Opportunities for low-carbon socioeconomic transition during the revitalization of Northeast China: Insights from Heilongjiang province

The Strategies of Reviving the Old Industrial Bases provide opportunities for low-carbon transition in Northeast China, which is one of the earliest regions to industrialize and the largest rustbelt in China, but study on the impacts of its socioeconomic factors on CO₂ emissions is still in short, though it is essential for guiding the pathways to achieve low-carbon socioeconomic transition. We adopted the structural decomposition analysis (SDA) to identify the main contributors to emissions increase in Heilongjiang province during 2002–2012, which is the heartland of Northeast revitalization. The results show that the increase in CO₂ emissions was mainly driven by growth in per-capita final demand, which generated 203.8 Mt (153.6%) upstream CO₂ emissions between 2002 and 2012. Changes in production structure and final demand structure had smaller impacts on CO₂ emissions increase (36.1 Mt and 27.0 Mt). However, the positive influences were largely overwhelmed by change in emission intensity, which avoided 135.4 Mt (−102%) CO₂ emissions. Therefore, appropriate measures related to energy structure optimization and efficiency improvement should be implemented. Especially, increasing the proportion of wind, solar and biomass energy in Heilongjiang, where renewable energy is abundant, would reduce the CO₂ emissions significantly. In addition, domestic export took the lead position in driving the CO₂ emissions in Heilongjiang, accounting for 37.6%–43.1% annual emissions between 2002 and 2012. Thus, some financial instrument, such as tax relief for less carbon intensive exports could be adopted to prompt upstream suppliers to decarbonize their production processes.