Non‐CO₂ Greenhouse Gas Emissions in China 2012: Inventory and Supply Chain Analysis

Abstract

Reliable inventory information is critical in informing emission mitigation efforts. Using the latest officially released emission data, which is production based, we take a consumption perspective to estimate the non‐CO2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for China in 2012. The non‐CO2 GHG emissions, which cover CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, and SF6, amounted to 2003.0 Mt. CO2‐eq (including 1871.9 Mt. CO2‐eq from economic activities), much larger than the total CO2 emissions in some developed countries. Urban consumption (30.1%), capital formation (28.2%), and exports (20.6%) derived approximately four fifths of the total embodied emissions in final demand. Furthermore, the results from structural path analysis help identify critical embodied emission paths and key economic sectors in supply chains for mitigating non‐CO2 GHG emissions in Chinese economic systems. The top 20 paths were responsible for half of the national total embodied emissions. Several industrial sectors such as Construction, Production and Supply of Electricity and Steam, Manufacture of Food and Tobacco and Manufacture of Chemicals, and Chemical Products played as the important transmission channels. Examining both production‐ and consumption‐based non‐CO2 GHG emissions will enrich our understanding of the influences of industrial positions, final consumption demands, and trades on national non‐CO2 GHG emissions by considering the comprehensive abatement potentials in the supply chains.

Consumption‐Based Accounting of Global Anthropogenic CH4 Emissions

“…In addition, the waste‐related CH 4 emissions were largely driven by local consumption, living standards of people, and waste management levels. At present, reduction of CH 4 emissions on the consumption side has been far less attended to by policy makers and researchers than that of CO 2 emissions (B. Zhang et al, , ). Consumption‐based accounting conducted in this study provides new insights on where to focus policy responses to reduce global anthropogenic CH 4 emissions and pinpoints the regional and sectoral hotspots for possible emission mitigation associated with production, consumption, and international trade.…”

Energy use by globalized economy: Total-consumption-based perspective via multi-region input-output accounting

“…The final-demand-based MRIO accounting is considered effective in addressing the amount of the energy use or emissions embedded in the goods or services that are ultimately used as final demand in regions outside a nation's jurisdiction . In addition, it is worth noticing that the final-demand-based accounting has been in recent years referred to as consumption-based accounting, at first by Peters and then widely adopted by other scholars Meng et al, 2018a;Zhang et al, 2018), in the domain of greenhouse gas emissions accounting that aims at allocating emissions to the nations covered under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).…”

“…Applied Energy 184, 1093-1105. Zhang, B., Zhang, Y., Zhao, X., Meng, J., 2018. Non-CO 2 greenhouse gas emissions in China 2012: Inventory and supply chain analysis.…”

Socioeconomic determinants of China's growing CH4 emissions

“…China is the world's largest contributor of anthropogenic CH 4 emissions. To date, there are three national GHG inventories including CH 4 emissions reported by the Chinese government (CCDNDRC, 2017;Zhang et al, 2018a). According to the last official national GHG inventory, which was published in the first Biennial Update Report (BUR) on Climate Change submitted to the UNFCCC (CCDNDRC, 2017), China's total CH 4 emissions amounted to 55.9 Tg in 2012.…”

“…Particularly, Zhang and his colleagues (Zhang and Chen, 2010;Zhang et al, 2015Zhang et al, , 2018a have conducted a series of studies on the embodiment analysis of CH 4 emissions in China.…”