Analysis on SO₂ Decomposition Effect from China’s Manufacturing Industry

Environmental issues are major issues related to the national economy and the people’s livelihood in the new era. The report to the 19 th CPC National Congress lists pollution prevention and control as one of the three key battles to win the decisive victory in building a well-off society in an all-round way. However, there are still great disputes about the mechanism analysis of China’s environmental pollution emission, especially the literature to investigate the mechanism and effect of China’s environmental pollution based on the data of four-digit industries and even micro enterprises in China’s manufacturing industry is very scarce. In view of this, this paper combines China’s environmental statistics database and China’s industrial enterprise database from 2000 to 2013 to decompose SO₂ emissions of China’s manufacturing industry at the four-digit industry level and enterprise level respectively. In this paper, the gross output value is used as the index to measure the economic scale, and the indirect decomposition method and direct decomposition method are used to decompose the mechanism effects which causing the change of SO₂ emission in detail, so as to supplement the shortcomings of the original literature. Through the decomposition of four-digit industries, it is concluded that the scale effect is positive, the industrial structure and technology effect are both negative, and the total effect obtained from the combination of the three effects is positive. Through the decomposition of enterprises, it is concluded that the scale effect is positive, the industry structure effect is positive, the enterprise structure and technology effect are both negative, and the total effect obtained from the synthesis of the four effects is positive. The conclusion of this paper means that China’s environmental pollution emission depends on the sum of various mechanism effects, and the technical effect will steadily reduce the total amount of pollution, but there is still much room for improvement in China’s technical effect. Based on the above conclusions, it is suggested that China should continue to reduce the intensity of pollution emission at the level of four-digit industries and enterprises, and pay attention to the adjustment of market structure of four-digit industries and enterprises, so as to effectively reduce the total amount of pollution emission. The conclusion of this paper can provide more practical policy suggestions for coordinating the relationship between economy and environment at the micro level of four-digit industries and enterprises in the new era, and for winning the battle of pollution prevention and control.