Assessment of Provincial and Sectoral Emissions in China

Abstract:

Air pollutant emissions have been steadily increasing in China, and the need for emission mitigations has become crucial. In order to better understand the source and uncertainties of these emissions in China, we evaluated four global and regional emissions inventories: Regional Emission inventory in Asia version 2.1 (REASv2.1), Emission Database for Global Atmospheric Research version 4.2 (EDGAR v4.2), Multi-resolution Emission Inventory for China (MEIC), and the other by Dr. Yu Zhao. We compared emissions of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter of less than 10 μm (PM10), that of less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5), ammonia (NH3), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) from 2000 to 2008, and analyzed differences in emissions estimates by source sectors and provinces as well as the national total. In order to understand the cause of these differences in the transport sector, we also analyzed emission factors in depth. We find that the differences of China’s total CO2 emissions among the inventories is small (~2%), whereas that of PM10 emissions is large (200% ~ 350%) for 2008. Furthermore, emissions at the source sector level showed considerable differences for some species. For example, the differences among the inventories for the industry sector for PM10 ranged at 27 ~ 48%, and that for the transport sector for PM10 was larger than an order of magnitude for 2008. These discrepancies were also visible at the provincial level for various species and sectors. Residential sector tended to have the largest, and industry the smallest difference among inventories, though this was not true for all the species. Transportation sector had comparatively small difference, ranging usually in 10 ~ 30%, except for PM10.