Trends in China's anthropogenic emissions since 2010 as the consequence of clean air actions

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Abstract

Abstract. To tackle the problem of severe air pollution, China has implemented active clean air policies in recent years. As a consequence, the emissions of major air pollutants have decreased and the air quality has substantially improved. Here, we quantified China's anthropogenic emission trends from 2010 to 2017 and identified the major driving forces of these trends by using a combination of bottom-up emission inventory and index decomposition analysis (IDA) approaches. The relative change rates of China's anthropogenic emissions during 2010–2017 are estimated as follows: −62% for SO2, −17% for NOx, +11% for nonmethane volatile organic compounds (NMVOCs), +1% for NH3, −27% for CO, −38% for PM10, −35% for PM2.5, −27% for BC, −35% for OC, and +16% for CO2. The IDA results suggest that emission control measures are the main drivers of this reduction, in which the pollution controls on power plants and industries are the most effective mitigation measures. The emission reduction rates markedly accelerated after the year 2013, confirming the effectiveness of China's Clean Air Action that was implemented since 2013. We estimated that during 2013–2017, China's anthropogenic emissions decreased by 59% for SO2, 21% for NOx, 23% for CO, 36% for PM10, 33% for PM2.5, 28% for BC, and 32% for OC. NMVOC emissions increased and NH3 emissions remained stable during 2010–2017, representing the absence of effective mitigation measures for NMVOCs and NH3 in current policies. The relative contributions of different sectors to emissions have significantly changed after several years' implementation of clean air policies, indicating that it is paramount to introduce new policies to enable further emission reductions in the future.

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Is Open Access

Historical (1750–2014) anthropogenic emissions of reactive gases and aerosols from the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS)

Nazar Kholod, Qiang Zhang, Meng Li … (2018)

We present a new data set of annual historical (1750–2014) anthropogenic chemically reactive gases (CO, CH 4 , NH 3 , NO x , SO 2 , NMVOCs), carbonaceous aerosols (black carbon – BC, and organic carbon – OC), and CO 2 developed with the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). We improve upon existing inventories with a more consistent and reproducible methodology applied to all emission species, updated emission factors, and recent estimates through 2014. The data system relies on existing energy consumption data sets and regional and country-specific inventories to produce trends over recent decades. All emission species are consistently estimated using the same activity data over all time periods. Emissions are provided on an annual basis at the level of country and sector and gridded with monthly seasonality. These estimates are comparable to, but generally slightly higher than, existing global inventories. Emissions over the most recent years are more uncertain, particularly in low- and middle-income regions where country-specific emission inventories are less available. Future work will involve refining and updating these emission estimates, estimating emissions' uncertainty, and publication of the system as open-source software.