Data and code for "Carbon trading steers China's steel decarbonisation while mitigating inter-plant profit inequality"

This repository contains the data, model code and raw optimization outputs supporting the article “Carbon trading steers China’s steel decarbonisation while mitigating inter-plant profit inequality”. The repository includes three main components. First, it provides plant-level and spatial data for Chinese steel plants, low-carbon hydrogen supply nodes, CO₂ utilization and geological storage sites, and the potential transport connections among these facilities. Second, it contains the Python source code used to formulate and solve the plant-resolved, spatially explicit and dynamic steel decarbonisation model with Gurobi. Third, it provides raw model outputs for different mitigation targets, carbon-price trajectories, carbon-trading settings and technology-cost assumptions. These materials support the analysis of the staged coal–gas–hydrogen transition in China’s iron and steel industry, the spatial deployment of hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies, interprovincial carbon allowance flows, sector-wide lifecycle profit and inter-plant profit inequality. They are provided to improve the transparency and reproducibility of the study and to support further research on plant-level steel decarbonisation and carbon-market design.