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Black carbon mitigation has received increasing attention for its potential contribution to both climate change mitigation and air pollution control. Although different bottom-up models concerned with unit mitigation costs of various technologies allow the assessment of alternative policies for optimized cost-effectiveness, the lack of adequate data often forced many reluctant explicit and implicit assumptions that deviate away from actual situations of rural residential energy consumption in developing countries, where most black carbon emissions occur. To gauge the theory-practice gap in black carbon mitigation – the unit cost differences that lie between what is estimated in the theory and what is practically achieved on the ground – this study conducted an extensive field survey and analysis of nine mitigation technologies in rural China, covering both northern and southern regions with different residential energy consumption patterns. With a special focus on two temporal characteristics of those technologies – lifetimes and annual utilization rates, this study quantitatively measured the unit cost gaps and explain the technical as well as sociopolitical mechanisms behind. Structural and behavioral barriers, which have affected the technologies’ performance, are discussed together with policy implications to narrow those gaps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is setting increasingly ambitious greenhouse gas targets and backing them up with a wide array of policies and programmes. How successful China will be in slowing and eventually reversing the growth in its greenhouse gas emissions will depend significantly on how well it does with policy implementation at the local and regional levels. This article examines how climate governance works in China's multi-level governance structure. It explores why the Chinese leadership is taking climate change seriously, the nature of the policies and programmes being introduced, and the steps being taken to promote local environmental innovation and improve policy compliance. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides an overview of the introduction of policy documents and legislation aimed to implement the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) of China in 2016. It considers whether the resource tax design could aid China build a low-carbon, energy-efficient industrial system and meet its national plan on climate change. It discusses the use of domestic programmes by China to penalise air pollution and confront resource misuse.

China, which produces the largest percentage of global emissions, is an important player in global climate change governance and has the potential to change the global climate outlook. In the past decade, China has made significant progress in getting climate change on the national agenda and becoming a leader in setting greenhouse gas emissions targets. However, there are many challenges impeding the implementation of China's climate policies, including a lack of urgency and political will and low public awareness of climate change. Air pollution, on the other hand, due in part to public concern about adverse health effects and quality of life, has become an increasingly greater priority for the Chinese government. This paper aims to examine air pollution as a driver of climate governance and the potential synergy between China's climate policies and air pollution governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]