Unveiling Carbon Emission Attributions along Sale Chains

Substantial anthropogenic emissions have resulted in serious environmental problems in China. Direct emissions and demand-pulled emissions along the supply chains have been extensively investigated. However, understanding the mechanism of how the sectoral emission is transferred through production activities along the sale chains at different production layers remains a challenge. In this paper, a top-down multilayer emission attribution model is developed to unveil the metabolism of multilayer input-driven emissions. For the first time, a diagramming approach enables the exhaustive depiction of the connections between primary input attributions and final production attributions, which allows accurate reallocation of the emission responsibilities to sectors at different production layers. Individual sale chain paths and supply chain paths have been extracted and ranked according to the contributions of emissions. A four-perspective comparison of sectoral emissions (i.e., direct emissions along sale chains, enabled emissions, direct emissions along the supply chains, and embodied emissions) is assessed. We find that at multiple production layers, sectoral direct emissions along the sale chains differ greatly from direct emissions along the supply chains. By comprehensively considering providers, consumers, and producers within a metabolic system, policy-makers should encourage upstream sectors to improve their cleaner production technologies and downstream sectors to adjust their industrial structures.