Explaining sectoral discrepancies between national and provincial statistics in China

Ma, Ben; Gao, Song; Zhang, Lei; Sonnenfeld, David A.

doi:10.1016/j.chieco.2014.07.004

Cited by 25 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Between NECs, annual data are collected only through sampling of smaller firms and reporting from large businesses fulfilling certain changeable criteria, by both provincial statistical agencies and the NBS. This creates sampling biases and inconsistencies 6,9,20 . Moderate revisions for the years between one NEC and the next are thus expected, but coal consumption has typically been revised by 5-10%-even more in the latest NEC-and almost exclusively upwards.…”

Section: Figure 1 | Comparison Of Growth Rates For DI Erent Measures mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The issue has been extensively debated 5,6,9 . The only official explanation is doublecounting at the provincial level, for example, by businesses with locations in more than one province 6,9,22 , but it has been argued that this cannot account for the magnitude of the gap 6 . However, this gap was reduced in the third NEC revisions (Fig.…”

Section: Figure 1 | Comparison Of Growth Rates For DI Erent Measures mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Uncertainties around reductions in China’s coal use and CO2 emissions

2016

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, implying high uncertainty. For example, BP 15 used different Chinese data to estimate a 0.9% increase in 2014 CO 2 emissions 7,8 . Here, we analyze 16 these preliminary announcements, with an approach that can be used to assess robustness of similar 17 future announcements. We show that the preliminary 2.9% reduction in coal consumption is 18 . Because it refers to coal consumption measured in mass units and often deviates from 9 growth measured in energy units, it can be misleading for estimating CO 2 emissions. It is often revised 10 ( Figure 1), but usually not until about 18 months later, with the publication of the following year's China 11 Energy Statistical Yearbook. A means of assessing the robustness of this growth rate is therefore 12 desirable, which we provide later in this paper. 13Further energy consumption data later published by NBS (and used by BP) show an insignificant increase 14 (0.06%) in total coal-derived energy use in 2014 7,8,10 , which is measured in energy units rather than mass 15 units, and includes energy from imports/exports and stock changes of coke and other products derived 16 from coal (see Methods online). Such moderate differences between growth rates of coal consumption 17 in mass units and growth rates of total coal-derived energy use are not uncommon in Chinese data, and 18 they have increased in recent years ( Figure 1). Coal-derived energy use is the most appropriate quantity 19 to use for estimating CO 2 emissions, since it explicitly includes all coal-derived products, and because 20 carbon content correlates more closely with energy content than with the mass of the coal 11 . Using 21 NBS's energy consumption data for coal, oil and natural gas 10 , combined with mean emission factors and 22 oxidation rates from a recent study (Liu et al. 2015) 12 , we estimate that Chinese fossil CO 2 emissions 23 3 grew by 0.8% in 2014 (see Methods). Global estimates compatible with this data show global energy-1 related emissions likely went up by ~0.5%, much less than the average over the last decade 7,13 . 2Interpretation of Chinese coal statistics is further complicated by revisions after the recently conducted 3 third National Economic Census (NEC), on which data in the 2014 Statistical Communiqué and 4 subsequently published data are based. The third NEC collected comprehensive data on economic 5 activity and energy use from (in principle) all entities in the industry and service sectors in 2013 9,14 , but 6 revised historical coal use for all years after 2000 upwards considerably (Figure 2). Total coal-derived 7 energy use for 2013 was revised up 13.6% (to 2.81 billion tonnes of coal equivalents (Gtce)) 15,16 -8 implying that 2014 coal-related CO 2 emissions in fact were much higher than existing estimates for 2013 9 -and every year since 2005 was revised up by 12-14%. Petroleum and natural gas saw only relatively 10 minor revisions (0%-1.7% and 0.7%-3.4%, respectively). The cumulative addition for 2000-2013 is 11 2.86 Gtce (+9.5%) from coal, 58.9 Mtce (+0.7%) fr...

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Section: Figure 1 | Comparison Of Growth Rates For DI Erent Measures mentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Figure 1 | Comparison Of Growth Rates For DI Erent Measures mentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainties around reductions in China’s coal use and CO2 emissions

2016

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“…Crucial in China is that too many companies and governmental authorities are still unwilling or actively hindering information disclosure for wider constituencies and there is still a major information disparity. In addition, the overall quality of environmental information disclosed by governmental agencies or companies remains low in terms of adequacy, reliability, credibility, timelines, and usefulness [10,22,71]. More verifiable information, widely disclosed and active public debate and learning following that information will advancedirectly and indirectly -informational governance.…”

Section: Future Outlookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Transparency and information disclosure in China's environmental governance

Zhang

Mol

2016

Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability

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115

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“…If anything, our key findings were even more pronounced. 12 As recently pointed out by Ma, Song, Zhang, and Sonnenfeld (2014), there are numerous ongoing problems with official Chinese data collection, including discrepancies between national aggregate values and the sum of provincial figures, particularly when it comes to industrial output. We acknowledge these issues but, like many others, use this data nonetheless given no alternative.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%