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The climate crisis and related events are often in the headline in recent years. The climate agreements reflected these concerns and called the researchers' attention to the urgent need for climate mitigation and adaptation policies. Many countries made new commitments during the latest United Nations Climate Conference (COP26) in November 2021 in Glasgow. In turn, scientists and experts worry that new pledges are not ambitious enough. The first environmental regulation was ratified in Great Britain in 1863. Later, the industrial and agricultural revolution stimulated pollution and brought about the emergence of environmental issues. The first agreement aiming to mitigate environmental pollution and stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992. Behind the European Union, the contribution of the biggest polluter countries to climate change is also significant. The objective of the paper is to investigate the explanatory factors of CO 2 emission, focusing on the contribution of economic growth, agriculture, and trade along with free trade and climate agreements on climate change in Non-European Union member states, including the biggest emitters in the past two decades. In addition, it investigates the role of specific free trade agreements in emission cuts. The results showed an increase in CO 2 emissions in third countries, the reduction in the impact of agricultural export on greenhouse gas emissions, underlining the potential hidden effect of trade-related emissions between 2000 and 2018. NAFTA was encouraged while EFTA, ASEAN and MERCOSUR reduced emission growth. The USA, China, and Russia have the highest responsibility in controlling climate change. The findings reflect the limited progress and implementation of climate and trade policies and agricultural-related emissions in Non-EU countries. • Confirmed the validity of the U-shaped EKC curve in Non-EU countries. • Economic development stimulates while agricultural development reduces CO 2 emission. • Agricultural export has a sinking impact on GHGs in the rest of the world. • NAFTA encouraged while EFTA, MERCOSUR and ASEAN hindered CO 2 emission. • The USA, China, Russia have the highest responsibility in controlling emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapidly developing economies of countries in hot climates face the risk of a significant increase in CO2 emissions. This study developed strategies for low energy cooling and ventilation for Indian residences (LECaVIR). Ventilation and cooling techniques were developed and tested for India's four climatic zones. The analysis shows that natural ventilation is possible in typical residential buildings for about 20-40% of the year. Using an enhanced natural ventilation mode with appropriately sized openable windows and controls, the total number of hours for which natural ventilation is able to offer satisfactory conditions for occupants can be extended by a further 13 percentage points, leading to a potential reduction of 46% in the mechanical cooling hours for residences. Dynamic thermal simulation models, coupled with control software, were used to test the most promising natural ventilation strategies as part of a mixed-mode approach to ensure year-round comfort at minimal energy cost. The simulation shows that energy savings of up to 55% are possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partitioning the contributions of climate, economic growth, and policy to a region's carbon flows is an important process for the Chinese government seeking to optimize their regional development policies to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. A combination of the carbon emission analysis and human appropriation of net primary production (HANPP) framework was applied to a village in the Lhasa river valley, Tibet, to quantify the contributions of these different factors to carbon flows and neutrality. From 2010 to 2019, the average annual net sequestration of CO2 was 374.9 g CO2 m−2 a−1. Changes in climate conditions and the regional policy of Grassland Ecological Protection Subsidy and Reward increased carbon sequestrations by 409.5 and 25.7 g CO2 m−2 a−1, respectively. Socioeconomic development, policies for reducing poverty, and promotion of forage production led to the increase in CO2 emissions by 103.5, 88.8, and 4.3 g CO2 m−2 a−1, respectively. The cumulative CO2 emissions (including HANPP) caused by land use were 298.92 Tg CO2 (2479.63 g CO2 m−2; 1 Tg = 1012 g), while the cumulative CO2 emissions due to energy use were only 11.22 Tg CO2 (93.07 g CO2 m−2), equal to 3.75% of the CO2 emissions driven by land use. Livestock grazing and cropland cultivation were the two main land use factors affecting the carbon balance. We argue that unhooking economic growth from traditional nomadic animal husbandry and lifestyles through policy optimizations would highly contribute the carbon neutrality in Tibet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Constructing a new welfare function considering economy, equity and ecology. • Optimizing carbon emission pathways from multiple perspectives. • Focusing on the emission pathways in China achieving the ambitious targets. With the increasing climate warming, reducing carbon emissions has gradually become a consensus around the world. However, the process of carbon emission reduction will inevitably lead to the transformation of economic structure, industrial structure and energy structure, which will bring huge changes in economic output, employment and other aspects, thus affecting the overall social welfare and equity. Therefore, it is particularly important for each country to determine a scientific and effective carbon emission pathway which take into account both social development and climate targets. As the largest carbon emitter, China has put forward the targets of carbon peak and carbon neutrality. In this regard, the corresponding carbon emission reduction scenarios are designed according to the new situation of China's emission reduction in this paper, firstly. Furthermore, under the premise of maximizing social welfare, an optimization model which integrating economic growth-equity-environment is developed to determine China's emission pathways under different scenarios from 2020 to 2050. Besides quantitatively showing the future total amount and peak value of carbon emissions under different scenarios, the results can also identify its evolution pathway over time. Therein, the peak under most scenarios will concentrate in 2025–2030, which is about 10.7 to 11.8 billion tons. With the increasingly stringent constraints on carbon emission reduction, the cost of emission reduction will increase correspondingly, but the overall social welfare will increase slightly. Finally, our findings provide practical guidance on achieving carbon emission reduction and enlightenments on policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is essential to achieving economic growth, yet the production of energy results in the emission of carbon dioxide, the primary factor in the deterioration of the environment and the acceleration of climate change. In this sense, the diversity of energy sources can contribute to achieving both environmentally sustainable development. This study investigates the relationship between energy diversification and economic growth in Nordic nations by employing a unique measure of energy diversity. The Nonlinear Panel Autoregressive Distributed Lag (NPARDL) approach is utilized in the research, and it looks at data from 1998 through 2018. According to our results, these nations experience favorable economic growth when there is an increase in the long-term diversity of their energy sources. However, in the near term, they have seen negative economic development due to the diversification of their energy sources. According to these findings, energy diversification benefits Nordic economic growth; however, further research is required for developing economies. As a result, further preventative actions must be implemented while simultaneously diversifying energy sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]