A Hypothetical Extraction Method Decomposition of Intersectoral and Interprovincial CO₂ Emission Linkages of China’s Construction Industry

Understanding the complex CO2 emissions in inter-sectoral and interregional interactions of the construction industry is significant to attaining sustainability in China. Many previous studies focused on aggregating the construction sector’s CO2 emissions on a national level, with the provincial characteristics and interactions often overlooked. Using extended environmental input–output tables, we adopted a hypothetical extraction method combined with extended-environmental multi-regional input–output tables for 2012, 2015, and 2017 data to decompose the CO2 emissions linkages in 30 provincial construction sectors. The provincial carbon emissions data from a complete system boundary informed the recategorization of China’s construction sector as a high-carbon-intensity industry. The interprovincial interactions results show relatively small backward CO2 emissions linkages compared to forward CO2 emissions linkages depicting the industry’s significant role in China’s economic growth and an essential target in CO2 emissions reduction plans. The provinces exhibited different impacts on the directional push–pull, with less developed provinces having one-way directional effects. The more developed provincial sectors behaved more like demand-driven industries creating an overall imbalance in CO2 emissions interaction between the sectors in interregional emission trades. We identified construction sectors in Gansu, Xingjian, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia as the most critical, with more significant CO2 emissions interactions than other provinces. Improving the technical level in less developed provincial construction sectors, considering provincial characteristics in policy formulation, and a swift shift to renewable energy as a primary energy source would aid in reducing the emissions intensities in the construction sector, especially in the less developed provinces, and achieving China’s quest to reach a CO2 emissions peak by 2030