Quantifying the synergy and trade-offs among economy-energy-environment-social targets: A perspective of industrial restructuring

Abstract

Protecting our environment while maintaining economic growth, requires a delicate balance among interlinked sustainable development policies. In this paper, we examine China's economic industries, including a high-resolution of the country's electricity sector during 2020-2030, using a multi-objective optimization model based on Input-Output analysis. This model, investigates the synergy and trade-offs of sustainable development goals in maximizing employment and GDP while minimizing energy and water consumption, CO₂ emissions, and five major pollutants to advance a sustainable industrial structure adjustment pathway for China. Our results reveal that there exists both synergies and trade-offs among multiple objectives, e.g., synergy among goals of minimizing air pollutant emissions and trade-offs between minimizing energy consumption and maximizing employment. Through the planned industrial restructuring period (2020-2030), the GDP, employment, carbon emission, and energy consumption will increase respectively by, 96.1%, 7.2%, 16.8%, 16.8%, and 6.3%, while pollutant emissions would decrease. Moreover, our research indicates that energy and water conservation should be prioritized in industrial structure adjustment strategies and policies. Our model demonstrates how the synergies and trade-offs among multiple policy targets can empower policy-makers, especially in developing nations, to make more informed and optimized industrial structure adjustment policies for sustainable development.

Keywords: Carbon emission; Input-output analysis; Multi-objective optimization; Pollutant emissions; Synergy; Trade-offs.