Carbon inequality in China: Evidence from city-level data

Carbon inequality has attracted increasing attention worldwide. Utilizing data from China's High Spatial Resolution Emission Gridded Database (CHRED), this paper presents the measured CO2 emission inequality in China for the years 2005, 2012, 2015, and 2020. Results show that the Gini coefficients of carbon emission report a slight decrease from 0.411 to 0.385 and the distribution becomes more symmetric from 2005 to 2020. Linking carbon inequality to economic level, the positive concentration index (0.230 to 0.118) indicates asymmetricity between carbon emission and economic development. A further decomposition analysis reveals the industrial sector's uneven development, indicating that energy-intensive features can be blamed for a large proportion of carbon inequality. Our findings suggest that policymakers should not consider economic development level alone as the only indicator of the allocation of abatement, as economic structure, energy intensity, and climate conditions are all responsible for such inequality.