Analysis of China’s Embodied Ecological Footprint and Its Flows among Economic Sectors per Unit of Currency Production

It is crucial to study ecological footprint production intensity (EFPI) in the ecological compensation strategy of designated industries and to delineate high-polluting industries. Environment-extended input-output (EE-IO) tables are suitable for analyzing embodied pollution or land occupation among its economic sectors. The ecological footprint (EF) and input-output tables (IOTs) were used to analyze China’s EFPI and its (net) flow among sectors in 2005, 2010, and 2015. With the environment-extended matrix and Leontief inverse matrix of EE-IO analysis, the direct pollution coefficient (DPC) and total pollution coefficient (TPC) of China’s EF were studied. The (net) embodied EFPI flows between any two sectors were decomposed and demonstrated in detail. The key embodied EFPI component transfer paths among sectors were tracked and analyzed. The results for China’s EFPI in 2005, 2010, and 2015 show that the averages of the TPC component and net embodied EFPI transfer components showed a downward trend from 2005 to 2015. The sector of electricity, heat, gas, and water (S11) and the sector of Agriculture (S1) provided larger component values of both TPCs and net embodied EFPI transfers. From the analysis of the three transfer levels of EFPI, high-value transfer paths were further marked for key governance. Imposing an ecological tax and controlling high-EFPI industries were recommended as optimizations from the production and consumption ends. Additionally, this paper provides a reference for the division of ecological responsibility among Chinese sectors.