Assessing carbon emissions along global supply chains from technology perspective: A network production decomposition analysis

Abstract

Global supply chains (GSCs) have boosted economic development while reshaping CO2 emissions patterns worldwide. Reducing emissions along GSCs is important to business operation and climate governance. As the productive and emission performances of production entities are largely determined by technology, assessing GSC emissions from a technology perspective is fundamental to GSC emissions management. However, a challenge is to properly model the role of technology in entities' emissions in a production network context. We propose a network production decomposition analysis (PDA) approach to resolve this problem. The model portrays organizational structure between entities along supply chains, the technical performance of which are further characterized. The network PDA model is therefore able to examine both the technological and structural impacts on GSC emissions in a unified framework. We apply the model to study GSC emissions for manufacturing and service industries in 2000–2020. It is found that the emission efficiency deterioration in GSCs and the shift of GSCs towards global south evidently raised CO2 emissions. Meanwhile, environmental technological improvements in GSCs of technology-intensive manufacturing and high-skilled services of global north and emerging economies contributed substantially to emissions mitigation. The results offer insights into formulating targeted measures to reduce emissions along GSCs.