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In China's low-carbon development progress, industrial sectors play a crucial role in reducing CO 2 emissions and maintaining economic growth targets. Because the Chinese government is promoting industrial structure transformation for "high-quality economic development," the dominant CO 2 emitters have changed in recent years. It is important to identify the trend evolution of industrial CO 2 emitters and implement targeted measures and policies for CO 2 emission control at the sector level. In this paper, a hybrid input–output model is adopted to assess the situation and trend of sectoral CO 2 emissions from 2002 to 2017 in China. Demand-side drivers of sectorial embodied CO 2 emissions are discussed. Based on the embodied CO 2 emission decomposition of 27 sectors, a CO 2 emission evaluation index is defined for CO 2 emission ranking and key sectors for embodied CO 2 emissions are identified. For the key CO 2 emitters, we provide targeted policy suggestions for CO 2 emission mitigation from the perspective of trend evolution and index ranking. The results indicate the following. (1) 2015 is a turning point for China's CO 2 emission mitigation progress, because the previously increasing embodied CO 2 begins to decrease from 2015 to 2017. (2) Although the Construction sector stimulates a large amount of CO 2 emissions at present, the major driving forces of CO 2 emissions have gradually changed from infrastructure construction to the increasing demand of consumer goods, service industry, and export of technology-intensive products. (3) The CO 2 emission intensity of the Electric Power and Heat Supply sector has increased, and promotion of renewable energy consumption is urgently needed. (4) From the demand-driven aspect, tertiary industry has greater CO 2 emission potential than heavy industry. • A turning point of embodied carbon dioxide of China appears in 2015. • Most sectors have reached the peak of embodied carbon dioxide by 2015. • Construction, Other Service Industry and Manufacture of Machinery are the top three embodied carbon dioxide emitters. • Electric Power and Heat Supply sector should be concerned for high embodied carbon dioxide intensity. • Sectors with great carbon dioxide emission potential change towards tertiary and high-tech industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]