Carbon emissions from energy combustion in rural China

Carbon emissions from rural energy combustion have not been successfully addressed in the existing accounting system since incomplete data of rural energy consumption and exclusion of emissions from combustion of biofuels in the sectoral or national totals to avoid double counting. Presented in this paper were estimations of CO2 emissions from fuel combustions in rural areas of China from 1979 to 2007 and analysis of their contributions to national energy related CO2 emissions, to highlight the important role rural energy plays in regard to climate change and potential capacity for carbon abatement in rural areas. The temporal variations of CO2 emission in rural areas was also analyzed with regard to total emissions, intensity and source structure, which could provide a novel perspective to our GHGs reduction strategies and related policy making. The results showed that the CO2 emissions in rural China have constantly increased from 8.89 x 10(8) tons in 1979 to 28.74 x 10(8) tons in 2007. Commercial energy has become the dominant force of CO2 emissions in rural China, most of which is mainly derived from the consumption of coal and electricity. The proportion of carbon emissions from rural areas to nationwide underwent an inverted U-curve trend if biomass energy was ignored, with a peak at 47.40% in 2000. The situation becomes absolutely different when considering about biomass. For a long time (from 1979 to 2001), rural energy related carbon emissions has maintained a greatly high proportion in total carbon emissions with a fluctuations between 45.13% and 56.31%. The proportion of carbon emission in rural areas has declined since 2002, but still up 40.99% in 2007. (C) 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd.