Abstract
The sustainable development of the western region of China has always been essential to the national development strategy. The Western region has undertaken an industrial transfer from the Eastern and Central regions. Therefore, the CO2 emission intensity in the western region is higher than those of the Eastern and Central regions of China, and consequently its low-carbon development pathway has an important impact for China as a whole. Sichuan Province is not only the province with the highest CO2 emissions, but also the most economically developed province in Western China in 2018. In order to promote low carbon development in the western region, it is important to understand the features of emissions in Sichuan Province and to formulate effective energy strategies accordingly. This paper uses the IPCC regional emission accounting method to calculate the carbon emissions of 15 cities in Sichuan province, and to comply with the city-level emission accounts. The results show that the total carbon emissions of Sichuan province over the past 10 years was 3258.32 mt and reached a peak in 2012. The smelting and pressing of ferrous metals, coal mining and dressing were the leading sectors that contributed to the emissions, accounting for 17.86% and 15.82%, respectively. Raw coal, cleaned coal, and coke were the most significant contributors to CO2 emissions, accounting for 43.73%, 9.55%, and 6.60%, respectively. Following the above results, the Sichuan provincial government can formulate differentiated energy structure policies according to different energy consumption structures and carbon emission levels in the 15 cities. By controlling the level of total emissions and regulating larger industrial emitters in Sichuan province, some useful information could be provided as an essential reference for low-carbon development in Western China, and contribute to the promotion of emissions mitigation from a more holistic perspective.
Highlights
Climate change is one of the most severe and complex issues in human history [1,2]
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) report, the latest statistics show the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions related to energy in 2018 both had the fastest growth in this decade
The city-level emission accounts for the 2006–2015 period are shown in Table 2 which includes the total carbon dioxide emissions of 15 cities in Sichuan Province
Summary
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) report, the latest statistics show the energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions related to energy in 2018 both had the fastest growth in this decade. The global energy demand grew by 2.3% in 2018, while energy-related CO2 emissions rose by 1.7%, and reached an all-time high of 33 Gt. The pressure from the interrelationship between vast amounts of energy usage and carbon emission caused by energy have forced policymakers to undertake action in order to mitigate climate change and achieve low-carbon economic development [3,4,5]. With the rapid growth of population and industrialization all over the world, the demand for fossil fuel energy in human activities is increasing, with the use of coal being especially dominant in China. It is the energy consumption characteristics that involve mainly relying on coal that is causing increasingly serious emission problems [11,12]
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