Meng, Jing;
Huo, Jingwen;
Zhang, Zengkai;
Liu, Yu;
Mi, Zhifu;
Guan, Dabo;
Feng, Kuishuang;
(2023)
The narrowing gap in developed and developing country emission intensities reduces global trade’s carbon leakage.
Nature Communications
, 14
, Article 3775. 10.1038/s41467-023-39449-7.
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Abstract
International trade affects CO2 emissions by redistributing production activities to places where the emission intensities are different from the place of consumption. This study focuses on the net emission change as the result of the narrowing gap in emission intensities between the exporter and importer. Here we show that the relocation of production activities from the global North (developed countries) to the global South (developing countries) in the early 2000s leads to an increase in global emissions due to the higher emission intensities in China and India. The related net emissions are about one-third of the total emissions embodied in the South-North trade. However, the narrowing emission intensities between South-North and the changing trade patterns results in declining net emissions in trade in the past decade. The convergence of emission intensities in the global South alleviates concerns that increasing South-South trade would lead to increased carbon leakage and carbon emissions. The mitigation opportunity to green the supply chain lies in sectors such as electricity, mineral products and chemical products, but calls for a universal assessment of emission intensities and concerted effort.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | The narrowing gap in developed and developing country emission intensities reduces global trade’s carbon leakage |
| Location: | England |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1038/s41467-023-39449-7 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39449-7 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Carbon and energy, Climate-change mitigation, Climate-change policy |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10172616 |
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