Analysis of China’s heavy industry energy-related CO2 emissions and its influencing factors: an input–output perspective

As one of the industries with high energy-extensive consumption in China, the carbon emissions (CO2-E) generated by heavy industry cannot be ignored. However, the related literatures that take heavy industry energy-related CO2-E as the research object in the past mainly focus on the index decomposition model (IDM), econometric analysis, and other aspects. At present, few literatures use the structural decomposition model (SDM) to analyze the CO2-E and influencing factors of the industry from the perspective of input–output (I-O) analysis. This perspective and model can unify the supply side and demand side energy-related CO2-E of the heavy industry, which is conducive to a more comprehensive analysis of the heavy industry energy-related CO2-E and further various direct and indirect influencing factors. Based on this, this paper employs the energy consumption method (ECM), the I-O analysis method, and SDM to examine the energy-related CO2-E and influencing factors of China’s heavy industry. The findings show that while the growth tendency of China’s heavy industry energy-related CO2-E has been effectively controlled within the sample interval. Simultaneously, the supply side’s optimization of the energy consumption structure (ECS), the upgrading of energy utilization technologies, and the generalized technological progress rate (GTPR) reflecting the input structure effect (ISE) have an inhibitory effect on the heavy industry’s energy-related CO2-E, while the final demand effect (FDE) has an increasing effect on the energy-related CO2-E in the heavy industry, indicating that the products produced by the heavy industry are still characterized by high carbonation. This paper not only further enriches the existing research literature on energy-related CO2-E from the heavy industry in theory, but also provides guidance for efficient control of excessive growth of energy-related CO2-E from the perspective of input and output for the heavy industry in practice.