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Climate change is considered one of the major systemic risks facing the world in the 21st century. To address climate change, China has adopted a series of climate policies, but the uncertainty brought about by frequent climate policy issuance has increased pressure on enterprises, which may not be conducive to enterprises reducing emissions. This paper uses data on 1211 listed companies on the A-share market in China from 2012 to 2022 to study the impact of climate policy uncertainty on enterprise pollutant emissions. The research findings show that climate policy uncertainty increases corporate pollution emissions; climate policy uncertainty mainly generates negative impacts on enterprise environmental regulation, social responsibility, and R&D investment, thereby negatively affecting enterprise emissions reduction. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that climate policy uncertainty in China has a more significant impact on non-state-owned enterprises, technology-intensive enterprises, lightly polluting enterprises, and enterprises in western regions. These findings emphasize the importance of enterprise social responsibility, environmental regulation, and R&D investment in enterprise emissions reduction and provide policy implications for Chinese enterprises to optimize their energy-saving and emission reduction strategies in the face of climate policy uncertainty. • We investigate the correlation between uncertainty in climate policy and the corporate pollution emissions. • We utilized an extensive dataset comprising publicly listed Chinese firms spanning the period from 2012 to 2022. • Climate policy uncertainty negatively impacts corporate environmental regulation, social responsibility, and R&D investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in China are energy-related. Thus, full understanding of energy-related GHG emissions is crucial for local governments to establish a baseline for tracking emission trends and developing mitigation strategies. In this paper, we present a survey-based GHG emission accounting method for sectoral energy consumption and apply it in Xiaolan, a typical town of Zhongshan. The method combines scope and sectoral analyses on the basis of local statistical approach, and pays more attention to data collection process. Scenarios of core findings in the study are list as below: (1) The energy-related GHG emissions of Xiaolan in 2010 was 2,072,444 tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO 2 e). Of this, 31.83% was Scope 1 emissions (direct emissions) and 68.17% was Scope 2 emissions (indirect emissions); (2) Emissions from “manufacturing”, “residents”, and “power, gas & water production and supply” made up 90.27%, among which, “manufacturing” represents the biggest emitting sector as 69.09%; (3) In 2010, the per capita GHG emissions was lower than that in most of the other Chinese cities, but higher than several Asian cities including Amman and Tokyo. Some strategic approaches to reduce GHG emissions were proposed: (1) save energy and improve energy efficiency; (2) optimize energy structure and develop low-carbon energy; (3) update manufacturing structure; (4) improve GHG emission management for the resident sector. Finally, we identified a number of key research issues to advance the town level GHG emission method for future research needs. This paper provides a useful method to understand and profile GHG emissions for towns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses how the Paris Agreement on climate change affects China and India. Taking a TWAIL (third-world approaches to international law) approach, it argues that patterns of exploitation are repeated in different fields. The UNFCCC required developed countries to reduce their emissions before developing countries would be required to do so. While some developed countries are keeping to their side of the bargain, others are failing to do so. Nevertheless, China and India have accepted an agreement with targets for all countries which requires considerable sacrifices in the energy field but possible gains in the water field. While both countries have agreed to reduce the rate of growth of their emissions, they have high expectations of climate finance, which are unlikely to be fulfilled. Their commitments require major changes to national policy, scarcely the sort of tinkering that the no-regrets policy in India has achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the Conference of the Parties held in Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15), the Chinese government announced its 2020 commitment to reduce the carbon intensity of the Chinese economy to 40–45% of its 2005 level. A number of analysts have criticised this target, indicating that these reductions can be achieved without the implementation of any active climate change policy. In this paper, we test this argument using a combined input–output based econometric projection approach and the World Input–Output Database (WIOD). Our results show that the projected carbon intensity for 2020 is likely to be 50% lower than the carbon intensity of 2005, without additional active climate change policy measures performed by the Chinese government. On top of it, our study indicates that the total volume of CO 2 emissions would be by 2020 seven times the volume of the year 2005. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]