A bottom-up approach based on transport turnovers was employed to establish a model for calculation of energy consumption and exhaust emissions from water-borne transportation sector. Chinese inland, coastal and ocean transport turnovers were obtained based on the relationships of transport turnovers against GDP and the growth prediction of GDP in next years. Combined with emission factors employed by IMO, energy consumption and exhaust emissions of water-borne transportation in China from 2001 to 2030 were estimated. In 2001, fuel consumption and NO_x, CO, NMVOC, CO₂, SO₂ and PM emissions from water-borne transportation sector in China were 7.909, 0.636, 0.059, 0.019, 24.832, 0.372 and 0.046 million tons respectively; in 2030, fuel consumption and NO_x, CO, NMVOC, CO₂, SO₂ and PM emissions were 59.518, 4.051, 0.165, 0.183, 187.432, 0.155 and 0.061 million tons respectively; from 2001 to 2030, fuel consumption and CO₂ and NO_x emissions from water-borne transportation sector in China increased with an average annual growth rate of 7.2%, 7.2% and 6.6% respectively; Due to the restriction of international maritime conventions, SO₂ and PM emissions which are closely related to sulfur content in fuels reduced significantly since 2020; in 2001, CO₂ emissions from water-borne transportation sector in China contributed around 3.2% CO₂ emissions of world shipping, and thereafter gradually upward, in 2020 and 2030, the contribution would grow to 11.5% and 15.3% respectively.