China's potential SO2 emissions from coal by 2050

Yuan Qian, Laura Scherer, Arnold Tukker and Paul Behrens

Energy Policy, 2020, vol. 147, issue C

Abstract: Coal is the dominant emitter of Sulfur Dioxide (SO2) in some countries, comprising ~92% of total emissions in China. Mitigation of these emissions can be driven by a number of factors, such as energy-efficiency improvements, installation of scrubbers, and use of renewable energy. This study evaluates the historical reduction of overall SO2 emission intensity from coal consumption for 30 Chinese provinces between 2000 and 2016. These trends are further combined with expected coal use from 2020 to 2050 along with scenarios of future power generation to explore China's future SO2 emissions. The results show that provinces starting with a high emission intensity in general have higher reduction rates. By 2050, China's potential SO2 emissions are between 3.9 Mt and 4.1 Mt, and industry mitigation efforts, such as the installation of scrubbers, appear to contribute most to abatement. Additionally, this study estimates the impact on global average temperatures from SO2 mitigation due to the adoption of renewables in the electric sector using the MAGICC model and find an increase of ~0.01 °C by 2050. Considering the reduced abatement opportunities of desulfurization technologies and climate change effects of coal combustion, renewable energy provides the most promising option for SO2 mitigation.

Keywords: SO2 emission reduction; Desulfurization technologies; Energy transition; Energy scenarios; Climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421520305735
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:147:y:2020:i:c:s0301421520305735

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2020.111856

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().