Air pollutant emissions from on-road vehicles in China, 1999-2011

The on-road vehicular emission in China from 1999 to 2011 was estimated, based on the emission factors of vehicles with different emission standards calculated by the COPERT model. The CO, NMVOC, NOX, BC and OC emissions changed from 19.7 Tg, 4.4 Tg, 2.3 Tg, 47.1 Gg and 74.4 Gg in 1999 to 32.7 Tg, 4.1 Tg, 7.6 Tg, 177.6 Gg and 101.5 Gg in 2011, respectively. The general trend for CO, NOX and BC was increasing, while the tendency for NMVOC and OC was firstly increase before 2002 and then decrease from 2003. The spatial analysis results showed that high emissions occurred in developed provinces (Guangdong, Shandong, Hebei, Jiangsu and Henan). The correlation between vehicular emissions and GDP were further investigated and good linear correlation was found. The not-obvious change of the inter-annual (1999-2011) fitted straight line slope and the sustained increasing emissions for NOX and BC suggested that the challenge of mitigating vehicular NOX and BC emissions is severe in China. The contribution from different vehicle types was also analyzed. Passenger car (PC) and motorcycle (MC) was the main contributor to the CO and NMVOC emissions. However, the contribution ratio of MC was decreasing from 36.6% and 68.8% in 1999 to 15.7% and 25.7% in 2011. Heavy duty truck (HDT) was the dominant contributor to NOX, BC and OC, with proportions of 58.9%, 57.6% and 52.8% in 2011, respectively. In addition, the uncertainty of the estimated emissions was also assessed based on the Monte Carlo simulation.