Emissions and Absorption of CO2 in China’s Cold Regions

Abstract

Energy production and consumption are dominant sources of CO2 emissions. Investigating the amount and characteristics of CO2 emission sources can aid in reducing CO2 emissions from energy-related sectors, which could lead to the development of advanced technologies and ideas for abatement. Cities play a significant role in CO2 emissions, representing a distinctive unit with a specialized energy consumption structure, meteorology, economy, agriculture, forest acreage, etc. Those properties interact and influence CO2 emissions. The city-level emission inventory is an important scientific database helping to investigate emission abatement technologies and establish control strategies. In this study, city-level CO2 emissions and ecological absorption of China’s coldest province are quantified. In the targeted region, winter lasts for about 6 months. Sectors of industry, thermal power generation, and domestic heating are dominant contributors to the total emissions. The provincial CO2 emissions from energy consumption increased gradually, reaching 327.61 million tons in 2019. Cities with strong industrial activities produced higher CO2 emissions. Moreover, the targeted region is a strong agriculture province, with the largest contribution to grain production in China. The absorption of farmland and forest was quantified, at 343.91 and 69.3 million tons in 2019, respectively. The total absorption was higher than the energy-related emissions. This indicated that the targeted region would provide a considerable carbon sink, attributed to the properties of its ecological system. From 2017 onwards, small boilers (single boilers smaller than 32 steam tons) were removed, and hence the emissions were lower than the original value. This study presents the characteristics of CO2 emissions, and reveals the co-benefit of air pollution control on CO2 reduction.