Evaluating China's fossil-fuel CO&amp;lt;sub&amp;gt;2&amp;lt;/sub&amp;gt; emissions from a comprehensive dataset of nine inventories

Pengfei Han,Xiaohui Lin,Lin Wu,Haikun Wang,Shu Tao,Bo Zheng,Monica Crippa,Rong Wang,Yuli Shan,Ning Zeng,Xiao Yun,Fang Zhao,Xiaolin Ma,Tom Oda,Zhu Liu,Dabo Guan,Greet Janssens-Maenhout,Qiang Zhang

doi:10.5194/acp-20-11371-2020

Abstract

Abstract. China's fossil-fuel CO2 (FFCO2) emissions accounted for approximately 28 % of the global total FFCO2 in 2016. An accurate estimate of China's FFCO2 emissions is a prerequisite for global and regional carbon budget analyses and the monitoring of carbon emission reduction efforts. However, significant uncertainties and discrepancies exist in estimations of China's FFCO2 emissions due to a lack of detailed traceable emission factors (EFs) and multiple statistical data sources. Here, we evaluated China's FFCO2 emissions from nine published global and regional emission datasets. These datasets show that the total emissions increased from 3.4 (3.0–3.7) in 2000 to 9.8 (9.2–10.4) Gt CO2 yr−1 in 2016. The variations in these estimates were largely due to the different EF (0.491–0.746 t C per t of coal) and activity data. The large-scale patterns of gridded emissions showed a reasonable agreement, with high emissions being concentrated in major city clusters, and the standard deviation mostly ranged from 10 % to 40 % at the provincial level. However, patterns beyond the provincial scale varied significantly, with the top 5 % of the grid level accounting for 50 %–90 % of total emissions in these datasets. Our findings highlight the significance of using locally measured EF for Chinese coal. To reduce uncertainty, we recommend using physical CO2 measurements and use these values for dataset validation, key input data sharing (e.g., point sources), and finer-resolution validations at various levels.

Highlights

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are one of the major accelerators of global warming (IPCC, 2007)
The emissions estimated from PKU and China Emission Accounts and Datasets (CEADs) showed a slight downward trend, even though they used independent activity data from International Energy Agency (IEA) (2014) and the National Bureau of Statistics (2016), and this downward trend was attributed to changes in the industrial structure, improved combustion efficiency, emissions control, and slowing economic growth (Guan et al, 2018; Zheng et al, 2018a)
NJU had the highest emissions during the periods of 2005–2015, followed by Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR), Multiresolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC), and Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC)/Global Carbon Project (GCP)/Open-Data Inventory for Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide (ODIAC), while CEADs (National) and PKU were significantly lower (Fig. 2)

Summary

Introduction

Anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are one of the major accelerators of global warming (IPCC, 2007). Global CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and industry processes increased to 36.23 Gt CO2 yr−1 in 2016, with a mean growth rate of 0.62 Gt CO2 yr−1 over the last decade (Le Quéré et al, 2018). CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and cement production in China were 9.9 Gt CO2 in 2016, accounting for approximately 28 % of all global fossil-fuel-based CO2 emissions (Le Quéré et al, 2018; IPCC AR5, 2013). To avoid the potential adverse effects from climate change (Zeng et al, 2008; Qin et al, 2016), the Chinese government has pledged to peak its CO2 emissions by 2030 or earlier and to reduce CO2 emissions per unit gross domestic product (GDP) by 60 %–65 %, less than the 2005 levels (SCIO, 2015). An accurate quantification of China’s CO2 emissions is the first step toward understanding its carbon budget and making carbon control policy

Objectives

Results

Conclusion