China energy and carbon flow in 2020-2022

SUN Shengwei; LI Xichuan; CHANG Jingang; ZENG Wang; LIU Huixiang; WANG Bing

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1002-9605.2025.11.021

Abstract：Energy and carbon emission flows provide the fundamental basis for the design of China's energy transition pathway and the realization of its carbon peaking and carbon neutrality goals.Based on energy data from 2020 to 2022,this study constructed energy flow and carbon flow diagrams for China,enabling systematic analysis of recent trends in energy production,consumption,and carbon emissions,as well as changes in energy and carbon flows across various energy types and key industries.The results indicate that total energy production and consumption in China continued to grow,reaching 4.129 billion tce and 5.055 billion tce in 2022,In terms of energy flows,the pattern of coal primarily flowing to thermal power generation and heating remained unchanged.Additionally,99.48%of crude oil was utilized for refining,predominantly for the production of diesel at 0.281 billion tce and gasoline at 0.215 billion tce.The consumption of natural gas in the power generation and heating sectors demonstrated significant growth,with annual growth rates of 3.0%and 12.98%,respectively.In terms of energy conversion efficiency,energy losses accounted for 31.69%of available consumption in 2022,with thermal power conversion exhibiting the lowest efficiency of only 58.34%.A carbon flow analysis reveals that carbon emissions reached 11.679 billion tons in 2022,with coal contributing 67.29%.From the end-use sector perspective,industry was the dominant source,accounting for 67.28%of total emissions.From the energy conversion perspective,thermal power generation contributed 43.12%.In the industrial sector,electricity was the main carrier,accounting for 41.48%of sectoral emissions,followed by coal at 36.99%.These findings indicate that China needs to accelerate the low-carbon development of traditional energy sources and the large-scale development of new energy sources,enhance energy utilization efficiency,and implement carbon capture and storage technologies for the low-carbon and clean utilization of fossil fuels.