Identification and evolution of critical betweenness sectors and transactions from the view of CO2 reduction in supply chain network

Abstract

Sectors tend to generate pressure on the environment due to its large amounts of emissions. The aim of this study is to identify critical betweenness sectors and transactions that play an important intermediate role in the supply chain, which can provide additional insights for CO2 emissions. Based on the input-output and energy consumption data in China, the notion of network centrality and structural path analysis method are employed in this paper to identify critical betweenness sectors and transactions, and then the evolutionary trends of betweenness sectors and transactions are analyzed from 2005 to 2015. The results show that some critical betweenness sectors, such as Metal products sector and Electrical equipment sector, have huge potential for carbon emission reduction, which fail to receive sufficient attention from the perspective of production or consumption. Some critical transactions, such as the transaction from Nonmetal products sector to Construction sector, have a large amount of CO2 emissions. The transaction from Metallurgy sector to Electrical equipment sector became increasingly important in China from 2005 to 2015. Additionally, the evolutionary trends of different transactions are significantly different. The findings reveal that special attention should be paid to these critical betweenness sectors and transactions and policy development should be dynamic to respond to changes in CO2 emissions that are generated by different betweenness sectors and transactions.