Carbon footprints are usually more conducive to doing comparative analysis or carbon management between different enterprises or different countries. Regarding how to accurately estimate the carbon footprint per kWh of coal-fired electricity, different studies can give different answers since there are no uniform system boundaries (e.g. the direct and indirect emission) or data sources, which hinders the carbon reduction management of the coal-fired power industry. Addressing this issue would improve the level of carbon management and carbon control in the coal-electricity industry. This paper develops a life cycle accounting model to analyze the carbon emissions of China's coal-fired power generation plants. We calculated the direct and embodied carbon emission of CO2 and CH4 from carbon emission and carbon reduction. Results reveal that the life cycle coal-fired carbon emissions are in line with the trend of coal consumption and electricity generation, and carbon emission of the life cycle is higher than direct emission of coal-fired power generation by 10%-13%, resulting in a net increase of 332 MItCO(2)e in 2016. Based on the systematic uncertainty analysis, we believe the estimates could be more accurate than the past researches. Finally, the paper provides three tiered approaches to improve the carbon management. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.