Spatial Differences in Carbon Intensity in Polish Households

Abstract

Knowledge about the driving forces behind greenhouse gasses (GHG) emissions is crucial for informed and evidence-based policy towards mitigation of GHG emission and changing production and consumption patterns. Both national and regional-level authorities are capable of addressing their actions more effectively if they have information about the spatial distribution of phenomena related to the policies they conduct. In this context, the main aim of this paper is to explain the regional differences in carbon intensity in Poland. The differences in carbon intensity between regions and the national average were analysed using index decomposition analysis (IDA). Aggregate carbon intensity for regional economies as well as the carbon intensity of households was investigated. For both levels of analysis: total emissions and emission from households economic development is the key factor responsible for the inter-regional differences in carbon emission per capita. In the case of total emissions, the second important factor influencing these differences is the structure of the national power system, i.e., its concentration and the production of energy from fossil fuels. For households, disposable income per capita is a key factor of differences in CO2 emission per capita between regions. Higher households’ incomes contribute to higher emission per capita, mostly due to the shift in consumption towards more energy- and material-intensive goods. The contribution of energy emissivity is quite low and not as varied as in the case of income. This suggests that policy instruments targeted at the consumption of fuels can be rather uniform across regions, while more developed regions should also be subject to measures supporting less energy-intensive consumption. On the other hand, policy in less developed regions should prevent them from following the path of per capita emissions growth.

Consumers’ Intention and Cognition for Low-Carbon Behavior: A Case Study of Hangzhou in China

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Qualitative–Quantitative Warning Modeling of Energy Consumption Processes in Inland Waterway Freight Transport on River Sections for Environmental Management

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Research on the Geographical Pattern, Evolution Model, and Driving Mechanism of Carbon Emission Density from Urban Industrial Land in the Yangtze River Economic Belt of China

“…Since the 1970s, an increasing number of scholars have been involved in research on land-use carbon emissions, summarized into the following areas and features: research related to land-use carbon sources and sinks from the perspective of the carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems, mainly dealing with the accounting of land-use carbon stocks and fluxes and their influencing factors [7,8]; correlation analysis of the relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth or factors of production based on land carbon emissions using econometric methods such as the gray correlation model [9], the coupled coordination degree model [10], and the decoupling model [11]; and research related to low-carbon development policies for land use under the "dual carbon" goal, that is, to portray the evolution models of land-use carbon emissions through methods such as spatial autocorrelation and cold-hot spot analysis and to further propose their policy implications. For example, Sidorczuk-Pietraszko [12] studied the spatial differences in household carbon intensities between different regions in Poland by means of exponential decomposition analysis (IDA); Rong [13] also found that there is an obvious spatial correlation between land-use carbon emissions in Chinese provinces, and thus suggested that China should strengthen the inter-provincial cooperation in order to achieve an overall emission reduction across the country.…”

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