Carbon emission accounting and responsibility allocation for district heating in northern China: A baseline value approach

Climate change mitigation in high-emission sectors like district heating (DH) requires accurate carbon accounting and effective responsibility allocation. Existing methods often overlook transmission and distribution emissions and fail to provide actionable differentiation among stakeholders. This study proposes a comprehensive carbon accounting framework and a baseline-based responsibility allocation approach, applied to 14 northern provinces in China based on real operational data. The total carbon emissions during the 2021–2022 heating season were estimated at approximately 348 Mt CO2/year, with significant regional disparities largely driven by heat source structure. Carbon responsibilities were allocated to heat sources, transmission, distribution, and users based on deviations from regional baselines, yielding a balanced incentive structure. The assigned responsibilities ranged from −4.6 to +10.9 Mt CO2 for heat sources, −1.4 to +0.9 Mt for transmission, −0.3 to +0.2 Mt for distribution, and 6.5 to 46.4 Mt for users across provinces. The results highlight considerable emission reduction potential through demand-side energy-saving, industrial waste heat recovery, and the adoption of seasonal thermal storage and long-distance heat transmission, while also emphasizing the critical role of regional power grid emission factors for electricity-driven technologies. This framework enables differentiation among system segments and stakeholders, supporting more targeted regulatory design, carbon trading schemes, and user-side efficiency improvements.