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Increased awareness of climate change has precipitated more stringent mitigation targets. Public sector institutions in Canada are committed to becoming carbon neutral to attain a leadership position in climate change mitigation-related initiatives. Recent statistics reveal that buildings account for the majority of the corporate carbon footprint of public sector institutions. Hence, there is an increasing interest towards developing net zero energy and net zero emission buildings to comply with climate action targets. With limited financial resources, public sector institutions must optimize investments into building energy retrofits by considering lifecycle cost (LCC), overall energy performance, and related greenhouse gas (GHG) emission. The aim of this paper is to develop an investment planning approach for net zero emission buildings (NZEB). First, an investment planning approach for NZEB is proposed. A typical recreational centre building in British Columbia, Canada, was used as the archetype to demonstrate the concept. Second, innovative and proven building energy retrofits were analysed using energy simulation software to assess the impact on energy consumption reduction, GHG emissions, and LCC. Third, impacts of geographical location, tariff regimes, and grid emission factors on energy retrofits were studied by locating the same building in other provinces of Canada. This study revealed that net zero energy investment has a strong correlation to the grid emission factor. The proposed approach in this paper will assist building managers and owners in retrofitting and budget planning.

This paper reviews the status of the research on industrial hydrogen production technology and development in China. The pros and cons of different hydrogen production technologies are compared. In addition, it is also conducted a comprehensive analysis of hydrogen production technology from economic and environmental aspects. Finally, the opportunities and challenges faced by the development of China’s hydrogen production technology are analyzed. In China, hydrogen production technology from fossil fuels such as coal and natural gas is relatively mature. Among them, hydrogen production by coal gasification and/or methane steam reforming have achieved large-scale applications. But its biggest problem is large carbon emissions, which does not meet China’s the development plan of "peaking carbon dioxide emissions and carbon neutrality." Hydrogen production technology through water electrolysis has many advantages, such as cleanness, pollution-free, and high purity of the hydrogen. However, it has the disadvantages of large power consumption and high hydrogen production cost. China has abundant renewable resources, but the technology for hydrogen production from renewable energy is still in its infancy and its development is not yet mature. Through comprehensive analysis, we believe that China should continue to develop new technologies while maintaining the advantages of traditional fossil fuel hydrogen production technologies. At the same time, China should also make full use of China’s remaining wind, light, electricity and biomass resources to develop green hydrogen production technologies such as electrohydrolysis. Through the above-mentioned various measures, it will effectively promote the transformation of China’s energy structure and realize the diversification of the hydrogen industry in the true sense.