Exploring the spatiotemporal characteristics and control strategies for volatile organic compound emissions in Jiangsu, China

• Solvent utilization and industrial processes are main contributors.
• Volatile organic compound emissions are concentrated in southern and coastal Jiangsu.
• The effect of urbanization and economy was analyzed at city level.
• Scenario analysis for various volatile organic compound emission control measures.

China being a large developing country, with rapid economic growth over the last three decades, has a great challenge to control volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions and mitigate their related environmental issues and health problems. Moreover, China has great disparity in characteristics of VOC emissions and economic development among its 31 provincial regions. Local governments should suit their control measures to local conditions. To address this issue, we selected Jiangsu Province, one of the largest contributors of VOC emissions in China, having the second largest economy among the 31 Chinese provinces, as our example. Then we built a VOC emission inventory for the period 2000–2013 and set up a scenario analysis for the reduction of VOC emissions for Jiangsu Province. Results show that total VOC emissions in Jiangsu have risen from 0.98 Tg in 2000 to 2.15 Tg in 2013, and emissions related to solvent utilization and industrial processes account for 49.0% and 42.9% of the 1.17 Tg increase. Overall, VOC emissions were concentrated in Jiangsu's southern and coastal areas for the study period. Although per-gross-domestic-product VOC emission intensity is decoupled from urbanization ratio, Jiangsu's VOC emissions are strongly correlated with gross domestic product and urbanization ratio. In scenario analysis, only enhanced control measures involving cleaner production processes and more stringent end-of-pipe approaches can achieve the two controlled sources', i.e., industrial process' and solvent utilization's, total reduction rate of 24.6% by 2020, compared with 2013, which means such measures will realize the emission reduction goal, 24.3%, assumed for China's thirteenth five-year-plan period of national development.