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A series of global actions have been made to address climate change. As a recent developed climate policy, Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDC) have renewed attention to the importance of exploring temperature rise levels lower than 2 °C, in particular a long-term limit of 1.5 °C, compared to the preindustrial level. Nonetheless, achieving the 2 °C target under the current INDCs depends on dynamic socioeconomic development pathways. Therefore, this study conducts an integrated assessment of INDCs by taking into account different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs). To that end, the CEEP-BIT research community develops the China’s Climate Change Integrated Assessment Model (C3IAM) to assess the climate change under SSPs in the context of with and without INDCs. Three SSPs, including “a green growth strategy” (SSP1), “a more middle-of-the-road development pattern” (SSP2) and “further fragmentation between regions” (SSP3) form the focus of this study. Results show that after considering INDCs, mitigation costs become very low and they have no evident positive changes in three SSPs. In 2100, a temperature rise would occur in SSP1-3, which is 3.20, 3.48 and 3.59 °C, respectively. There are long-term difficulties to keep warming well below 2 °C and pursue efforts toward 1.5 °C target even under INDCs. A drastic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions is needed in order to mitigate potentially catastrophic climate change impacts. This work contributes on realizing the hard link between the earth and socioeconomic systems, as well as extending the economic models by coupling the global CGE model with the economic optimum growth model. In C3IAM, China’s energy consumption and emissions pattern are investigated and refined. This study can provide policy makers and the public a better understanding about pathways through which different scenarios could unfold toward 2100, highlights the real mitigation and adaption challenges faced by climate change and can lead to formulating effective policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The price gap between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) and Brent crude oil markets has been completely changed in the past several years. The price of WTI was always a little larger than that of Brent for a long time. However, the price of WTI has been surpassed by that of Brent since 2011. The new market circumstances and volatility of oil price require a comprehensive re-estimation of risk. Therefore, this study aims to explore an integrated approach to assess the price risk in the two crude oil markets through the value at risk (VaR) model. The VaR is estimated by the extreme value theory (EVT) and GARCH model on the basis of generalized error distribution (GED). The results show that EVT is a powerful approach to capture the risk in the oil markets. On the contrary, the traditional variance–covariance (VC) and Monte Carlo (MC) approaches tend to overestimate risk when the confidence level is 95%, but underestimate risk at the confidence level of 99%. The VaR of WTI returns is larger than that of Brent returns at identical confidence levels. Moreover, the GED-GARCH model can estimate the downside dynamic VaR accurately for WTI and Brent oil returns. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Based on 29 existing climate change integrated assessment models (IAM), this paper discusses the progress of integrated assessment models for climate policy with five key aspects in IAMs including model structure, uncertainty, equity, technical change and abatement mechanism. There are three main categories in IAMs including optimization models, computable general equilibrium (CGE) models and simulation models. In order to model the uncertainties in climate change, IAMs in the future need to answer questions such as the probability distribution of the effects of climate change, the degree to which human society is risk averse and the rate at which human society discounts future benefits and costs relative to those in the present. As for the intergenerational equity, prescriptionist supports the low discount rate and immediate actions in climate policies, while descriptionist supports the high discount rate and "step-by-step" actions in climate policies. As for the international equity, IAMs should place greater welfare weights on the low-income regions. IAMs have the tendency to make technical change endogenous by three approaches including direct price-induced, R&D-induced and learning-induced. As for the GHG emission reduction mechanism, most researchers who use the cost-benefit analysis consider that quantity-based mechanisms are more efficient than price-based mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the Paris Agreement, China has the ambition to develop non-fossil energy which will account for 20% of the total energy consumption in 2030. China has abundant biomass potential implying the bioenergy should be an important option of non-fossil energy. In this analysis, we present an representative biogas project (the Deqingyuan project, DQY) in Beijing and conduct a cost-benefit analysis for the whole value chain. DQY is the first large-scale biogas project in China that utilizes 100% chicken manure as a feedstock and integrates biogas production with ecological agriculture using advanced technologies. DQY uses 80,000 t of chicken manure and 100,000 t of sewage each year to produce biogas, which generates 14 million KWh of power annually, and obtains an additional revenue of RMB 8 million yuan each year through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Operating as an example of a sustainable bioenergy model, DQY accomplishes the full use of a recycled resource while showing consideration for animal welfare during the entire production, which is a fundamental component of the new rural energy strategy. The circular economy model of DQY plays a prominent role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, mitigating pollution, and increasing employment, among other benefits. This paper aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the typical demonstration model (DQY) in utilization of agricultural waste in China, and further proposes a general development model of Chinese biogas in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]