Outsourcing manufacturing to China results in high CO2 emissions

Despite the increasingly fervent debate regarding the trade relationship between China and the United States and its implications for the global political environment, it is evident that manufacturing goods in China and shipping them to developed countries has real-world consequences, particularly for the environment. University of Maryland researchers, Drs Kuishuang Feng and Klaus Hubacek in collaboration with others, have begun to quantify the magnitude of those impacts and published their findings in Nature Climate Change. Their study demonstrates that buying a product made in China causes significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions than purchasing the same product made elsewhere. For this study, researchers pay particular attention to Chinese provinces with high emissions intensity and suggest that developed economies could do a lot to alleviate carbon pollution by helping improve manufacturing practices in these provinces.

 

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Published on Mon, 09/28/2015 - 09:48