Chinese experts advocate for improved carbon emissions accounting system

SHANGHAI, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese experts on Wednesday called for building a more scientific and fair accounting system for carbon emissions.

The experts made the call at the launch of a report on consumption-based carbon emissions held by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Analyzing the consumption-based carbon emissions of major developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2019, the report noted that the consumption-based carbon emissions of major developed countries are generally higher than the production-based carbon emissions, while the opposite is true for major developing countries.

According to the report, major developed countries transferred 1.48 billion tonnes of carbon emissions to other countries and regions through international trade in 2019, while major developing countries bore 3.39 billion tonnes of embodied carbon emissions that year.

"The prevailing global measurement of carbon emissions is on the production end, which is unfair to the development of developing countries, and this report gives a brand new perspective to safeguard the rights and interests of developing countries," said Chai Qimin from the National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation.

According to Wei Wei, vice president of the Shanghai Advanced Research Institute (SARI) of the CAS, this is the first report on consumption-based carbon emissions in China, and is focused on carbon emissions caused by human consumption behavior.

The report calls for integrating the production-based and consumption-based carbon emissions, and making a more scientific allocation of carbon reductions in different countries.

"We hope to establish a full-calibre carbon emissions database, providing a better scientific basis for global emission reductions and climate change governance," said Wei.

"In the future, we will further optimize the accounting method to achieve higher precision carbon emissions accounting, such as using satellites to observe the process of carbon flow," he added.

The report, led by the SARI, was jointly compiled by the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Urban Environment of the CAS and Tsinghua University.