Spatial Characteristic of Coal Production-Based Carbon Emissions in Chinese Mining Cities

Jingying Fu,Dong Jiang,Xiang Li,Donglin Dong,Gang Lin

doi:10.3390/en13020453

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate CO2 emissions in the production of coal sources at the prefecture level and to analyze their spatial distribution and regional differences based on the spatial autocorrelation and standard deviational ellipse analysis. The results indicate that Chinese coal production from 2018 will most likely generate 485.23 million tons of CO2 emissions, and there still exists an obvious gap between the five coal development districts in terms of their CO2 emissions. A significant clustering pattern and positive spatial autocorrelation are revealed in the coal production-based carbon emissions in China. In addition, the spatial pattern of coal production-based CO2 emissions has an obvious central tendency and directional trend, and the ellipse direction is quite consistent with the Aihui–Tengchong Line. Our findings suggest that energy policy-makers should be concerned about the carbon emission effect when implementing regional coal development plans and actively guide the formation of a low-carbon spatial strategic pattern of coal production with a directional distribution of CO2 emissions perpendicular to the Aihui–Tengchong Line.

Highlights

China is committed to fighting climate change by cutting carbon emissions under the ParisAgreement [1]
Using 4383 productive coal mines of China from 2018 as examples, this study aims to quantify the amount of CO2 emissions in the production of coal sources at the prefecture level based on a high spatial resolution mine site dataset and to analyze their spatial characterization and regional differences
Some large-scale mining areas in Shandong, Jiangsu, Henan, Anhui, and Hebei Provinces have had a longstanding presence in deep mining, which causes substantial energy consumption, immensely increasing the CO2 emission

Summary

Introduction

China is committed to fighting climate change by cutting carbon emissions under the ParisAgreement [1]. China is committed to fighting climate change by cutting carbon emissions under the Paris. Taking the energy department as an example, fossil fuels, in particular. CO2 emissions since the demand for energy is directly affected by the mitigation of climate change [4]. The exploitation and utilization of renewable energy is an inevitable choice for solving energy and environmental issues because of the gradual exhaustion of fossil fuels and serious environmental pollution [5]. Non-fossil fuels, still make up a relatively low share of China’s primary energy consumption due to energy efficiency and economic problems. Coal remains China’s top source for electricity and will continue to rise in the short term, despite the fact that many industries are slowly phasing out coal in favor of other fossil fuels, such as natural gas [7,8].

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Conclusion