Multi-Scale GHG Emission Relations in Resource-Based Heavy Industrial Cities: A Case Study of Tangshan City, Hebei Province

Abstract

The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission pressure faced by resource-based heavy industrial cities was mainly induced by multi-scale interactions, which require systematical assessments from local, regional, national and global scales. Taking Tangshan city, a heavy industry base in Hebei Province of China, as the research area, this study carried out a multi-scale analysis on the GHG emissions in terms of final demand, final consumption and trade balance. The main results are as follows: (1) The average embodied intensity of GHG emissions in Tangshan was 27.6 tons/10,000 CNY, of which 66.2% was caused by local inputs; (2) The secondary industry was the main source for the relatively high GHG emissions in Tangshan; (3) The GHG emissions embodied in final demand were 201.6 million tons, within which the proportion of fixed capital formation reached 59.4%; (4) As for the trade balance, Tangshan was a net exporter of embodied GHG emissions, with the total net outflows of 411.6 million tons. Depicting the GHG emission flows and sorting out the multiple GHG emission inventory would be helpful to identify the transformation pressure of resource-based heavy industry cities, which would be significant for the adjustments in industrial structures and policy optimization of energy saving and emissions reduction.