Analysis of Industrial Carbon Transfer in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei City Cluster and Surrounding Areas

To achieve the goal of carbon neutrality and win the blue-sky defense battle, the environmental situation in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas is still grim, and the optimization of its industrial structure and energy structure is imminent. With the rapid development of interregional trade in intermediate products, carbon emissions are transferred across regions with the trade. Due to the large differences in the technology, industrial structure, and economic development of cities, extending the environmental governance chain of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding areas is indispensable. In this article, based on the interregional input-output tables in 2002, 2007, and 2012, we establish the average propagation length (APL) model and the structural path analysis model Structural Path Analysis model for analyzing the carbon conduction relationship in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei. And we also compare the situation of the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta. The results show that: i) From perspective of the whole urban clusters, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei has obvious characteristics of coal-fired urban clusters. More than 65% of the carbon-containing resources in Hebei’s coal industry are transferred to the electricity and heat industry. In the carbon conduction chain, the carbon emissions caused by electricity and heat industry, which acts as an intermediary, account for more than 85% of the total emissions. ii) From the perspective of industrial structure transfer within the urban clusters, Hebei Province has an important resource support position. Its secondary industry can not only effectively alleviate the shortage of energy supply in other resource provinces, but also has great development potential in the improvement of economic benefits. iii) From the perspective of specific industry sectors, resource provinces such as Shanxi and Inner Mongolia have high carbon emission coefficients in the electricity and heat industry, which is the main reason for the high carbon emissions in the transfer chain.