Article CO 2 Emissions Accounting and Carbon Peak Prediction of China’s Papermaking Industry Jiameng Yang 1, * , Yuchen Hua 1 , Jiarong Ye 1 , Shiying Xu 1 and Zhiyong (John) Liu 2
1 College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China 2 Networks Financial Institute, Donald W. Scott College of Business, Indiana State University, 30 N 7th St., Terre Haute, IN 47809, USA * Correspondence: yjm@njfu.edu.cn Abstract: China has been the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper products. In the context of the “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals”, China’s papermaking industry which is traditionally a high energy-consuming and high-emissions industry, desperately needs a nationally appropriate low-carbon development path. From the consumption-side perspective, this paper calcu- lates the CO 2 emissions of China’s papermaking industry from 2000 to 2019 by using carbon emission nuclear algorithm, grain-straw ratio, first-order attenuation method, and STIRFDT decomposition model, etc., to further explore the core stages and basic patterns affecting the industry’s carbon peaking. The results show that the total CO 2 emissions of China’s papermaking industry showed an upward trend from 2000–2013, stable from 2013–2017, and a steady but slight decline from 2017–2019. Meanwhile, the total CO 2 emissions of the full life cycle of paper products in China have decreased to a certain extent in the raw material acquisition, pulp, and paper making and shipping stages, with only the waste paper disposal stage showing a particular upward trend. We find that from 2000 to 2019, China’s CO 2 emissions in the pulping and papermaking stage of paper products accounted for 68% of the total emissions in the whole life cycle, of which 59% was caused by coal consumption. Moreover, the scenario prediction shows that improving the energy structure and increasing the waste paper recovery rate can reduce the CO 2 emissions of the industry, and it is more significant when both work. Based on this and the four core stages of CO 2 emissions of the papermaking industry we proposed ways to promote CO 2 emissions peaking of China’s paper products.
Citation: Yang, J.; Hua, Y.; Ye, J.; Xu, S.; Liu, Z. CO 2 Emissions Accounting and Carbon Peak Prediction of China’s Papermaking Industry. Forests 2022 , 13 , 1856. https:// doi.org/10.3390/f13111856
Keywords: paper and paper products; LCA; CO 2 emissions; carbon peaking
Academic Editors: Chul-Hee Lim and Moonil Kim
1. Introduction Since the 21st century, global problems such as lack of resources, environmental dam- age, and climate change have become increasingly prominent. China has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest CO 2 emitter since 2009 [1], and in 2019, China’s CO 2 emissions were higher than the combined CO 2 emissions of the United States and European Union (EU) countries, with a global share of 29.37% [2]. According to China’s Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) commitment, they “Strive to achieve carbon peaking by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060”. Energy saving and carbon reduction have become essential tasks to help achieve the “carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals” in the coming period. The papermaking industry presents an energy-intensive sector, which accounted for approximately 1.4% of total national manufacturing energy consumption in 2021 [3]. China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of paper and paperboard [4,5], and the types and quantities of paper products are increasing with the growth of the popu- lation and the improvement of people’s living standards. National paper and paperboard production reaches 112.60 × 10 6 tons in 2020, up 4.60% from 2019 [6]. Currently, China’s papermaking industry is still in the rising stage of industrial development and energy consumption, and the corresponding CO 2 emissions continue to increase with the increase
Received: 7 October 2022 Accepted: 3 November 2022 Published: 7 November 2022
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Forests 2022 , 13 , 1856. https://doi.org/10.3390/f13111856
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