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Paper has shaped society for centuries and is considered one of humanity's most important inventions. However, pulp and paper products can be damaging to social and natural systems along their lifecycle of material extraction, processing, transportation, and waste handling. The pulp and paper industry is among the top five most energy-intensive industries globally and is the fourth largest industrial energy user. This industry accounts for approximately 6% of global industrial energy use and 2% of direct industrial CO 2 emissions. The pulp and paper industry is also the largest user of original or virgin wood, with deleterious impacts on both human health and local flora and fauna, including aquatic ecosystems. This critical and systematic review seeks to identify alternatives for mitigating the climate impacts of pulp and paper processes and products, thus making the pulp and paper industry more environmentally sustainable. This study reviews 466 studies to answer the following questions: what are the main determinants of energy and carbon emissions emerging from the pulp and paper industry? What are the benefits of this industry adopting low-carbon manufacturing processes, and what barriers will need to be tackled to enable such adoption? Using a sociotechnical lens, we answer these questions, identify barriers for the pulp and paper industry's decarbonization, and present promising avenues for future research. •This review identifies carbon-intensive processes in the pulp and paper industry. •Presents decarbonizing practices, potential transformations and innovations. •Presents promising avenues for future research. •No agreed consensus on the most promising technologies to achieve net-zero in the pulp and paper industry. •Pulp and paper products are associated with other sociotechnical systems that create compelling interdependencies among industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper evaluates the net effect of renewable energy policy in Spain from 2002 to 2017 and calculates its cost-effectiveness in terms of CO 2 emission reductions in the production of electricity. Our conclusions indicate that although the phasing out of Feed-in Tariffs reduced the regulatory costs, it also limited renewable participation in the electricity market, leading to an increased electricity price and higher emissions. According to our results, the joint effect of (i) the value of avoided emissions due to renewable energy participation and (ii) the merit order effect was able to compensate for the regulatory costs (subsidies) up until 2010, while the sign of the net effect was reversed from 2011 to 2017. Finally, we find that the economic implications of emission reductions are highly dependent on how the social cost of carbon is measured. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the impacts of renewable energy support policies on energy prices, fossil fuel supply and thus carbon emissions from fossil fuels. Such supports are climate friendly if the renewables are already competitive against fossil fuels. But if the renewables are not yet competitive, the climate change impacts are often ambiguous and are sensitive to capacity constraints of renewables production and to the fossil fuel market structure. If the renewables do not have capacity constraints, then the subsidies are subject to the Green Paradox under perfect competition, but might be climate friendly under monopoly. Supports for capacity constrained renewables under perfect competition lead to more current fossil fuel supply but delay fossil fuel exhaustion time, and these effects are reversed under monopoly. Our results highlight the importance of considering the long-term effects on fossil fuel supply as well as capacity constraints and market power in designing renewable energy policies and evaluating their carbon footprints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an assessment of alternative, long-term energy supply and low-carbon strategies for the Philippine power sector from 2014 to 2040 using TIMES model. It examines the potential contribution of renewable energy to diversify the Philippine energy supply-mix to meet future electricity demands. The reference scenario compares the impact of four alternative policy goals: (1) carbon tax, (2) targeted renewable-based power generation, (3) limited coal share in supply-mix, and (4) renewables subsidy. The reference scenario shows a significant increase of the share of coal-based power generation and import dependency of fossil-fuel increases from 227 PJ in 2016 to 1073 PJ in 2040. The model results for the alternative policy scenarios show a large potential for renewable energy-based power generation. The alternative policy options show a significant decrease of import dependency in the energy supply-mix for power generation. Most alternative policy scenarios project a higher total system cost, with the exception of the subsidy scenario. System cost increases only 2.6% in the renewables target scenario relative to the reference scenario. However, long-term benefits from investing in the alternative policy options would need to be considered, including diversification of energy supply-mix, improved energy security, and progress toward a low-carbon society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, a growing body of research has examined the role of cities in addressing climate change and the institutional and political challenges which they encounter. For the most part, in these accounts, the infrastructure networks, their material fabric, everyday practices and political economies, have remained unexamined. In this paper, it is argued that this is a critical omission and an approach is developed for understanding how urban responses to climate change both configure and are configured by infrastructure networks. Central to any such analysis is the conception of how and why (urban) infrastructure networks undergo change. Focusing on urban energy networks and on the case of London, the paper argues for an analysis of the ‘urban infrastructure regimes’ and ‘experiments’ through which climate change is governed. It is found that climate change experiments serve as a means through which dominant actors articulate and test new ‘low-carbon’ logics for urban infrastructure development. It is argued that experiments work by establishing new circuits, configuring actors in new sets of relations and through these means realising the potential for addressing climate change in the city. At the same time, experiments become sites of conflict, a means through which new forms of urban circulation can be confined and marginalised, leaving dominant energy regimes (relatively) intact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: Climate change is now widely recognized as the major environmental problem. In order to reduce CO2 emissions so as to cope with climate change, a wide range of effective policies, and an enforced international cooperation are required. A better understanding of the dynamic changes of CO2 emissions will strengthen international cooperation and provide necessary information for policy making. This paper investigates the global convergence in per capita CO2 emissions over the period 1971–2008. The results manifest an absolute convergence within subsamples grouped by income level, while provide little evidence of absolute convergence in the full sample containing 110 countries. Furthermore, this paper takes the GDP per capita into consideration within the conditional convergence framework. Interestingly, the result shows that, within different income groups, the relationships between GDP per capita and per capita CO2 emission growth are different. Specially, per capita CO2 emissions of high-income countries keep at the “steady state” as income rises. This result is contrary to Environmental Kuznets Curve, which indicates that the CO2 emissions will decline when income rises beyond a certain level. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Planning for power systems generation expansion follows environmental policies incorporating technologies based on renewables to reduce CO 2 emissions. These policies are susceptible to unpredictable changes, given dynamic economic and political contexts. This paper analyzes the impact of changes in energy policies, motivated by different environmental objectives. The analysis is done through a novel approach coupling Dynamic Programming and Multi-objective programming to generate several energy policy scenarios and their trade-offs, representing plausible policy changes in the different stages of the planning horizon. The results indicate a clear Pareto front and that energy policy scenarios with abrupt changes should be avoided in favor of scenarios with gradual changes. “Greener” energy policies in a given planning stage are not necessarily the best ones considering the full planning horizon, considering the unfolding impacts of current decisions into the future. The approach is useful in improving planners' future vision from myopic into a perspicacious one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper identifies the main features of CO2 emission from fossil energy combustion in China. Then it estimates China''s future energy requirements and projects its CO2 emission from 2010 to 2020 based on the scenario analysis approach. China''s rate of carbon productivity growth is estimated to be 5.4% in the period 2005–2020, while the CO2 intensity of GDP will reduce by about 50% but CO2 emission in 2020 will still be about 40% higher than prevailing in 2005 because of rapid growth of GDP. This estimation is based on the assumption that China will implement a sustainable development strategy in consideration of climate change issues. The main objectives of the strategy are to implement an “energy conservation first” strategy, to develop renewable energy and advanced nuclear technology actively, to readjust the country''s economic structure, and to formulate and legislate laws and regulations, and to build institutions for energy conservation and development of renewable energy. It concludes that international measures to mitigate CO2 emission will limit world fossil fuel consumption. China is not placed to replicate the modernization model adopted by developed countries and has to coordinate economic development and carbon dioxide emission control while still in the process of industrialization and modernization. China has to evolve a low carbon industrialization model. This is the key to the success of sustainable development initiatives in China. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The increasing pressure resulting from the need for CO2 mitigation is in conflict with the predominance of coal in China’s energy structure. A possible solution to this tension between climate change and fossil fuel consumption fact could be the introduction of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. However, high cost and other problems give rise to great uncertainty in R&D and popularization of carbon capture technology. This paper presents a real options model incorporating policy uncertainty described by carbon price scenarios (including stochasticity), allowing for possible technological change. This model is further used to determine the best strategy for investing in CCS technology in an uncertain environment in China and the effect of climate policy on the decision-making process of investment into carbon-saving technologies. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The increased demand for energy in China has generated concomitant increase of carbon emissions, which poses an unprecedented challenge to China's, and even global, sustainable development. In this paper, from the perspective of provincial carbon emissions, we analyze China's carbon emissions changes during 1997-2007 based on the index decomposition analysis method. We find that: (1) China's CO2 emissions from end-use energy consumption mainly originated from such major industrial provinces as Hebei, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Henan and Guangdong. (2) Economic growth and decline in energy intensity will have the greatest impact on CO2 emissions from end-use energy consumption. Economic growth is the key factor driving the increase of CO2 emissions. Change in energy intensity can more or less decrease CO2 emissions. In the future, China's carbon emissions mitigation policies should be developed to address these differences in provincial carbon emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]