Abstract:

The accounting of cross-regional electricity indirect carbon emissions is crucial to the carbon budget management of major power-sending and power-receiving regions during China's "15th Five-Year Plan" period. To address such issues as significant inaccuracies in traditional territorial-based accounting methods and insufficient integration of green electricity certificates, four alternative accounting methods, including the power source-based emission factor method, the power import-based emission factor method, the net coal-power transfer adjustment method, and the green certificate consumption adjustment method, are proposed to quantitatively assess the scale of carbon emission transfers via cross-regional and inter-provincial electricity transmission in 2023, and the impacts of different accounting methods on regional carbon budgets are compared. The study reveals that the accounting results of indirect carbon emissions from cross-regional electricity are varied significantly with different methods, with fluctuations exceeding 10% in key power-importing regions such as East China and North China; the accounting mechanism based on the "national average emission factor adjusted with green certificates" can dynamically refine the carbon emission responsibilities of power-importing regions. It is recommended that the accounting of indirect carbon emissions from cross-regional electricity transmission should be grounded in regional coordinated development and the efficiency of power resource allocation, with comprehensive consideration of the responsibility-sharing mechanisms between sending and receiving regions as well as the green certificate system.

Key words: carbon dual control, electricity indirect carbon emissions, electricity emission factor, carbon emission accounting method