated efforts from all regions, underpinned by scientifically sound carbon reduction pathways and a fair and viable emission reduction target scheme. A program based on embodied carbon emissions might be considered fairer in some respects because it accounts for the carbon emissions associated with the entire supply chain of products. It addresses the concept of “carbon leakage,” where regions with strict emissions reduction targets might see increased imports of carbon-intensive goods, shifting emissions elsewhere.