China emitted a little less greenhouse gas than we thought

As a rapidly emerging economy with over four times the population of the US, China is playing an increasingly large role in the story of climate change. That makes trends in energy production there rather important. Unfortunately, Chinese emissions data aren’t the best, leaving significant error bars and discrepancies between different estimates.

A new study led by Zhu Liu went back over data covering 2000 to 2013 to pull together something a little more reliable. The study concludes that China emitted less greenhouse gas than we thought.

Instead of relying on iffy energy consumption data, the researchers went back to the production of coal, oil, and gas in China, and to imports and exports. They came up with a number that was actually a little higher than the Chinese government’s national estimate.