The increased demand for energy in China has generated concomitant increase of carbon emissions, which poses an unprecedented challenge to China’s, and even global, sustainable development. In this paper, from the perspective of provincial carbon emissions, the authors analyse China’s carbon emissions changes during 1997-2007 based on the index decomposition analysis method.

Findings:

China's CO2 emissions from end-use energy consumption mainly originated from such major industrial provinces as Hebei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Henan and Guangdong
economic growth and decline in energy intensity will have the greatest impact on CO2 emissions from end-use energy consumption.

Economic growth is the key factor driving the increase of CO2 emissions. Change in energy intensity can more or less decrease CO2 emissions. In the future, China’s carbon emissions mitigation policies should be developed to address these differences in provincial carbon emissions.