The power industry is the leading source of man-made carbon emissions in China, and it is supposed to assume most of the responsibility for reducing carbon emissions. To study the decoupling status between carbon emissions and economic growth in China’s power industry, a new OECD decoupling analysis with LMDI model is employed in this paper. The results are as follows:
1. Growth and volatility are the main characteristic features of carbon emissions in the power industry, and carbon emissions increased from 25,059.65 ktce in 1995 to 100,805.75 ktce in 2014, with an annual average growth rate of 15.11%.
2. Per capita output effect, energy structure effect, and population scale effect play a positive role in the increment of carbon emissions, with contributions of 202.69%, 1.42%, and 19.96%, respectively. Energy intensity effect is the only driving force on the decline of carbon emissions, with a contribution rate of -124.07%.
3. There exists a weak decoupling relationship between carbon emissions and economic growth in the power industry for most of the study years. It should be noted that energy intensity effect plays a prominent role in the development of decoupling.