Carbon Lorenz curves

Carbon inequality at the sub-national scale: A case study of provincial-level inequality in CO2 emissions in China 1997–2007

“…While a parallel with the intra-national scale could potentially be interesting, it is beyond the scope of this article. (Duro and Padilla, 2006;Groot, 2010). While other studies have considered the role of provincial level CO 2 emissions in China (Auffhammer and Carson, 2008;Feng et al, 2009;Qu et al, 2010), as well as variations in energy intensity in China (He and Wang, 2007), to the best of our knowledge none have done so with an explicit goal of examining inequality in CO 2 emissions.…”

“…1 While addressing inequality at the scale of the nation-state has obvious and immediate ramifications for international climate change negotiations, from an analytical standpoint it fails to address the issue of inequality within the world's largest CO 2 emitting countries. Because of the large size of the world's largest CO 2 emitting countries, variation within these countries have the potential to have a large impact on total global carbon inequality (Duro and Padilla, 2006;Groot, 2010), and understanding the internal dynamics of carbon inequality within these countries has the potential to add significantly to our understanding of total global inequality in CO 2 emissions. As many of these countries continue to develop, internal dynamics of carbon inequality have the potential to shape future energy policies.…”

“…In doing so it follows several international scale studies that have applied measures commonly used to study income inequality, including the Gini coefficient and Theil Index, to examine the global distribution of per capita CO 2 emissions (Cantore and Padilla, 2010;Duro and Padilla, 2006;Groot, 2010;Wodon 1997, 2000;Padilla and Serrano, 2006). The provincial-level use of these measures is particularly appropriate within China because inter-provincial economic inequality within China has been studied quite thoroughly using these same measures (Chan and Wang, 2008;Fan, 1995;Fan and Sun, 2008).…”

“…Using the quasi-Gini concentration index Padilla and Serrano demonstrate that during their study period , emissions inequality relative to economic inequality was reduced far less than measuring the CO 2 emissions Gini alone would suggest. Groot (2010) has similarly used the Gini Index and the related concept of Lorenz curves to examine the outcome of various forms of carbon reduction policies. This study illustrates that under an outcome of even allocation of carbon emission permits, developed countries would be required to provide the greatest reduction in carbon emissions.…”

Equity, Emissions Allowance Trading and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change

“…Below, we examine inequality in terms of country differentials in population and per capita GDP along the horizontal axis. Note that this approach has been used to construct Lorenz curves for the analysis of the inequality of GHG emissions (Clarke-Sather et al 2011;Teng et al 2011), though only Groot (2010) has applied them to analyzing the distributional implications of GHG mitigation agreements, though of a hypothetical nature.…”