Exploring the trading embodied CO2 effect and low-carbon globalization from the international division perspective

This paper explores the embodied CO2 emission effect by measuring the marginal net trading embodied CO2 emissions and decomposing the exporting embodied CO2 emissions from the international division perspective. The result shows that 38.5% of the studying countries were not beneficial to the low-carbon globalization in 2009. The trading CO2 emission effect of China and the US both satisfied the low-carbon globalization standards, but the international division types between China and the US were quite different. Decomposition of the vertical specialization embodied CO2 emissions suggests that the CO2 emissions embodied in the foreign value of China's exporting products were mainly included in the final products. By contrast, the CO2 emissions embodied in the foreign value of the US' exporting products were majorly contained in the intermediate goods. The result indicates that China mainly located at the downstream and the US majorly located at the upstream in the global value chain. The carbon RCA shows that labor-intensive manufacturing and knowledge-intensive manufacturing of China as well as capital-intensive manufacturing and service industries of the US had carbon revealed comparative disadvantages. The future international division cannot simply consider traditional multilateral trading profits but should also consider the trading CO2 emission effect in the low-carbon globalization context.