Development of a new global CO2 emission database with highly-resolved source category and sub-country information: methodology and 1970-2021 emissions

<p>CO₂ emission database lays the foundation of climate research and climate governance. Most current global CO₂ emission inventories were developed with energy statistics from International Energy Agency (IEA) and were available at country level with limited source categories. Here, as the first step toward a high-resolution and dynamic updated global CO₂ emission database, we developed a data-driven approach to construct seamless and highly-resolved energy consumption data cubes for 208 countries/territories, 797 sub-country administrative divisions in 29 countries, 42 fuel types, and 52 sectors, with the fusion of energy consumption from 24 international statistics and 66 regional/local statistics. Global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production in 1970-2021 were then estimated with highly-resolved source category (1484 of total) and sub-country information (797 of total). Specifically, 73% of global CO₂ emissions in 2021 were calculated based on sub-country information, providing considerably improved spatial resolution for global CO₂ accounting. With the support of detailed information, the dynamics of global CO₂ emissions across sectors and fuels were presented, representing the evolution of global economy and progress of climate governance. Remarkable differences of sectoral contribution were found across sub-country administrative divisions within a given country, revealing the uneven distribution of energy and economic structure among different regions. Our estimates were generally consistent with existing databases at aggregated level for global total or large emitters, while large discrepancies were observed for middle and small emitters. Our database, named Multi-resolution Emission Inventory model for Climate and air pollution research (MEIC) is publicly available through http://meicmodel.org.cn with highly-resolved information and timely update, which provides an independent carbon emission accounting data source for climate research.</p>