Emission trends of air pollutants and CO₂ in China from 2005 to 2021

Abstract

Abstract. China is facing the challenge of synergistic reducing air pollutants and CO2 emissions in the coming decades. The coupled emission inventory of air pollutants and CO2 is a prerequisite to designing the synergetic emission reduction strategy. This study compiled China’s emission inventory of air pollutants and CO2 during 2005–2021 (ABaCAS-EI v2.0 dataset) based on a unified emission source framework and uniformed activity. The mitigation policies have decoupled the emissions of air pollutants and CO2 with economic development in China since 2013. In the context of growing activity levels, energy structure adjustment and energy & material saving brought a 7 % drop in the average annual growth rate of CO2 emissions after 2011; on the basis, end-of-pipe control contributed 51 %–98 % of air pollutants emission reductions after 2013. Sectors of industrial boilers and residential fossil combustion, and seven provinces (including Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Jilin, Henan, Sichuan, and Qinghai) have achieved emission reductions of both air pollutants and CO2 during 2013–2021. The declining trends in both sectoral and regional emission ratios of air pollutants to CO2 indicated that the potential for synergistic emission reduction in China has declined from 2013 to 2021. The emission ratios in 2021 show that the residential fossil fuel combustion, iron and steel industry, and transportation have relatively higher co-benefits of SO2, PM2.5, NOx, and VOCs emission reductions when reducing CO2 emissions. Most of the cities with higher potential to synergistically reduce NOx, VOCs, and CO2 emissions are located within the Yangtze River Economic Belt; those with higher potential to co-control SO2 and CO2, and PM2.5 and CO2 are in southern and northeast China, respectively. What’s more, a further deconstruction of sectoral emissions in 2021 has suggested future reduction measures. For example, controlling coal consumption in the energy field; promoting innovative technologies with low air pollutant emission intensities and coal-saving effects in the iron and steel industry; combining coal and carbonate replacing technologies with separated particle control measures in the cement industry; controlling light-duty passenger vehicle, heavy-duty truck, agricultural machinery, and inland water transport in the transport field. Our dataset and analysis can provide insights into future co-control of air pollutants and CO2 emissions for China and other countries with the same demand worldwide. Our ABaCAS-EI v2.0 dataset can be accessed from https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.21777005.v1 (Li et al., 2022) by species, sector, and province.

Extreme Emission Reduction Requirements for China to Achieve World Health Organization Global Air Quality Guidelines

“…The difference is the result of the combined effect of anthropogenic emissions change and meteorological conditions change. According to Li et al, from 2015 to 2021, emissions of NO x , SO 2 , NH 3 , VOCs, and primary PM 2.5 in China decreased by more than 30, 65, 10, 5, and 40%, respectively. We simulated both annual PM 2.5 and peak season MDA8 O 3 in China from 2015 to 2021 by the DeepRSM model.…”

Spatially and Temporally Differentiated NOx and VOCs Emission Abatement Could Effectively Gain O3-Related Health Benefits

“…18,44,45 Taken the whole 2017 as the baseline year, a high-resolution emission inventory (4 × 4 km) 46 was adopted in the YRD region with grid transformation, whereas the emission data except YRD region was obtained from the ABaCAS-EI data set. 47 The biogenic emission was generated by the Model for Emissions of Gases and Aerosols from Nature (MEGAN, version 2.10). 48 A 5-day spin up was performed to avoid the influence of initial conditions.…”

Distinct PM2.5‐Related Near‐Term Climate Penalties Induced by Different Clean Air Measures in China

“…Specific physical and chemical settings can be found in Section S1 in Supporting Information . The anthropogenic emission data from China in 2013 and 2021 were obtained from the Air Benefit and Cost and Attainment Assessment System‐Emission Inventory v2.0 (Li et al., 2023). We designed a series of emission scenarios based on the emissions in 2013 and the emission changes attributable to socioeconomic development and clean air measures.…”