Study on carbon footprint evaluation and carbon reduction path of cross-basin water transfer project – A case study of the Yellow River East diversion project in China

Inter-basin water transfers have become an important means of water allocation to address imbalances in regional water distribution. Inter-basin water transfers often have a huge amount of engineering efforts and are accompanied by a large amount of carbon emissions generated during the life cycle. Previous studies usually suffer from problems such as rough data lists, difficulty in obtaining some background data, and failure to adopt a dynamic perspective. In this study, the Yellow Water East Diversion Project in China is taken as a case study, and hybrid LCA is utilized to make up for the background data that are difficult to obtain by traditional LCA, which enhances the comprehensiveness of the study results. In addition, a comparative analysis is conducted with seawater desalination, which is also used as a supplementary water resource supply method, and scenarios of power structure changes with different intensities are considered. It is found that carbon emissions due to pipelines and electricity are the main sources of carbon emissions from the Yellow Water Eastward Transfer Project. Inter-basin water transfer has lower carbon emissions compared to desalination. Recommendations for optimizing carbon emission reduction are also made. The results of this study enrich the life cycle carbon emission inventory and provide basic data on carbon emissions for water resources management in other regions. The construction of the methodological system can be used as a reference for carbon emission studies in other fields.