The evolution of CO2 emissions in international trade for major economies: a perspective from the global supply chain

Employing global multi-regional input–output models, this paper revisits the carbon dioxide (CO2) emission trade (including exports and imports) and assesses their positions in the national emissions of 14 major countries with large national emissions or large emission trades during 1995–2009. It especially explores the evolution of the emission trades of these countries from both continuous time series and comparative perspectives, in order to provide an explanation for CO2 emission spillovers across countries. The main findings obtained were as follows: (1) China was the largest CO2 exporter to other countries, accounting for over 20 % of global exports since 2005; the CO2 exports of the United States of America (USA), Germany, and Japan varied slightly over this time period, but overall, their proportions had decreased. (2) The CO2 imports of the USA were the largest, occupying around 20 % of the global CO2 imports; meanwhile, China’s CO2 imports increased rapidly and ranked the second largest. (3) For Chinese Taiwan, its proportion of CO2 exports in production-based emissions ranked the highest while that of the USA ranked the lowest; highly CO2 import-dependent countries with an over 40 % proportion of CO2 imports in its consumption-based emissions included France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, while China, India, and Russia remained the lowest, distinguished from their physical energy imports. These results suggested that the global policy makers should take the CO2 emissions in trade into consideration when carefully accounting for national emissions inventories.