Evaluating the Causal Relations between the Kaya Identity Index and ODIAC-Based Fossil Fuel CO2 Flux

The Kaya identity is a powerful index displaying the influence of individual carbon dioxide (CO2) sources on CO2 emissions. The sources are disaggregated into representative factors such as population, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, energy intensity of the GDP, and carbon footprint of ener...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Energies (Basel) 2020-11, Vol.13 (22), p.6009
Main Authors: Hwang, YoungSeok, Um, Jung-Sup, Hwang, JunHwa, Schlüter, Stephan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anthropogenic factors
Carbon dioxide
Carbon sources
Causality
Climate change
CO2 flux
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Economic growth
Electricity generation
Emission inventories
Emissions
Energy consumption
Energy utilization
Environmental policy
Evaluation
Fluctuations
Flux
Fossil fuels
GDP
GOSAT
Gross Domestic Product
Human influences
Kaya identity
Mediation
mediator analysis
ODIAC
Per capita
Residential energy
Variables
Wind power
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Summary:The Kaya identity is a powerful index displaying the influence of individual carbon dioxide (CO2) sources on CO2 emissions. The sources are disaggregated into representative factors such as population, gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, energy intensity of the GDP, and carbon footprint of energy. However, the Kaya identity has limitations as it is merely an accounting equation and does not allow for an examination of the hidden causalities among the factors. Analyzing the causal relationships between the individual Kaya identity factors and their respective subcomponents is necessary to identify the real and relevant drivers of CO2 emissions. In this study we evaluated these causal relationships by conducting a parallel multiple mediation analysis, whereby we used the fossil fuel CO2 flux based on the Open-Source Data Inventory of Anthropogenic CO2 emissions (ODIAC). We found out that the indirect effects from the decomposed variables on the CO2 flux are significant. However, the Kaya identity factors show neither strong nor even significant mediating effects. This demonstrates that the influence individual Kaya identity factors have on CO2 directly emitted to the atmosphere is not primarily due to changes in their input factors, namely the decomposed variables.
ISSN:1996-1073
1996-1073
DOI:10.3390/en13226009