Low-carbon development via greening global value chains: A case study of Belarus

Huiqing Wang; Yixin Hu; Heran Zheng; Yuli Shan; Song Qing; Xi Liang; Kuishuang Feng; Dabo Guan

doi:10.1098/rspa.2020.0024

Low-carbon development via greening global value chains: A case study of Belarus

Huiqing Wang, Yixin Hu, Heran Zheng, Yuli Shan^*, Song Qing, Xi Liang, Kuishuang Feng, Dabo Guan

^*Corresponding author for this work

Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The rise of global value chains (GCVs) has seen the transfer of carbon emissions embodied in every step of international trade. Building a coordinated, inclusive and green GCV can be an effective and efficient way to achieve carbon emissions mitigation targets for countries that participate highly in GCVs. In this paper, we first describe the energy consumption as well as the territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions of Belarus and its regions from 2010 to 2017. The results show that Belarus has a relatively clean energy structure with 75% of Belarus' energy consumption coming from imported natural gas. The 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' sector has expanded significantly over the past few years; its territorial-based emissions increased 10-fold from 2011 to 2014, with the 'food processing' sector displaying the largest increase in consumption-based emissions. An analysis of regional emissions accounts shows that there is significant regional heterogeneity in Belarus with Mogilev, Gomel and Vitebsk having more energy-intensive manufacturing industries. We then analysed the changes in Belarus' international trade as well as its emission impacts. The results show that Belarus has changed from a net carbon exporter in 2011 to a net carbon importer in 2014. Countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Russia, China, Ukraine, Poland and Kazakhstan, are the main trading partners and carbon emission importers/exporters for Belarus. 'Construction' and 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' are two major emission-importing sectors in Belarus, while 'electricity' and 'ferrous metals' are the primary emission-exporting sectors. Possible low-carbon development pathways are discussed for Belarus through the perspectives of global supply and the value chain.

Original language	English
Article number	20200024
Number of pages	19
Journal	Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences
Volume	476
Issue number	2239
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1098/rspa.2020.0024
Publication status	Published - 29 Jul 2020

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
Data accessibility. We publish the territorial-based and consumption-based emission inventories as the electronic supplementary material for data re-use. The command file is published as well. Authors’ contributions. Y.S. and K.F. designed the study, H.W. conducted the study and drafted the manuscript, Y.H. and H.Z. calculated the consumption-based emissions, D.G., S.Q. and X.L. revised the manuscript. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Funding. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0602604), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41921005, 91846301, 41629501), the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/N00714X/1 and NE/P019900/1), the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L016028/1) and the British Academy (NAFR2180103, NAFR2180104). Acknowledgements. The authors acknowledge the efforts and ‘crowd-sourcing’ work of the Applied Energy summer school 2018 held in Tsinghua University. All the data and results have been uploaded to the China Emission Accounts and Datasets (www.ceads.net) for free re-use.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s).

Keywords

Belarus
CO 2 emissions
greening global value chains
input-output

ASJC Scopus subject areas

General Mathematics
General Engineering
General Physics and Astronomy

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1098/rspa.2020.0024

Cite this

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title = "Low-carbon development via greening global value chains: A case study of Belarus",

abstract = "The rise of global value chains (GCVs) has seen the transfer of carbon emissions embodied in every step of international trade. Building a coordinated, inclusive and green GCV can be an effective and efficient way to achieve carbon emissions mitigation targets for countries that participate highly in GCVs. In this paper, we first describe the energy consumption as well as the territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions of Belarus and its regions from 2010 to 2017. The results show that Belarus has a relatively clean energy structure with 75% of Belarus' energy consumption coming from imported natural gas. The 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' sector has expanded significantly over the past few years; its territorial-based emissions increased 10-fold from 2011 to 2014, with the 'food processing' sector displaying the largest increase in consumption-based emissions. An analysis of regional emissions accounts shows that there is significant regional heterogeneity in Belarus with Mogilev, Gomel and Vitebsk having more energy-intensive manufacturing industries. We then analysed the changes in Belarus' international trade as well as its emission impacts. The results show that Belarus has changed from a net carbon exporter in 2011 to a net carbon importer in 2014. Countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Russia, China, Ukraine, Poland and Kazakhstan, are the main trading partners and carbon emission importers/exporters for Belarus. 'Construction' and 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' are two major emission-importing sectors in Belarus, while 'electricity' and 'ferrous metals' are the primary emission-exporting sectors. Possible low-carbon development pathways are discussed for Belarus through the perspectives of global supply and the value chain.",

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author = "Huiqing Wang and Yixin Hu and Heran Zheng and Yuli Shan and Song Qing and Xi Liang and Kuishuang Feng and Dabo Guan",

note = "Funding Information: Data accessibility. We publish the territorial-based and consumption-based emission inventories as the electronic supplementary material for data re-use. The command file is published as well. Authors{\textquoteright} contributions. Y.S. and K.F. designed the study, H.W. conducted the study and drafted the manuscript, Y.H. and H.Z. calculated the consumption-based emissions, D.G., S.Q. and X.L. revised the manuscript. Competing interests. We declare we have no competing interests. Funding. This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0602604), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41921005, 91846301, 41629501), the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/N00714X/1 and NE/P019900/1), the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/L016028/1) and the British Academy (NAFR2180103, NAFR2180104). Acknowledgements. The authors acknowledge the efforts and {\textquoteleft}crowd-sourcing{\textquoteright} work of the Applied Energy summer school 2018 held in Tsinghua University. All the data and results have been uploaded to the China Emission Accounts and Datasets (www.ceads.net) for free re-use. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 The Author(s).",

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AU - Zheng, Heran

AU - Shan, Yuli

AU - Qing, Song

AU - Liang, Xi

AU - Feng, Kuishuang

AU - Guan, Dabo

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N2 - The rise of global value chains (GCVs) has seen the transfer of carbon emissions embodied in every step of international trade. Building a coordinated, inclusive and green GCV can be an effective and efficient way to achieve carbon emissions mitigation targets for countries that participate highly in GCVs. In this paper, we first describe the energy consumption as well as the territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions of Belarus and its regions from 2010 to 2017. The results show that Belarus has a relatively clean energy structure with 75% of Belarus' energy consumption coming from imported natural gas. The 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' sector has expanded significantly over the past few years; its territorial-based emissions increased 10-fold from 2011 to 2014, with the 'food processing' sector displaying the largest increase in consumption-based emissions. An analysis of regional emissions accounts shows that there is significant regional heterogeneity in Belarus with Mogilev, Gomel and Vitebsk having more energy-intensive manufacturing industries. We then analysed the changes in Belarus' international trade as well as its emission impacts. The results show that Belarus has changed from a net carbon exporter in 2011 to a net carbon importer in 2014. Countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Russia, China, Ukraine, Poland and Kazakhstan, are the main trading partners and carbon emission importers/exporters for Belarus. 'Construction' and 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' are two major emission-importing sectors in Belarus, while 'electricity' and 'ferrous metals' are the primary emission-exporting sectors. Possible low-carbon development pathways are discussed for Belarus through the perspectives of global supply and the value chain.

AB - The rise of global value chains (GCVs) has seen the transfer of carbon emissions embodied in every step of international trade. Building a coordinated, inclusive and green GCV can be an effective and efficient way to achieve carbon emissions mitigation targets for countries that participate highly in GCVs. In this paper, we first describe the energy consumption as well as the territorial and consumption-based carbon emissions of Belarus and its regions from 2010 to 2017. The results show that Belarus has a relatively clean energy structure with 75% of Belarus' energy consumption coming from imported natural gas. The 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' sector has expanded significantly over the past few years; its territorial-based emissions increased 10-fold from 2011 to 2014, with the 'food processing' sector displaying the largest increase in consumption-based emissions. An analysis of regional emissions accounts shows that there is significant regional heterogeneity in Belarus with Mogilev, Gomel and Vitebsk having more energy-intensive manufacturing industries. We then analysed the changes in Belarus' international trade as well as its emission impacts. The results show that Belarus has changed from a net carbon exporter in 2011 to a net carbon importer in 2014. Countries along the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Russia, China, Ukraine, Poland and Kazakhstan, are the main trading partners and carbon emission importers/exporters for Belarus. 'Construction' and 'chemical, rubber and plastic products' are two major emission-importing sectors in Belarus, while 'electricity' and 'ferrous metals' are the primary emission-exporting sectors. Possible low-carbon development pathways are discussed for Belarus through the perspectives of global supply and the value chain.

KW - Belarus

KW - CO 2 emissions

KW - greening global value chains

KW - input-output

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Low-carbon development via greening global value chains: A case study of Belarus

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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