Spatiotemporal characteristics of consumption based CO2 emissions from China's power sector

As China's largest CO2 emission source, power sector has a large scale of power exchange, which results in the issue of interprovincial CO2 emissions transfer embodied in power transmission. Based on interprovincial detailed power exchange data, a bottom-up method which takes into account the fuel mix of exported electricity is developed to calculate provincial CO2 emissions embodied in power transmission. Provincial CO2 emissions from power sector associated in consumption perspective in 2007, 2010 and 2012 are analyzed and compared with those in production based perspective. The calculation shows that total CO2 emissions embodied in interprovincial power exchange is 532 Tg in 2012, accounting for 14% of total emissions from power sector. The embodied emissions have risen by 94% between 2007 and 2012. The general transfer pathway of embodied CO2 emissions is from eastern China to western China with long-range power transmission. The disparities between consumption and production based CO2 emissions are significant in some provinces. The production based CO2 emissions from power sector of Inner Mongolia are 195 Tg higher than those of the consumption based, while the consumption based emissions of Beijing are 484% larger than those of the production based. This study also reveals an increasing trend of CO2 emissions from both production and consumption principles for most provinces over the period 2007-2012.