Spatiotemporal variations of fossil fuel CO₂ emissions in China: A sectoral allocation approach based on multi-source...

Fossil fuel (FF) CO₂ emissions account for the largest portion of human-related CO₂ emissions. It is essential to accurately understand the spatial distribution of high-resolution FFCO₂ emissions to formulate different carbon emission reduction policies in different regions. Therefore, a sectoral allocation approach was proposed to estimate FFCO₂ emissions in China from 2000 to 2021 based on multi-source data. Furthermore, the spatiotemporal characteristics of FFCO₂ emissions in different sectors were analyzed at different scales, and the spatial correlation of FFCO₂ emissions in the service sector and industrial sector was also evaluated through Moran's index. The results showed that the mean R² value of the sectoral allocation approach (0.89) exceeds that of the approach using only nighttime light (0.72). Moreover, the calculated results were utilized to analyze the Spatiotemporal variation of FFCO₂ emissions. The analysis revealed that China's FFCO₂ emissions increased from 3173 Mt in 2000-10662 Mt in 2021. The high emissions of FFCO₂ mainly come from the industrial sectors in North China and Central China, as well as the service sectors in the eastern coastal cities and other provincial capital cities. The spatial dependence of FFCO₂ emissions in the industrial sector was stronger than that in the service sector, but the spatial dependence of FFCO₂ emissions in the service sector showed an increasing trend from 2000 to 2021. These results have important references and implications for region-specific carbon emission reduction policies.