Abstract:

Electricity emission factors are widely used in carbon accounting of different subjects such as industries, enterprises and products. Due to the different resource endowments in China, the differences of regional power emission factors are more significant. The use of national, regional and provincial emission factors will have greater impacts on the indirect carbon accounting of industrial enterprises and products. It directly affects the provincial "double carbon" indicator assessment, the payment of tariffs on the export of energy-consuming products and the costs of compliance in the domestic carbon market. This study takes the electrolytic aluminum industry as an example to measure the impacts of the selection of electricity emission factors on the carbon accounting of products in energy-consuming industries. The results show that the selection of electricity emission factors needs to be tailored to the application scenarios of the accounting subject. From the perspective of promoting fairness, the national carbon emissions trading market should adopt the national average electricity emission factor. While assessing the carbon emission intensity of provincial and sub-provincial administrative regions, compiling greenhouse gas inventories of provincial and sub-provincial administrative regions, and disclosing the voluntary greenhouse gas emission reports of enterprises, priority should be given to adopting the average emission factor of electricity corresponding to the provincial power grids.

Key words: electricity emission factor, carbon emission, carbon accounting, electrolytic aluminum