China's carbon emissions have long been overestimated

A team led by Chinese researchers published a report in the online edition of Nature magazine in the United Kingdom on the 19th. They said that after analyzing the two major sources of carbon dioxide emissions, fossil fuels and cement production, they found that China’s carbon emissions ratio in recent years In the past, much less was estimated.

This research was done in collaboration with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Tsinghua University, and the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. They analyzed China's carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production from 1950 to 2013, and in particular conducted in-depth analysis of coal data.

Their estimation results show that China's carbon emissions from fossil fuels and cement production in 2013 were 14% lower than some international research results such as the previous estimate of the Global Atmospheric Research Emissions Database; the accumulated carbon in China between 2000 and 2013 The emissions are nearly 3 billion tons less than previously estimated.

Researchers say that the main reason for this difference is that some previous studies did not fully consider the characteristics of China's use of coal. Coal is a widely used fossil fuel in China and is also a common source of energy for cement production. However, surveys show that China uses a lot of low-quality coal. The carbon content of such coal is lower than that of high-quality coal. Therefore, the amount of carbon dioxide produced by burning low-quality coal is relatively low.

Regarding the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the burning of unit coal, China's emissions of such coal are on average 40% lower than the default value recommended by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. However, the problem with low quality coal is that the amount of heat generated by a unit of coal is low, and the other components contained in it are more likely to cause air pollution.

The researchers also said that the discovery not only involves China, but may also have a great impact on the way countries around the world have calculated carbon emissions over a long period of time.