The carbon cost of mitigating air pollutant emissions from coal-fired power plants in China

• With the largest pollution-intensive coal-fired power plant (CFPP) fleet in the world, China has widely distributed air pollutant control devices (APCDs) to improve air quality. These APCDs are effective in mitigating air pollutants, at the same time, consume substantial carbon-intensive electricity from CFPPs. Nevertheless, the carbon cost of clean coal-fired power remains unexplored. Therefore, by collecting plant-level information, we quantified CO2 emissions induced by APCDs’ power consumption from China’s CFPPs. We show that from 2000 to 2020, CO2 emissions induced by APCDs in China’s CFPPs increased from 1.48 Mt to 51.7 Mt, and the ratio of power consumed by the APCDs to the total power generation increased from 0.12% to 1.19%. In 2020, the wet limestone-gypsum flue gas desulfurization device dominated the carbon emissions with a percentage of 80%, followed by the dust removal device’s 13% and denitration device’s 7%, respectively. Scenario analysis demonstrates that Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Shandong are the hotspots of APCD CO2 emissions in the future. The lifetime of CFPPs is an important factor affecting the scale of future APCD CO2 emissions. Our study underscores the urgency of a comprehensive assessment of environmental policies and urges the necessity of synergetic management of air pollutants and carbon emissions.