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China has become the world largest paper and paperboard producer. However, pulp and paper industry has involved high resource consumption and severe pollution especially for water. This research has assessed the eco-efficiency of China's pulp and paper industry at the national level and provincial level. An overview regarding the cleaner production of China's pulp and paper industry was presented to reveal the measures for reducing environmental impact in the last two decades. Slacks-based measure was used to analyze the efficiency levels of 16 provinces' pulp and paper industries. To uncover the underlying causes of eco-efficiency performance, Malmquist–Luenberger index was calculated to discover the drivers of productivity growth of pulp and paper industries. Our results showed that the pollution treatment of China's pulp and paper industry has made progress in terms of water consumption and water pollution, although the absolute amount of pollution discharge is still large. Chemical oxygen demand emissions are still the first critical influencing factor of pulp and paper industry's inefficiency. Furthermore, efficiency progress was the dominating contribution of the industry's productivity growth between 2010 and 2013. The policies for adjusting the industrial structure of pulp and paper industry have resulted in the scale effects through eliminating backward production capacity and accelerating merger and acquisitions. Moreover, the productivity of pulp and paper industry was underestimated when the undesirable outputs were ignored. It indicates that the stricter environmental regulations have positive effects on paper companies to internalize environmental pressures in the production activities through environmental management. In the future, pulp and paper companies should further internalize the cost of pollution treatment through scale effects and technology improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging economies like China, India, and Mexico are becoming the world's manufacturing leaders through the engagement in offshoring production activities. In achieving this status, however, they have met with difficult environmental issues. This paper features an analysis of industry-level panel data to examine the link between different offshoring tasks in China and carbon dioxide emissions. Through this analysis, the environmental effects of offshored production are addressed. Specifically an input–output model is presented, thereby quantifying offshored production tasks in China. The results show that iron and steel, nonferrous metals (IS) and chemicals (CH) generate the most carbon dioxide during production of processed goods. Additionally, electrical machinery (EM) and general machinery (GM) generate a higher amount of carbon dioxide during production of parts and components. The results also show that those industries characterized by higher energy consumption have higher carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions induced by offshoring. Given these results, it seems that any solutions geared towards reducing the energy consumption of entire manufacturing industries would be useful. Furthermore, the results of the analyses presented here indicate that China would be responsible for working with developed countries to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through cooperative environmental regulation. A globalization perspective is adopted to offer unique insight into the environmental issues faced by China. The results of this paper would provide quantified, actionable information for formulating practical industrial policies geared towards reducing carbon dioxide leakage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information & Communication Technology (ICT) industry meets great expansion in China, in production as in diffusion, as the derived environmental impact becomes an increasing key issue in concern of Chinese policy makers. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used tool for measuring ICT products' environmental impact then for estimating relative legislative measures' efficiency. Consider the vast territory with highly centralized of power in China, this paper introduces the geographical factor into the study on the environmental impact according to different categories of ICT product. From this article, the geographically unbalanced development of ICT industry together with disproportional distribution of energy consumption over different phases of ICT products' life cycle may eventually contributes to the inconsistent results on environmental benefits or loss in different regions, according to the concept of LCA. In ignoring the fact that environmental balance varies from one region to another, according to the product's category and how the LCA result is distributed over different phases of life cycle, there could be eventual inefficiency of China's environmental policy-making in subject of ICT industry's environmental impact for the past, today and tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Energy consumption keeps increasing in China's building sector with the constant growth of urban population and people's living standard. In order to achieve co-benefits of reducing energy use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy costs effectively, all respects related to the energy performance in the building sector need to be addressed. Considering the fact that over 80% of total energy use in a building's lifecycle is contributed by the operation stage, the study's focus is put on this stage for well understanding the energy consumption and carbon emissions and exploring the approach to achieve the effectiveness of co-benefits. The energy use in large commercial buildings is 4–6 times higher than residential buildings in China, thus IKEA Xuhui Store as one of large shopping malls in Shanghai is selected as the case study by using the method formed in the study. The outcomes of research show that the benefit of annual 170 MWh of energy use and 150 tons of CO2e reduction as well as the significant economic benefit have been achieved by implementing different measures in IKEA Xuhui Store between 2008 and 2011. Existing investment, technology and capacity barriers to co-benefits approach in a wider consideration of China's building sector are described. The assessment for evaluating co-benefits of cutting energy use and CO2 emissions in the production and demolition stages in a building's lifecycle are also addressed by the paper. However, it is very complicated to make a lifecycle assessment on the overall co-benefits in the building sector because of the complexity and the lack of available data for the research. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In China, Rapid economic growth has stimulated fast urban expansion and rural household income and consumption expenditure. In current paper, an input–output method is used to determine the impact of China’s increased urban and rural household consumption on carbon emissions. The results shows that the direct and indirect CO2 emission from household consumption accounted for more than 40% of total carbon emissions from primary energy utilization in China in 1992–2007. The population increase, expansion of urbanization and the increase of household consumption per capita all contribute to an increase of indirect carbon emissions, while carbon intensity decline mitigates the growth of carbon emissions. Therefore, at the domestic level, household consumption is of great significance for CO2 emission, which could be mitigated through changing the composition of goods and services consumed by households, and switching to consumption pattern of less carbon-intensive products. The government must consider the substantial contribution of household consumption to carbon emissions when China is encouraging consumption in order to address the current global financial crisis. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Polyurethane-bounded pavement with good road performances is a new pavement form. Whether polyurethane (PU) pavement met the requirements of energy conservation, environmental protection and sustainable development or not, the energy consumption and emission of PU pavement in whole life cycle were analyzed systematically in this paper. Firstly, the life cycle of pavement was divided into six phases: material production, mixture production, transportation, construction, maintenance and recycling according to the construction technology of road in China. Based on the classification of the life cycle environmental impact assessment (LCIA), the effects of six main exhaust gases (CO 2 , CH 4 , N 2 O, CO, SO 2 , NO x) were divided into four categories: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Photochemical Smog Potential (POCP) and Acidification Potential (AP). Secondly, the energy consumption and emission of each phase are studied, and the main phase with significant environmental impact was selected. Thirdly, the results of inventory would be normalized and weighted to analyze the environmental impact by the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). The LCIA method was environmental design of industrial product 97 (EDIP 97). Results show that the construction of PU pavement is conducive to energy conservation. Besides, the energy consumption of mixture production phase is the largest in asphalt pavement, and it is material production phase in PU pavement. In terms of emission, the emissions mainly occur in material production and mixture production phases in asphalt pavement, and it is material production phase in PU pavement. Under the same structure, the construction of PU pavement is not conducive to reducing the emission, and will enlarge the GWP, EP and AP. For example, the CO 2 , N 2 O and NOx emissions of PU pavement are 1.98, 5.30 and 2.35 times higher than that of asphalt pavement respectively, but the CO emission of asphalt pavement is 3.86 times higher than that of PU pavement. Furthermore, the results of LCIA show that the score of all environmental impact of PU pavement is little smaller than that of asphalt pavement after normalization and weighting. However, the road performances of PU pavement are much better than that of asphalt pavement. With the same environmental impact, PU pavement has a longer service life. It is summarized that PU pavement meets the requirements of environmental protection and sustainable development in the long run. This is conducive to the promotion and application of PU pavement. • The energy consumption and emission of PU pavement in life cycle were studied. • The goal and scope definition of this study were determined. • The key phases of high energy consumption and emission were identified. • The comprehensive environmental impact assessments of asphalt pavement and PU pavement are conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]