China's CH₄ emissions from coal mining: A review of current bottom-up inventories

As the world's largest CH₄ emitter, China's CH₄ emissions contribute to climate change more than the amount emitted by many developed countries combined. The rapid growth of China's coal demand has important implications for CH₄ emissions from coal mining or coal mine methane (CMM) emissions. This paper aims to present an overview of bottom-up estimation of China's CMM emissions, including the trend in the last four decades and the limitations of current understanding on CH₄ emissions. Although characterized by significant differences in inventory compilation, statistically, the total CMM emissions rose from 4.64 to 16.41 Tg with a peak of 21.48 Tg from 1980 to 2016. Large discrepancies of inventory results existed in previous studies, which were affected by the coverage of emission sources, emission factors and activity-level data. The disagreements can be largely attributable to the emission factors of underground mining, which contain substantial variances in both spatial and temporal dimensions. To develop more reliable CMM inventories and make targeted mitigation measures, more attention should be paid to the transparency of the estimated results, coal statistics, on-site CMM emission factors, and the emissions from abandoned coal mines. As the leading CH₄ emission source in China, the estimations of CMM emissions urgently need to overcome existing and emerging challenges for compiling a consistent and accurate inventory.