An emissions accounting framework for industrial parks in China

China has the largest number of industrial parks in the world. These parks are not only crucial for the country to accelerate industrialization but also to achieve its climate change targets. Constructing CO₂ emission inventories for industrial parks is the first step in analysing the park's emission patterns and designing low-carbon policies. However, most of the previous emission accounts for industrial parks adopted various scopes and methodologies, making them incomparable with each other. This study develops a self-consistent methodology and framework for China's industrial parks based on enterprise-level data. We consider both Scope 1 and 2 emissions and construct the inventories by 19 energy types and 39 industrial sectors, which are consistent with the existing national, provincial, and city-level emission inventories. Such sectoral-based emission inventories will be not only able to provide data support for the design of emission/energy control policies, but also help the central/local governments evaluate a park's emission reduction performance. Finally, an empirical study is applied to four industrial parks to verify the method. In addition, we review the eco-industrial park programmes in Japan and South Korea, as well as their emissions accounting framework. We find that most of the Japanese industrial parks provide Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, while for South Korea, parks mostly focus on Scope 1 emissions. The discussion of Japan and South Korea's eco-industrial parks have referential significance for the construction China's low-carbon parks.