Abstract: China is a major CO₂ emitter and has a strong determination to reduce its CO₂ emissions. Therefore, the driving forces for the increase in its emissions have caused attention widely. Meanwhile, the inter-regional trade structure has become a potential significant factor for China’s emission growth, which has not been investigated in the existing studies. To this end, this study takes changes in the inter-provincial trade structure into consideration and adopts a two-stage six-factor structural decomposition analysis method based on China’s provincial multi-regional input-output model to explore the driving forces for the increase in China’s CO₂ emissions during the important development period of 2002-2012. Results show that during the period 2007-2012, changes in the structure of inter-provincial trade showed a carbon-intensive trend. The upward emission effects from the growth in the scale of final demand were mainly driven by exports as well as investment in the eastern provinces during the period 2002-2007, but driven mainly by increases in provincial investment in the following period. At the sectoral level, the CO₂ intensity of electricity production had been continuously improved during the study period, and that of the production of non-metallic mineral products, metal rolled and processed products had also been improved to a certain extent. However, electricity consumption in the construction and service industries had increased. In the future, measurements for improving CO₂ intensity and production technology on the production side could be combined with guidance of consumption preference on the demand side. Meanwhile, low-carbon development cooperation based on the inter-regional industrial chain could also play a role in reducing China’s CO₂ emissions.

Key words: CO₂ emissions, driving forces, inter-provincial trade structure, structural decomposition analysis, multi-regional inputoutput model