Analysis of China’s Manufacturing Industry Carbon Lock-In and Its Influencing Factors

Abstract

There are industry lock-in and regional lock-in phenomena in China’s manufacturing industry carbon emissions. However, the existing researches often focus on global carbon emissions, which is not adverse to finding the main problems of manufacturing industry carbon emissions. The biggest contributions of this study are the identification of the industry lock-in and regional lock-in of China’s manufacturing industry and the finding of the regional factors that affect the carbon lock-in of the manufacturing industry, which points out the direction for the low-carbon transformation of the local manufacturing industry. This paper is based on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) carbon emissions coefficient method and energy consumption data from 2000 to 2016 to count the manufacturing industry carbon emissions of 30 provinces in China (except Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and Tibet). On this basis, the paper uses a spatial–temporal geographical weighted regression (GTWR) model to analysis the regional influencing factors of the high-carbon manufacturing industry. Results demonstrate that China’s high-carbon manufacturing industry mainly concentrates on the ferrous metal processing industry, non-metallic mineral manufacturing industry and other sectors. In addition, the carbon emissions of high-carbon manufacturing industries are mainly concentrated in Bohai Bay and the North China Plain. The industrial structure and economic scale are the main reasons for the regional carbon lock-in of the high-carbon manufacturing industry, and the strength of the lock-in has continued to increase. Resource endowment is a stable factor of carbon lock-in in high-carbon regions. Technological progress helps to unlock carbon, while foreign direct investment results in the enhancement of carbon regional lock-in. This study focuses on the regional factors of carbon lock-in in the manufacturing industry, hoping to provide decision support for the green development of China’s manufacturing industry.