Forecasting carbon emissions of China’s industrial sectors via time lag effect

There is a significant time lag in the process of sectoral interactions, thus, it is necessary to identify the sectoral carbon emissions in time series. This paper calculates the time lag of sectoral carbon emissions of China’s industrial sectors and constructs the monthly consumption data of sectors of 24 months, then simulates the monthly carbon emissions in the year 2022, the results are as follows: The terminal manufacturing industries receive carbon emissions from many sectors, and the energy supply industry generates carbon inflows to all sectors. Due to the time lag effect, some of the carbon emissions generated in the current period come from carbon accumulation in the previous periods. There are great differences in the time lag of sectoral carbon emissions, the carbon emissions of the energy supply industry are concentrated in the early stage while the time lag of the communication equipment manufacturing industry is long. Sectors show differences of carbon emissions in time series due to their different final consumption. In the whole year, the degree of carbon emissions in January and February is low and that in December is high.