Projected increases in emissions of high global warming potential fluorinated gases in China

Abstract

China is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and has committed to mitigating global warming through achieving carbon neutrality by 2060. However, detailed information on China’s historical and projected emissions of fluorinated greenhouse gases, with high global warming potentials, is lacking. Here we establish a comprehensive and up-to-date inventory of China’s fluorinated greenhouse gas emissions and find that they show an accelerating growth rate, increasing from 5.5 to 221 million tons CO2-equivalent per year from 1990 to 2019. China has become the world’s largest emitter of fluorinated greenhouse gases and contributed 93% of the global emission increase during the period 1990−2019. We find that total emissions of fluorinated greenhouse gases from China are projected to increase to 506–1356 million tons CO2-equivalent per year in 2060 if there is no regulation, which is larger than the projected CO2 emissions under China’s carbon neutrality commitment for 2060.