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This paper shows an integrated assessment for energy planning and climate change mitigation in Mexico, as an international case study. The Mexico 2050 Calculator was used to run a number of low carbon future scenarios by 2050. The calculator consists of a whole-systems model, which combines the main sectors of the Mexican economy into a single visual tool. By integrating energy and carbon dynamics across all sectors and carrying out a sensitivity analysis of the entire model, we compare four low carbon energy scenarios to assess current energy policy strategies in the country. The methodology proposed in this paper can also be applied to any other nation, particularly to those with similar models already available. Our findings show the relative impact of each sector and their various interactions for achieving Mexico’s ratified climate commitments. The paper also includes policy recommendations and highlights the need for scaling-up energy efficiency policy efforts in industry and transport, for having a higher focus on agricultural and land use policies, and for promoting integrated renewable energy policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition to low carbon sea transport is a logical response to the extreme dependency of the Pacific Islands region on imported fossil fuel, its significant vulnerability to the effects of climate change and the critical shipping needs of Pacific Island countries (PICs). Building on previous work in low carbon sea transport in the Pacific, this paper further considers the barriers to achieving such transition by assessing, through a ‘post-Paris Agreement’ lens, the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) submitted by PICs and contrasting these to the near total lack of investment and planning for low carbon transition in the transport sector with the parallel occurrence in the electricity sector where ~USD 2 billion of donor investment is deployed or queued despite electricity using only ~20% of fossil fuel across the region. Consistent with recent international studies, inadequate and inappropriate financing and policy have been identified as dominant transition barriers for low carbon sea transport development in PICs. This paper further examines the regional level barriers to policy development, and finds them inhibited by the silo nature of the major regional actors. The implications that the Paris Agreement has for climate financing to support the essential research and capacity development needed to underpin a successful low carbon sea transport transition strategy at any useful scale and speed are also considered in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Assemblage approaches are increasingly being used to understand new socio-natural formations arising in relation to the multiple crises of capitalism, climate change and environmental degradation. The valuation of nature is key to these new formations, which the creation of new ‘valued entities’, through calculative practices, that can be accounted for, costed and circulated in monetised and financialised forms in order to ostensibly ‘fix’ certain environmental outcomes in relation to contemporary global crisis. This paper uses an assemblage approach in relation to the global’ transnational project of carbon forestry offsetting and REDD+ in a particular place, Uganda, arguing that it has utility in this respect. While Uganda has been named by Lang and Byakola (2005) as a ‘funny place to store carbon’ due to its contested land politics and history of violence its weak governance context paradoxically re-enforces the imperative for intervention. The paper argues that carbon forestry assemblages are inherently ephemeral and fundamentally contested in three ways: exhibiting a speculative virtuality, faltering materiality and disputed territoriality. Such analysis has the ability to go beyond technical and managerial, or solely pollical economic critiques of carbon forestry, to point at openings for alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To achieve the targets in the Paris Climate Change Agreement, carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) will be one of the critical carbon mitigation technologies. For China, the biggest carbon emitter with coal-dominated energy structure, CCUS is expected to play more and more important roles for carbon emissions reduction. This paper looks at a method for designing a pipeline network system for large-scale CO2 capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) in China. On the basis of performing a moderately significant literature review of past papers and models dating back to the early 2000’s, a updated multi-stage mixed integer programming (MIP) model for carbon source and sink matching (SSM) in ChinaCCUS DSS (Decision Support System) is developed. The Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei) region suffering from increasingly serious air pollution is chose as a case study to address the SSM issue with application of the updated model. The modeling results show that around 2200 km pipeline with investment of around $1.6 billion needed to be built to transport the cumulative sequestrated emissions of 1620 Mt CO 2 in the planning period of 2020–2050. Compared to the single-stage programming, the multi-stage programming could result to better pipeline connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years the UK has positioned itself to become a global leader in addressing climate change. Along with this positioning, there has been an increasing emphasis on the role of communities to facilitate, increase and sustain carbon reduction practices. Previous research into community-based carbon reduction projects has highlighted the difficulty of engaging the public in community initiatives and sustaining pro-environmental behaviours. The importance placed on addressing climate change necessitates an understanding of how individuals respond to, and engage with, (or even ignore) community-based carbon reduction strategies. The paper presents findings from focus groups in three urban communities and investigates individual engagements with community-based carbon reduction strategies. Focusing on the three dimensions of engagement: cognitive; affective and; behavioural, the paper discusses what people know, feel and do about addressing climate change at the community level. An “information-vacuum” is reported that leads to an “awareness-involvement gap” that inhibits sustained engagement with community projects. Drawing on these findings, the paper advances a new theoretical framework and a “what works” approach for community-based initiatives attempting to meaningfully engage the public with addressing climate change and sustainable living. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With important implications for global climate change mitigation, the development of a cap-and-trade emission trading scheme (ETS) in China is embedded in distinctive political, economic, and institutional contexts and has been attracting increasing attention in recent years. To offer a clear perspective on current research progress, this paper systematically reviews the recent literature on China’s ETS from three main aspects: mechanism design, policy and regional linkages, as well as impact assessment. The current research consensuses are summarized based upon detailed literature analyses and commentaries, and together with observations of international experience and China’s actual condition, the paper provides policy proposals for the development of China’s national ETS during 2016–2020. Finally, several important controversies in the current literature are discussed with regard to the practical demands of China’s ETS development. Five pressing topics that need to be further studied in the coming years are highlighted, including cap setting, allowance allocation among sectors and enterprises, carbon pricing, policy package and unified carbon market construction, as well as ex-ante and ex-post impact assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change economics is now four decades old. Much of what it has achieved as a field of academic enquiry can be linked back to issues of integrated assessment modelling. This paper shows that the standard approach is going through a major change in scope as of the last five years. The conventional focus on determining optimal mitigation paths based on modelling the social cost of carbon is being enlarged to embrace promising new waves of research. These are: (1) the economics of insurance against catastrophic risks; (2) the economics of trade and climate; and (3) the economics of climate change adaptation. The paper helps to bridge the gap between economics and climate policy by showing that the analytical toolkit of climate change economics has shifted towards more realistic representations of climatic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes how rapid rates of improvement in smart phones, telecommunication systems and other forms of IT enable solutions for sustainability and how this provides opportunities for the fields of telecommunication and information systems. While reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change focuses on technologies with rates of improvement less than 5% per year, most types of information technologies are experiencing annual rates of improvement that exceed 30% per year. These rapid rates of improvement are changing the economics of many activities of which this paper describes four examples in transportation. The paper concludes by discussing challenges for universities and in particular for the fields of telecommunications and information systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Energy/emission intensity indicators measure the relationship between economic development and climate change. These intensity indicators are preferentially used in assessment criteria for mitigation goals in places such as China. This paper investigates the driving factors of changes in the national CO 2 emission intensity and their contributions to reductions at the sector level in China from 2002 to 2012 using multiplicative structural decomposition analysis (SDA) and attribution analysis. Both Leontief and Ghosh input-output models are used in the study. The empirical results indicate: 1) the energy intensity effect is the main driver that decreases the aggregate emission intensity from both the demand and supply sides; 2) structural effects, such as the energy structure effect and domestic Ghosh structure effect, promote the increase in aggregate emission intensity principally; and 3) to a large extent, sector "smelting and pressing of metals", "manufacture of non-metallic mineral products" and "chemical industry" are the top three sectors that contribute to the negative energy intensity effect. Ultimately, several discussions and conclusions associated with the empirical results, result stability and research extensibility are presented. Highlights • Both Leontief and Ghosh models were adopted to study China's CO 2 intensity. • Multiplicative decomposition was applied to study the intensity changes in 2002–2012. • Energy intensity effect was the major drivers to reduce China's emission intensity. • The structural effects as a whole contributed to the increase of emission intensity. • The domestic allocation structure can be adjusted and optimized preferentially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objectives Public health co-benefits from curbing climate change can make greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation strategies more attractive and increase their implementation. The purpose of this systematic review is to summarize the evidence of these health co-benefits to improve our understanding of the mitigation measures involved, potential mechanisms, and relevant uncertainties. Methods A comprehensive search for peer-reviewed studies published in English was conducted using the primary electronic databases. Reference lists from these articles were reviewed and manual searches were performed to supplement relevant studies. The identified records were screened based on inclusion criteria. We extracted data from the final retrieved papers using a pre-designed data extraction form and a quality assessment was conducted. The studies were heterogeneities, so meta-analysis was not possible and instead evidence was synthesized using narrative summaries. Results Thirty-six studies were identified. We identified GHG mitigation strategies in five domains – energy generation, transportation, food and agriculture, households, and industry and economy – which usually, although not always, bring co-benefits for public health. These health gains are likely to be multiplied by comprehensive measures that include more than one sectors. Conclusions GHG mitigation strategies can bring about substantial and possibly cost-effective public health co-benefits. These findings are highly relevant to policy makers and other stakeholders since they point to the compounding value of taking concerted action against climate change and air pollution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a world where climate goals are global but action remains firmly in the hands of states, reliable methods are needed to ensure that emissions reductions on a national level are not offset by carbon leakage. Appropriate indicators are needed to help policy makers set accurate targets for the carbon balance of their foreign trade and monitor the development of trade in a meaningful way. This paper proposes a new displacement indicator – the technology adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade – that improves on existing ideas by separating out the effects of scale and composition of trade from the effects of different technologies and energy systems. The new indicator is calculated for Swedish and UK trade from 1995 to 2009, a period when both countries have reported decreasing territorial emissions together with sustained economic growth. One key finding is that, for both countries, outsourcing of emissions is less serious than what conventional analysis of emissions embodied in trade suggests. For Sweden, the technology adjusted balance of emissions embodied in trade is positive throughout the studied period, implying that its exports reduce emissions abroad more than what is generated by its imports. However, we also find that both countries have changed the composition of their imports and exports during this period: imports have become more carbon intensive and, exports less so, compared to the world economy at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a conceptual model for corporate climate change strategy development. It reflects the dynamic influence of climate change risks and stakeholder pressures on carbon management practices adopted and the performance perception of managers. We draw our model on resource dependence theory to explain how managers apply carbon management practices to reduce ecological uncertainty caused by firms’ direct dependence on nature. Using institutional theory, we describe how stakeholders influence firm reactions to climate change. We test a structural equation model and run a cluster analysis of 105 Brazilian energy firms. The results show that companies undertake one of four different strategies ranging from a minimalist approach to the regulation shaper, pressure manager or greenhouse gas emission avoiders. The proposed model contributes to an understanding of the importance of embedding climate change in a business model in emerging markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-term credibility is a central pillar of climate policy. This paper assesses whether Ecuador's recently adopted climate targets, policies to decarbonize the power sector, and measures to reduce deforestation constitute a credible basis for a transformation towards a low-carbon economy. Based on the literature on the design of credible climate policy and expert interviews, we argue that even though Ecuador's existing policies may reduce emissions in the short term, they do not yet constitute an entry point for a long-term strategy of economic transformation. We then outline politically and institutionally feasible mitigation measures, which we evaluate from a dynamic policy sequencing perspective according to their potential to prepare the ground for more stringent measures to reduce emission in the future. These measures include inter alia reform of driving restrictions, public transport, vehicle efficiency standards, support for electric cars, and results-based payments to reduce land use emission. Such reforms will need to be phased in gradually and embedded in a broad fiscal reform package. To counter potential adverse distributional effects of higher energy prices, low-income groups could be protected by lowering other taxes, scaling up investment in education, and block-pricing schemes. Furthermore, increased participation of key stakeholders would likely reduce public opposition against energy- and climate-related policies, such as fossil fuel subsidy reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Along with the concerns about global climate change, more and more researchers pay attention to the low carbon logistics. Since the logistics industry is an important source of carbon emissions, it is becoming more and more important to reduce carbon emissions in logistics operation. In this paper, we study a low carbon for location routing problem with heterogeneous fleet, simultaneous pickup-delivery and time windows and design a two-phased hybrid heuristic algorithm to solve the problem. Firstly, we introduce the concept of temporal-spatial distance and use genetic algorithm to cluster the customer points to construct the initial path. Then, we use variable neighborhood search algorithm for local search. By incorporating the idea of simulated annealing algorithm into the framework of variable neighborhood algorithm, the global optimization ability of the algorithm is improved. At the same time, the vehicle adjustment strategy is added in the optimization process. The computational experiments are implemented to investigate the performance of the proposed heuristic algorithm. Computational results show that the initial solution considering temporal-spatial distance has obvious advantages in the efficiency of the algorithm and the quality of the solution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change is a big challenge facing global community in 21st century. The carbon emission futures markets has been treated as a key tool to combat climate change cost-effectively. Making profits from futures trading is the fundamental incentive mechanism to keep this market run sustainably and effectively, while few technique analysis research on this topic has been done in the energy finance field. This paper contributes to the literature by proposing an integrated moving average rule for the European Union Allowance (EUA) futures market and designing an approach to optimize the weights of rules based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Genetic Algorithms (GAs). The similarity of trading rules designed here is used to select base rules. An integrated approach based on PSO and GAs is proposed to identify the optimal weights group for the selected base rules. A group of Adaptive Moving Average trading rules with different weights constitutes an integrated trading rule. Experiments using the EUA futures market price were conducted. The results show that: (1) our model is profitable in the EUA future market with the proper parameter except the case that prices fluctuate significantly; (2) the adjustment cycle of 5 days is more useful than 20 days or 50 days; (3) the algorithm achieves the best performance at the 0.78 similarity threshold; (4) the rule with the short period of 150 days and the long period of 200 days is a useful building block for a successive rule set. This approach is a useful reference to the practical investments in EUA futures market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A combination of characteristics of the climate change problem make the credibility of future commitments crucial for climate policy: the long lifetimes of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and of energy infrastructure requires a long term perspective; the inherently global aspects of the atmosphere as a public good requires international coordination; decarbonizing the global economy depends on the incentives for investment in innovation; and persistent uncertainty— both about the problem and potential solutions—necessitate adapting to new information. Even in a first best world, climate policy design needs to navigate a tradeoff between making commitments that are sufficiently credible to stimulate transformation and retaining flexibility to adjust. The goal of this paper is to use the experience in other policy areas to assemble a broad set of possible remedies for addressing credibility problems and then characterize the advantages and disadvantages of each. We first review the theory and practice of addressing credibility problems in monetary, fiscal, and trade policy. From this we derive a taxonomy of four policy design categories. As a preliminary example, we then apply this framework to assess the credibility of climate targets made by selected developing countries as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change process. Finally, we evaluate the items in the taxonomy as policy alternatives in terms of their effects on incentives for investment in low-carbon technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper addresses the important question of how institutional structures matter to the delivery of climate change policy for urban transport. It examines the strategic goals, policy tools in operation and initial progress towards carbon emission reduction in seven cities across the UK and Germany where different institutional structures exist. The UK has the presence of a strong national carbon target and strong hierarchical national–local government relationships whilst Germany has a more integrated system of local transport provision in a context where local and regional government is stronger. Our findings show that the carbon agenda has made very little difference to what is happening on the ground in the cities. Across all sites, progress is being made but largely through technological improvements which are being almost completely offset by population growth. Even in the more integrated city environments there has not be an additional stimulus to manage the demand for travel. Contrary to previous research therefore, we cannot conclude that institutional structures are paramount in delivering effective carbon reduction policies. The institutional structures in the UK and in Germany are not perfectly aligned to carbon management but, given the cross policy impacts of most transport interventions, this is perhaps inevitable. We can clearly conclude however that “better” structures are not sufficient to achieve the implementation of more effective carbon policies. Whilst institutional structures must matter, it is the broader governance environment and the resources and politics involved in transport policy that currently seem to dominate the importance of the carbon agenda and implementation paths that emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade we have seen the growth and development of low carbon lifestyle movement organisations, which seek to encourage members of the public to reduce their personal energy use and carbon emissions. As a first step to assess the transformational potential of such organisations, this paper examines the ways in which they frame their activities. This reveals an important challenge they face: in addressing the broader public, do they promote ‘transformative’ behaviours or do they limit themselves to encouraging ‘easy changes’ to maintain their appeal? We find evidence that many organisations within this movement avoid ‘transformative’ frames. The main reasons for this are organisers’ perceptions that transformational frames lack resonance with broader audiences, as well as wider cultural contexts that caution against behavioural intervention. The analysis draws on interviews with key actors in the low carbon lifestyle movement and combines insights from the literatures on collective action framing and lifestyle movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]