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Abstract. Aerobic composting is an effective way to recycle and fertilize livestock manure and therefore reduce its pollution. It is crucial to strike a balance between energy savings and mitigation of methane (CH₄) emission. In this study, a particle-scale CH₄ emission model for composting based on the kinetics of CH₄ generation and oxidation was employed to evaluate the global warming potential (GWP) and energy consumption of 64 composting strategies, which provides a theoretic foundation for the optimization of composing operations. Measurement results showed that the GWP due to accumulative CH₄ emission over a 21-d period of pig manure–wheat straw aerobic composting was 0.29 kg CO₂ kg^–1, lower than those of previous studies using similar composting conditions. The GWP might be closely related to the physicochemical properties of composting materials, such as density and organic matter content. The daily energy consumption was at a relatively low level, i.e., 1.23 kW h t^–1 d^–1. The results of numerical simulation showed that CH₄ emission was affected by a combination of the aeration rate, aeration time, and nonaeration time, while the energy consumption was mainly related to the aeration rate. The best composting operations were an aeration rate of 3.34 L min^–1 and an intermittent aeration pattern with 6 h on/0.5 h off.