ALBERT

Description: Water and energy are basic natural resources that play a significant role in regional sustainable development. Carbon emission, which affects climate change, is also an important environmental element. In the context of economic globalization, international trade drives the transfer of water, energy and carbon footprints spatially. Thus, it’s critical to understand the water-energy-carbon(WEC) nexus embodied in global trade. However, few studies have investigated the coupling of multi-environmental elements and considered cross-regional correlation effects. In this paper, multi-regional input-output tables were developed to quantify WEC transfers embodied in trade among 39 major economies, and the spatiotemporal characteristics and coupling relationships of WEC flows were analyzed. Then, a logarithmic mean divisia index (LMDI) method was conducted to explore driving factors of WEC transfer changes for individual countries. The changes of WEC export and import were decomposed into five driving factors, including economic effect, intensity effect, structure effect, population effect and external dependence effect. The main results are: (1) WEC showed similar transfer paths, with its main outflows from China and BRIIAT (Brazil, Russia, India, Indonesia, Australia, Turkey) countries to East Asia, NAFTA and EU countries. (2) The transfers of virtual WEC were positively correlated. Both W-E and W-C showed two types of linear relationships with different slopes. (3) Economic effect, dependence effect and population effect promoted WEC export, while intensity effect and structural effect drove negatively. However, structural effect was a positive factor for WEC import. Economic effect and intensity effect showed the highest contribution, while population effect showed the least.