Exploring CO2 mitigation pathway of local industries using a regional-based system dynamics model

Low-carbon development based on low energy consumption, low pollution and low emissions has become an important strategic choice for worldwide governments to achieve sustainable development. In order to support smart government in decision making, information systems have been developed to monitor and predict CO2 emissions. Most of the existing studies investigate CO2 emission amounts, identify influencing factors of CO2 emission and discuss potential suggestions to mitigate CO2 emission for different industries. They often focus on CO2 emission research of industries in a region or country, while the integration of carbon flow in the neighboring regions is not well studied. Therefore, this paper proposes a system dynamics model to explore an optimal carbon emission reduction path of a regional industry by integrating regional differences, i.e., industrial comparative advantages, technology advantages and the inter-regional context between the neighboring regions. In the case study, we use a key industry in a typical industrial region of Western China, the cement industry in Chongqing, as a scenario to simulate the CO2 emission, possible energy demand and cement production of the cement industry in this region for recent years. Simulation results show that by leveraging the regional differences, especially the collaboration of the industrial chain and production capacity among regions, the cement industry in Chongqing can achieve the low-carbon target. In addition, through the analysis and discussions about the features of our model and Chongqing’s cement industry, it reflects that our model using regional differences is applicable to industries with a common demand market at the regional level such as energy, chemical and steel industries.