Abstract:As one of the most affluent cities in China and with an urbanization rate as high as 86%, Guangzhou’s greenhouse gas emissions increment has been increasingly dominated by the greenhouse gas generated during its domestic waste treatment. After a continuous follow-up study on Guangzhou"s greenhouse gas emission inventory from 2010 to 2018, we find that the main source contributing to the increase of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions has witnessed a gradual transition from energy consumption to waste treatment, with the latter accounting for 70% of the increase in Guangzhou’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2018. Of the waste treatment emissions, more than 90% comes from domestic waste disposal. Researches show that the greenhouse gas emissions generated by domestic waste disposal in Guangzhou has been increasing year by year, with an average annual growth rate of 5.16% from 2010 to 2018 and the later period witnessing a higher rate than the former period. The city’s domestic waste generated per capita stands at 0.7-1.1 kg/person/day and they are disposed of mainly through landfill. We set up three scenarios in this paper based on parameters including permanent resident population, amount of waste generated per capita, daily disposal capacity of waste incineration power plants and methane recovery rate to predict the domestic waste output and the consequent greenhouse gas emissions in Guangzhou by the year 2035. Our prediction results show that there will not be a growth tipping point in per capita domestic waste output in Guangzhou before 2035, but there is going to be a gap in the city’s waste disposal capacity around 2033. The emissions from waste disposal, on the other hand, would meet with a tipping point in 2019. By 2035, the emissions under the Emission Reduction Scenario would be 31% less than that under the Policy Scenario, and the emissions under the Intensified Emission Reduction Scenario would be 48% less than that under the Policy Scenario.
