Carbon emissions and driving forces of China’s power sector: Input-output model based on the disaggregated power sector

The power sector plays a significant role in China’s energy transition and emission reduction strategy. Considering that the aggregation of the power sector from different sources in input-output (IO) tables will lead to the “aggregation bias problem”, it is vital that we disaggregate the power sector using IO tables when analyzing and comparing the driving forces of embodied carbon emission changes in the power sector. This paper first disaggregates the power sector into seven subsectors; then, it uses structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to analyze the driving forces of embodied carbon emission changes in each subsector and allocates embodied emissions that occur from 2007 to 2015 according to the demand categories. The results show that the embodied carbon emissions from each clean energy sector were relatively lower than those from thermal power during the study period. Consumption volume was the main driving factor for the embodied carbon emission increments. From 2012 to 2015, the production structure was mainly responsible for the embodied emission increases in each clean energy sector, indicating that the embodied carbon emissions caused by power equipment updates or reconstruction processes should receive more attention. In addition, the embodied carbon emission changes induced by urban residential consumption on the thermal power showed a plateaued trend from 2007 to 2015. This paper provides support for the formulation of emission reduction measures and the low-carbon structural transformation of the power sector.