Forecast and Analysis on Reducing China’s CO2 Emissions from Lime Industrial Process

Abstract

China greenhouse gas inventories show that CO2 emissions from the lime industrial process are large scales and closely related to the development of its downstream industries. Therefore, there is high importance to analyze and forecast on reducing China’s CO2 emissions from lime industrial process. The aims of this paper are to make up the research gaps in China and provide a quantitative reference for related authorities to formulate relevant policies. The prediction method in this paper is consistent with the published national inventory, which is an activity data based method to predict carbon dioxide emissions from the industrial process of four categories of lime products. Three future scenarios are assumed. The business as usual scenario (BAU) is a frozen scenario. There are two emission reduction scenarios (ERS and SRS) assumed under different emission reduction strength considering combined industrial process CO2 emission reduction approaches from both the production side and the consumption side. The results show that between 2020 and 2050, China’s lime industrial process has an increasingly significant CO2 emission reduction potential, enabling both emission intensity reductions and total emission reductions to be achieved simultaneously. Based on the simulation results from emission reduction scenarios, compared with 2012 level, in 2050, the emission intensity can be reduced by 13–27%, the total lime production can be reduced by 49–78%, and the CO2 emissions in the lime industrial process can be reduced by 57–85%.