Energy Use and Sulphur Dioxide Emissions in Asia

This paper presents a review of energy use in 22 selected countries of Asia and estimates the anthropogenic emission of sulphur dioxide (SO2) for the selected countries, both at national and disaggregated sub-country regional levels. The paper also makes a comparative assessment of the Asian countries in terms of SO2emission intensity (i.e. emission per GDP), emission per capita and emission density (i.e. emission per unit area). Total SO2emission in the region was estimated to be about 38 million tons in 1990. Five countries, China, India, South Korea, Japan and Thailand, accounted for over 91% of the regional SO2emission. Coal use had the dominant share (81%) of the total emission from the region. Among the economic sectors, industry contributed the largest share (49%) to the total emissions of the selected countries as a whole, followed by the power sector (30%). These findings suggest the need for mitigation strategies focussed on the industry and power sectors of the major emitting countries in Asia.