Responsibility Allocation of Provincial Industry Emission Reduction from the Perspective of Industrial Linkages—A Case Study of Shanxi Province

The allocation of emissions reduction responsibilities in a fair and efficient manner is the key to achieving optimal overall reductions in emissions. However, existing studies have not adequately considered the impact of industry linkages. To fill this gap, this study constructed a carbon emissions reduction responsibility allocation model from the perspective of industry linkages using the TOPSIS (a technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution) comprehensive evaluation method based on entropy weights. A typical resource-based province, Shanxi, was selected to broaden the scope of the related research to the provincial level. The indicator system designed in this study also compensates existing studies that have lacked consideration of industry linkages. The results show that traditional energy-intensive industries will be significantly less responsible by incorporating indirect emissions responsibility into the equity principle, while the ‘coal mining and washing’ and ‘construction’ industries will be more responsible. By incorporating the impact of industry linkages on the overall emissions reduction effect into the efficiency principle, traditional energy-intensive industries with overly intensive emissions reduction tasks will limit the overall efficiency, while industries with strong emissions reduction potential or able to support low-carbon economic development will be able to take on more responsibilities. These findings are expected to provide the government with references to formulate mitigation policies in China and in other countries.