Development a detailed inventory framework for estimating major pollutants emissions inventory for Yunnan Province, China

A Yunnan Province regional emission inventory for the year 2009 was developed, using the best available domestic emission factors and activity level data for the first time. The inventory covers major emission sources in the region and both bottom-up and top-down approaches were adopted to compile the inventory for those sources where possible. The results show that the estimated emissions for SO2, NOX, CO2 and PM10 in Yunnan Province for the year 2009 were 446.75 kt, 486.91 kt, 20553.91 wt (104t) and 467.83 kt, respectively. Coal-fired power plants and industrial sources were major contributors of SO2, NOX and CO2 emissions, accounting for 84.49%, 73.27% and 68.34% of the total emissions. Biomass burning accounted for 71.62% of total PM10 emissions. Qujing predominate the total emissions of each species, 33.58% for SO2, 31.04% for NOX, 24.19% for CO2, and 15.79% for PM10. The highest emission density value was up to 5024 kg SO2 km−2 and 5063 kg NOX·km−2 in Qujing, 2076 t CO2·km−2 and 3032 kg PM10·km−2 in Kunming. Furthermore, a qualitative approach was used to characterize the uncertainty of emission inventories, with low uncertainty in SO2 emission estimates from coal-fired power plant sources, medium to high uncertainties for NOX emissions and CO2 emissions, and high uncertainty in PM10.