53 / 2024-09-02 18:44:26

Export-embodied CO2 emissions from ocean industries in China: Evolution, drivers, and policy implications

ocean industry, export-embodied CO2 emissions, processing exports, environmentally extended input–output, driving factor, sustainable ocean policies.

The ocean industries are characterized by being export-driven. The exports of ocean industries (hereafter termed ocean exports) caused environmental pollution with amounts of CO₂ emissions and thereby affects climate change. There is a need, therefore, for accurate assessments of CO₂ emissions embodied in ocean exports—which can help policymakers adopt targeted emission-reduction measures to formulate sustainable ocean policies. However, few studies of ocean-industry emissions consider impacts in sectoral and trade pattern heterogeneity, especially from export perspective. To fill this gap, we measure and evaluate the export-embodied CO₂ emissions from China’s ocean industries, based on our newly developed high-resolution and comparable time-series environmentally extended input–output database, called EE-DPN-OEIOT. The results show that China’s ocean exports generated 94.3 Mt of embodied CO₂ emissions in 2017, with nearly 40% originating from processing ocean exports. Regarding the evolution from 2007 to 2017, the total export-embodied CO₂ emissions from ocean industries decreased by 7.3%, while the embodied CO₂ emissions in processing ocean exports increased by 50.1%. From 2007 to 2017, the decrease in carbon emission intensity was the major driving factor of the downturn in export-embodied CO₂ emissions across the total ocean economy and for seven ocean subsectors (60%), while the export-scale effect primarily drove the increases in CO₂ emissions. Moreover, there were disparities in the driving factors behind changes in embodied CO₂ emissions between processing and non-processing ocean exports. Based on our findings, we propose three recommendations from a trade perspective to facilitate low-carbon sustainable transition of China’s ocean economy, thus better fulfilling Sustainable Development Goal 14.