Estimation of marginal abatement costs of CO2 in Chinese provinces under 2020 carbon emission rights allocation: 2005–2020

Abstract

The calculation of marginal abatement costs of CO plays a vital role in meeting China's 2020 emission reduction targets by providing reference for determining carbon tax and carbon trading pricing. However, most existing researches only used one method to discuss regional and industrial marginal abatement costs, and almost no studies predicted future marginal abatement costs from the perspective of CO emission efficiency. To make up for the gaps, this paper first estimates marginal abatement costs of CO in three major industries of 30 provinces in China from 2005 to 2015 based on three assumptions. Second, based on the principle of fairness and efficiency, China's 2020 emission reduction targets are decomposed by province. Based on the ZSG-C-DDF model, the marginal abatement costs of CO in all provinces in China in 2020 are estimated and compared with the marginal abatement costs of 2005 to 2015. The results show that (1) from 2005 to 2015, marginal abatement costs of CO in all provinces show a fluctuating upward trend; (2) compared with the marginal abatement costs of primary industry or tertiary industry, most provinces have lower marginal abatement costs for secondary industry; and (3) the average marginal abatement costs of CO for China in 2020 are 2766.882 Yuan/tonne for the 40% carbon intensity reduction target and 3334.836 Yuan/tonne for the 45% target, showing that the higher the emission reduction target, the higher the marginal abatement costs of CO. (4) Overall, the average marginal abatement costs of CO in China by 2020 are higher than those in 2005-2015. The empirical analysis in this paper can provide multiple references for environmental policy makers.

Impact of green finance on carbon intensity-empirical research based on dynamic spatial Durbin model

“…(2) Many experts believe that the development of green finance has a significant inhibitory effect on carbon emission. Wang et al (2018) suggested that two energy projects funded by green finance (green bonds) in China were expected to reduce 12.6 million tons of CO2 per year. Green financial funds investing in soil protection, green transportation, clean energy, energy conservation, low-carbon utilities and other fields would gradually reduce the environmental burden.…”

“…Human survival has been seriously threatened by global warming caused by excessive CO2 emissions (Duan et al 2018;Yang et al 2020;Bamanga et al 2021).…”

Initial allocation of SO2 emission rights based on the combination weighting method: evidence from China’s thermal power plants

“…With regard to the choice of research objects, with the increasing rise of carbon emissions trading, most scholars currently study the initial allocation of CO2 emissions (Duan et al 2018;Han et al 2018;Li et al 2018). In addition, because of the serious haze phenomenon, the initial allocation of particulate matter emission rights has recently become the focus of scholars (Wu et al 2015).…”

Measuring of China’s Provincial Carbon Abatement Cost and its Spatial Distribution Pattern

“…Due to the translation property, we use a quadratic form of the directional distance function expressed as formula (2). We select capital, labor, and energy consumption as input indicators.…”

“…For example, Choi et al (2012) employed the dual model of the slacks-based Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model to estimate the abatement costs of CO 2 emissions [1]. Duan et al (2018) calculated the marginal abatement costs of carbon emissions in different ways, found that the carbon abatement cost in all provinces raised from 2005 to 2015 [2]. Xue (2021) explored the convergence of MAC during 2001-2015 and pointed that the spatial effect should not be ignored when studying the marginal abatement cost [3].…”