Abstract: In the context of the “dual carbon” goals, accurately accounting for and reporting carbon emission data is crucial for developing effective emission reduction policies. To verify the reliability of carbon emission data from coal-fired power plants in China, by comparing the data discrepancies between the incoming coal and the coal fed into the furnace, and applying statistical methods for quantitative analysis, a method was proposed to validate the reliability of carbon emission data obtained by the mass balance approach. The reliability of this method was tested through case studies of two power plants (Plant A and Plant B) in Zhejiang province. The results showed that although the correlation between the incoming and furnace-fed coal data in Plant A for 2022 and 2023 (the determination coefficients of carbon content, incoming/consumed quantities, and carbon emission were 0.76/0.80, 0.81/0.95, and 0.82/0.96, respectively) was significantly stronger than that of Plant B (-0.03/0.25, 0.54/0.64, and 0.43/0.66), this difference was due to the varying magnitudes of the time lags between coal entering the plant and entering the furnace at the two plants. This discrepancy increased the difficulty of assessing data estimation errors, but by applying appropriate statistical methods, the reliability of carbon emission data from different power plants could be effectively evaluated using a unified standard. And the carbon emission data from both Plant A and Plant B were verified as reliable.

Key words: coal-fired power plant, carbon emission, mass balance method, statistical methods