Greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities in China from 2006 to 2019

Dan Wang; Weili Ye; Guangxue Wu; Ruoqi Li; Yuru Guan; Wei Zhang; Junxia Wang; Yuli Shan; Klaus Hubacek

doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01439-7

Greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities in China from 2006 to 2019

Sci Data. 2022 Jun 16;9(1):317. doi: 10.1038/s41597-022-01439-7.

Authors

Dan Wang^#¹, Weili Ye^#², Guangxue Wu³, Ruoqi Li^{1

4}, Yuru Guan¹, Wei Zhang^{5

6}, Junxia Wang⁷, Yuli Shan¹, Klaus Hubacek⁸

Affiliations

¹ Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES), Energy Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG), University of Groningen, Groningen, 9747 AG, The Netherlands.
² The Center for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Regional Environment and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing, 100012, China.
³ Civil Engineering, School of Engineering, College of Science and Engineering, National University of Ireland, Galway, Galway, H91 TK33, Ireland.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
⁵ The Center for Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Regional Environment and Ecology, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing, 100012, China. zhangwei@caep.org.cn.
⁶ State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Planning and Policy Simulation, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing, 100012, China. zhangwei@caep.org.cn.
⁷ State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Quality Control in Environmental Monitoring, China National Environmental Monitoring Centre, Beijing, 100012, China.
⁸ Integrated Research on Energy, Environment and Society (IREES), Energy Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG), University of Groningen, Groningen, 9747 AG, The Netherlands. k.hubacek@rug.nl.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) alleviate water pollution but also induce resource consumption and environmental impacts especially greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Mitigating GHG emissions of WWTPs can contribute to achieving carbon neutrality in China. But there is still a lack of a high-resolution and time-series GHG emission inventories of WWTPs in China. In this study, we construct a firm-level emission inventory of WWTPs for CH₄, N₂O and CO₂ emissions from different wastewater treatment processes, energy consumption and effluent discharge for the time-period from 2006 to 2019. We aim to develop a transparent, verifiable and comparable WWTP GHG emission inventory to support GHG mitigation of WWTPs in China.

Abstract

Grants and funding