Spatiotemporal variations of fossil fuel CO2 emissions in China: A sectoral allocation approach based on multi-source data.

ABSTRACT

Fossil fuel (FF) CO2 emissions account for the largest portion of human-related CO2 emissions. It is essential to accurately understand the spatial distribution of high-resolution FFCO2 emissions to formulate different carbon emission reduction policies in different regions. Therefore, a sectoral allocation approach was proposed to estimate FFCO2 emissions in China from 2000 to 2021 based on multi-source data. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal characteristics of FFCO2 emissions in different sectors were analyzed at different scales, and the spatial correlation of FFCO2 emissions in the service sector and industrial sector was also evaluated through Moran's index. The results showed that the mean R2 value of the sectoral allocation approach (0.89) exceeds that of the approach using only nighttime light (0.72). Moreover, the calculated results were utilized to analyze the Spatiotemporal variation of FFCO2 emissions. The analysis revealed that China's FFCO2 emissions increased from 3173 Mt in 2000-10662 Mt in 2021. The high emissions of FFCO2 mainly come from the industrial sectors in North China and Central China, as well as the service sectors in the eastern coastal cities and other provincial capital cities. The spatial dependence of FFCO2 emissions in the industrial sector was stronger than that in the service sector, but the spatial dependence of FFCO2 emissions in the service sector showed an increasing trend from 2000 to 2021. These results have important references and implications for region-specific carbon emission reduction policies.