Influencing factors and decoupling analysis of carbon emissions in China’s manufacturing industry

The manufacturing industry directly reflects national productivity, and it is also an industry with high energy consumption and severe carbon emissions. This study decomposes the influential factors on carbon emissions in China’s manufacturing industry from 1995 to 2018 into industry value added, energy consumption, fixed asset investment, carbon productivity, energy structure, energy intensity, investment carbon intensity, and investment efficiency by Generalized Divisia Index Model. The decoupling analysis of carbon emissions and industry value added is carried out to investigate the states of the manufacturing industry under the pressure of “low carbon” and “economy.” Results show that first, fixed asset investment is the driving force of carbon emissions, followed by industry value added; investment carbon intensity, carbon productivity, investment efficiency, and energy intensity are the mitigating factors; simultaneously, the impacts of energy consumption and energy structure are fluctuating. Second, the decoupling of manufacturing has improved, especially in the light industry. Third, the decoupling of carbon emissions and economic development is mainly dominated by the decoupling of energy consumption and industry added value. Therefore, reducing the proportion of coal consumption and optimizing the energy structure are significant ways to promote the low-carbon development of the manufacturing industry.