CO2 emissions from electricity generation in China during 1997-2040: The roles of energy transition and thermal power generation efficiency

CO₂ emissions from electricity generation (CEE) in China increased from 935 Mt to 3511 Mt during the period 1997-2017, ignoring a slight decline from 2013 to 2015. To identify what resulted in this pattern and how to peak China's CEE in the future, this study first quantitatively evaluated the drivers of CEE. Then, considering both the energy transition and thermal power generation efficiency (TPGE) could make sense in CEE reduction, based on historical data from China's 30 provinces during 1997-2017, we established twelve scenarios, which were hybrids of four electricity mix scenarios (refer to International Energy Agency (IEA) and China National Renewable Energy Centre (CNRE)) and three TPGE scenarios (business-as-usual (BAU), median scenario, and best-available-technology (BAT)), to explore the impacts of energy transition and regional convergence in TPGE on CEE until 2040. The BAU scenario assumes the TPGE in all provinces develops as historical trends, while the median scenario and BAT scenario represent a form of weak and strong regional convergence in TPGE across provinces, respectively. The decomposition results showed that TPGE was a dominator in emissions reduction, followed by the share of renewables in electricity generation. The scenario analysis indicated that when the electricity mix changes with IEA's Current Policies scenario, the decline in CEE will be not persistent after 2017 unless a strong regional convergence in TPGE occurs. Moreover, under BAT scenario, with any case of electricity mix the CEE in 2040 is 31-54% lower than that under BAU scenario. The results also showed that more ambitious targets for developing low-carbon technologies could help the rapid decarbonization of China's electricity sector.

Waste generation in Spain. Do Spanish regions exhibit a similar behavior?

We analyze waste generation differences across Spanish regions by studying the evolution of two complementary indicators: municipal solid waste per unit of GDP as well as in per capita terms. To that end, we apply the recent statistic developed by Phillips and Sul (2007) which allows us to test for the null hypothesis of convergence. In the present case, this hypothesis is equivalent to admitting that the waste generation follows a similar path across the Spanish regions. Our results lead us to reject this hypothesis, which implies that Spanish regional waste generation is quite heterogenous and exhibits several patterns of behavior. We observe that the northern regions exhibit the lowest waste ratios while the insular and Mediterranean coast regions have the highest waste generation. This different behavior is also explained by some socioeconomic factors. Per capita income, environmental spending and education level are helpful in this regard. The population dispersion and the number of years that a region has been governed by a left-wing party are also associated with lower levels of waste generation. Finally, we can also observe that the regions with the highest levels of waste generation are greatly dependent on the tourism industry. Then, strategies targeting the transit towards a more sustainable economy in Spain should take into account this fact. In particular, the adoption of methods for the reduction of the waste levels generated by tourism activities in these areas can be very useful.