• Energy Research
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Rural energy consumption in China has increased dramatically in the last decades, and has become a significant contributor of carbon emissions. Yet there is limited data on energy consumption patterns and their evolution in forest rural areas of China. In order to bridge this gap, we report the findings of field surveys in forest villages in Weichang County as a case study of rural energy consumption in northern China. We found that the residential energy consumption per household is 3313 kgce yr(-1) (kilogram standard coal equivalent per year), with energy content of 9.7 x 107 kJ yr(-1), including 1783 kgce yr(-1) from coal, 1386 kgce yr(-1) from fuel wood, 96 kgce yr(-1) from electricity, and 49 kgce yr(-1) from LPG. Per capita consumption is 909 kgce yr(-1) and its energy content is 2.7 x 107 kJ yr(-1). Due to a total energy utilization efficiency of 24.6%, all the consumed energy can only supply about 2.4 x 107 kJ yr(-1) of efficient energy content. Secondly, household energy consumption is partitioned into 2614 kgce yr(-1) for heating, 616 kgce yr(-1) for cooking, and 117 kgce yr(-1) for home appliances. Thirdly, the associated carbon emissions per household are 2556 kgC yr(-1), including 1022 kgC yr(-1) from unutilized fuel wood (90% of the total fuel wood). The rest of emissions come from the use of electricity (212 kgC yr(-1)), coal (1301 kgC yr(-1)) and LPG (21 kgC yr(-1)). Fourthly, local climate, family size and household income have strong influences on rural residential energy consumption. Changes in storage and utilization practices of fuel can lead to the 10%-30% increase in the efficiency of fuel wood use, leading to reduced energy consumption by 924 kgce yr(-1) per household (27.9% reduction) and 901 kgC yr(-1) of carbon emissions (35.3% reduction).

AbstractLivestock contributes approximately one‐third of global anthropogenic methane (CH4) emissions. Quantifying the spatial and temporal variations of these emissions is crucial for climate change mitigation. Although country‐level information is reported regularly through national inventories and global databases, spatially explicit quantification of century‐long dynamics of CH4 emissions from livestock has been poorly investigated. Using the Tier 2 method adopted from the 2019 Refinement to 2006 IPCC guidelines, we estimated CH4 emissions from global livestock at a spatial resolution of 0.083° (~9 km at the equator) during the period 1890–2019. We find that global CH4 emissions from livestock increased from 31.8 [26.5–37.1] (mean [minimum−maximum of 95% confidence interval) Tg CH4 yr−1 in 1890 to 131.7 [109.6–153.7] Tg CH4 yr−1 in 2019, a fourfold increase in the past 130 years. The growth in global CH4 emissions mostly occurred after 1950 and was mainly attributed to the cattle sector. Our estimate shows faster growth in livestock CH4 emissions as compared to the previous Tier 1 estimates and is ~20% higher than the estimate from FAOSTAT for the year 2019. Regionally, South Asia, Brazil, North Africa, China, the United States, Western Europe, and Equatorial Africa shared the majority of the global emissions in the 2010s. South Asia, tropical Africa, and Brazil have dominated the growth in global CH4 emissions from livestock in the recent three decades. Changes in livestock CH4 emissions were primarily associated with changes in population and national income and were also affected by the policy, diet shifts, livestock productivity improvement, and international trade. The new geospatial information on the magnitude and trends of livestock CH4 emissions identifies emission hotspots and spatial–temporal patterns, which will help to guide meaningful CH4 mitigation practices in the livestock sector at both local and global scales.

AbstractEast Asia (China, Japan, Koreas, and Mongolia) has been the world's economic engine over at least the past two decades, exhibiting a rapid increase in fossil fuel emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and has expressed the recent ambition to achieve climate neutrality by mid‐century. However, the GHG balance of its terrestrial ecosystems remains poorly constrained. Here, we present a synthesis of the three most important long‐lived greenhouse gases (CO2, CH4, and N2O) budgets over East Asia during the decades of 2000s and 2010s, following a dual constraint approach. We estimate that terrestrial ecosystems in East Asia is close to neutrality of GHGs, with a magnitude of between −46.3 ± 505.9 Tg CO2eq yr−1(the top‐down approach) and −36.1 ± 207.1 Tg CO2eq yr−1(the bottom‐up approach) during 2000–2019. This net GHG sink includes a large land CO2sink (−1229.3 ± 430.9 Tg CO2 yr−1based on the top‐down approach and −1353.8 ± 158.5 Tg CO2 yr−1based on the bottom‐up approach) being offset by biogenic CH4and N2O emissions, predominantly coming from the agricultural sectors. Emerging data sources and modeling capacities have helped achieve agreement between the top‐down and bottom‐up approaches, but sizable uncertainties remain in several flux terms. For example, the reported CO2flux from land use and land cover change varies from a net source of more than 300 Tg CO2 yr−1to a net sink of ∼−700 Tg CO2 yr−1. Although terrestrial ecosystems over East Asia is close to GHG neutral currently, curbing agricultural GHG emissions and additional afforestation and forest managements have the potential to transform the terrestrial ecosystems into a net GHG sink, which would help in realizing East Asian countries' ambitions to achieve climate neutrality.