Comparative Analysis and Multi‐Criteria Evaluation of Industrial Indirect Carbon Emission Accounting Approaches in Power Systems

ABSTRACT

Reducing indirect carbon emissions is crucial for large industrial consumers, especially export‐orientated enterprises, seeking to lower their carbon‐related costs. Indirect emissions implicit in electricity consumption rely on mathematical accounting. It is still under investigation how to evaluate the applicability of the different accounting approaches to ensure the fair allocation of indirect carbon emissions among industrial consumers. In this paper, a circuit theory‐based carbon emission flow tracing method is proposed to improve the physical consistency of emission attribution by explicitly incorporating grid topology and transmission parameters. A multi‐dimensional evaluation indicator system is then established to assess these approaches in terms of temporal, spatial, and incentive consistency. Five state‐of‐the‐art indirect carbon emission accounting methods are compared under this framework. Empirical analysis of nine industrial sectors in Henan Province, China, shows that the choice of accounting approach substantially affects the carbon signals received by consumers. Compared with existing methods, the proposed method effectively mitigates accounting distortions, improves allocational fairness, and increases the matching degree with renewable energy penetration by 22.8% relative to the marginal carbon emission factor method. These findings provide methodological support for improving indirect carbon emission accounting and assessing sectoral decarbonisation effects under different accounting rules.