Disparities in socio-economic drivers behind China's provincial energy-related mercury emission changes

Contributions of cleaner production and end-of-pipe treatment to NOx emissions and intensity reductions in China, 1997-2018

The Chinese experience of economic development and environmental protection provides an important reference for developing countries. Although changes in aggregate NO_x emissions have been widely studied, there is a relative lack of studies analysing NO_x intensity changes and their related development strategies in China. This study attempts to identify the socioeconomic drivers and change patterns for both NO_x emissions and intensity considering the cleaner production and end-of-pipe treatments. Both structural decomposition analysis and structural path analysis were used to analyse the NO_x emissions/intensity changes at different levels and transmission layers in China in the last two decades (1997-2018). The results indicate that construction contributes the most to NO_x emissions/intensity, followed by transportation. The emission intensity effect is the primary driver of NO_x emissions/intensity reduction, which mainly benefits from end-of-pipe treatment and energy efficiency improvement. Especially, during 2012-2018, they decreased 11,916 Kt-NO_x and 8,103 Kt-NO_x emissions and aggregate embodied intensity by 43.2% and 29.8%, respectively. The final demand effect is the primary deterrent, which is attributed to investment and consumption effects. The critical sectors for future NO_x reduction are the construction and building materials industry, transportation and other services industry. The policy implications and recommendations for the future developments are discussed based on the study findings.

Looping Mercury Cycle in Global Environmental-Economic System Modeling

The Minamata Convention on Mercury calls for Hg control actions to protect the environment and human beings from the adverse impacts of Hg pollution. It aims at the entire life cycle of Hg. Existing studies on the Hg cycle in the global environmental-economic system have characterized the emission-to-impact pathway of Hg pollution. That is, Hg emissions/releases from the economic system can have adverse impacts on human health and ecosystems. However, current modeling of the Hg cycle is not fully looped. It ignores the feedback of Hg-related environmental impacts (including human health impacts and ecosystem impacts) to the economic system. This would impede the development of more comprehensive Hg control actions. By synthesizing recent information on Hg cycle modeling, this critical review found that Hg-related environmental impacts would have feedbacks to the economic system via the labor force and biodiversity loss. However, the interactions between Hg-related activities in the environmental and economic systems are not completely clear. The cascading effects of Hg-related environmental impacts to the economic system throughout global supply chains have not been revealed. Here, we emphasize the knowledge gaps and propose possible approaches for looping the Hg cycle in global environmental-economic system modeling. This progress is crucial for formulating more dynamic and flexible Hg control measures. It provides new perspectives for the implementation of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

Embodied energy in China: drivers and inequality at a regional level

China is a large economy with unbalanced economic growth throughout different regions, posing a great challenge to allocating energy saving and carbon emissions reduction responsibilities. This paper applies the multi-regional input-output tables of China in 2007 and 2012 to evaluate the status of embodied energy consumption. The embodied energy transfer of eight regions in China is analyzed based on a demand-side perspective. Furthermore, the driving factors of embodied energy changes and the inequality at a regional level are explored via a structural decomposition analysis, which provides references for promoting regional energy development and adjusting the industrial layout. The results indicate that China's total embodied energy consumption increased from 2.06 billion tons of standard coal equivalent (tce) in 2007 to 3.46 billion tce in 2012. Specifically, embodied energy consumption is concentrated in the Central regions, consuming 710 million tce in 2012. In addition, a large proportion of energy produced in all regions is consumed locally, while the amount of transferred embodied energy is widespread across different regions. The economic scale is the primary driving factor of embodied energy consumption changes, and technological development has a noticeable effect on restraining energy consumption. Regarding the structural effect, significant differences exist in different regions and end-use sectors. In conclusion, the regional development policies aiming to optimize the industrial structure and strengthen energy technology improvement in dual-circulation development patterns are proposed.

Inequalities of China's regional low-carbon development

As China plays an important role in global climate change, investigating its low-carbon development (LCD) will shed light on the global low-carbon economy. This study aims to explore the drivers of LCD inequality and evolution based on an extended spatial decomposition model. We find that potential energy intensity is the most important factor responsible for both national LCD inequality and its evolution. Further analysis suggests that the central region made some progress in LCD due to the decline of potential energy intensity. Nonetheless, the west must pay attention to the high potential energy intensity and deteriorating industry structure for the persistent poor LCD. And the provincial results indicate that the poorer the economy, the worse the LCD. The LCD formation and evolution mechanism of the various provinces are highly heterogeneous. Overall, we underscore the comprehensive investigation of inequality issues of LCD and provide insights for other regions desiring to develop the low-carbon economy.