Decoupling and decomposition analysis of carbon emissions from economic output in Chinese Guangdong Province: A sector perspective

South China's Guangdong Province, the Chinese largest provincial economy and the global 14th biggest economy, has been facing a huge challenge of achieving economic growth without emission growth. Developing new strategy for making economic growth compatible carbon reduction requires better understanding of the decoupling carbon emission from economic growth. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive decoupling and decomposition analysis of carbon emission from economic output in Guangdong Province from a sector perspective. We firstly calculate carbon emission in six sectors based on the energy consumption of each sector and carbon coefficient of 13 types of fuels during 2000-2014, and then quantify the decoupling status between CO2 emissions and economic growth in those six sectors by using the Tapio decoupling index, finally, investigate the influencing factors of emissions by using the decomposition techniques. The modeling results show that agricultural sector has strong decoupling, industrial, transport and others sectors are weak decoupling; construction and trade sectors are expansive negative decoupling. We also find that energy intensity and economic output are the major factors influencing carbon emission, also the effects of energy structure and emission factor among six sectors are studied. Some policy recommendations finally are put forward.