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.