Abstract
<jats:p>This research focuses on spatial organization of economies in the single-resource regions of the Russian Federation that experience a combined effect of the global energy transition, tightening carbon regulations, and redirection of the export flows in the mining industry. The study aims to make a quantitative assessment of the depth of structural deformations in the economic space of coal- and oil-and-gas-producing regions and to justify parameters of the following three spatial transformation scenarios: inertial, adaptive, and proactive. The methodological framework includes the Herfindahl–Hirschman Index (HHI) for measuring the sectoral concentration of the gross regional product, employment location quotients, decomposition analysis of carbon intensity of mining operations, and econometric modeling of the relationship between the investments in decarbonization and the diversification dynamics. The empirical base covers data from Rosstat, the Russian Ministry of Energy, TsDU TEK, and the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory for 2019–2025 across eight key single-resource regions that collectively account for over 78% of the total coal production and 92% of the hydrocarbon extraction in the country. The HHI for the Kemerovo Region decreased from 0.58 (2019) to 0.48 (2025), indicating an onset of the forced diversification, while the cumulative losses of the coal companies reached 112.6 billion rubles in 2024, with mining employment declining by 3,800 persons annually. The carbon intensity of the coal mining regions exceeds that of the oil-and-gas regions by a factor of 1.9–2.2, standing at 1.82 t CO2-eq per thousand tonnes of the coal mined. The proactive scenario that envisages an increase in decarbonization investments to 4.2% of the GRP enables a 35% reduction in the carbon intensity by 2035 with a simultaneous increase in the diversification index to 0.37. The practical significance of the results lies in their applicability to formulating fair energy transition strategies for the resource-based regions</jats:p>