Inventory, environmental impact, and economic burden of GHG emission at the city level: Case study of Jinan, China

To understand greenhouse gas (GHG) emission at the city level and establish effective measures to achieve carbon reduction, we conducted an inventory of GHG emission and its environmental and economic impacts on Jinan City by using a hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) method. We quantified the GHG emission in Jinan in the past 11 years and evaluated the spatial environmental potential of the energy consumption and industrial process in 2015. The inventory included direct emission of scope 1 (agriculture, land use, industry, municipal solid waste disposal, and energy consumption), and indirect emission of scopes 2 and 3, including emissions from the upstream production of imported energy (e.g., electricity, coal, oil, natural gas) and raw materials (e.g., steel, building material), that have been disregarded in most studies. The indirect emission value was 7.43 × 107 t CO2 eq and exceeded the direct emission value, which was 6.23 × 107 t CO2 eq. The economic burden on human health was higher than that on GHG emission and ecosystem categories (2.26 × 109 $). Results showed that energy consumption accounted for 73% of the total direct emission. The production of steel, coal power, building material, and oil extraction accounted for 31%, 19%, 19%, and 10% of the total indirect emission, respectively. Therefore, reducing the coal share rate in energy consumption, optimizing the industrial structure, improving the industrial production technology, and constructing an accurate and complete life cycle database in China are highly recommended for regional carbon emission reduction.