Search

China, a country with a long-standing agricultural legacy, is increasingly prioritizing the reduction of CO2 emissions from its agricultural sector. Initially, the carbon emission sources within the agricultural sector are classified into two categories: direct and indirect emissions. Using this classification, the study calculates the generalized agricultural carbon emissions (GACEs) of 30 provinces in China between 2011 and 2020. To further understand the factors influencing GACEs, the paper employs the logarithmic mean Divisia index method and Tapio decoupling index to analyze seven key factors. These factors include carbon emission intensity, energy consumption of generalized agriculture, and economic benefit level of energy consumption. By comparing the impact and changes of GACEs during the 12th and 13th five-year plan periods, the study reveals valuable insights. The findings suggest that carbon emission intensity plays a crucial role in suppressing GACEs, while the level of economic development acts as a catalyst for their increase. By effectively managing these influencing factors, the paper proposes that the increase in GACEs can be effectively suppressed, and the achievement of agricultural CO2 reduction goals can be expedited. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper selects China's renewable energy enterprises as a research sample and analyzes the impacts of equity balance and executive stock ownership on these companies' innovation efficiency from 2009 to 2018. The results show that equity balance has significant and positive impacts on innovation efficiency, while there is a significant nonlinear, inverted U-shaped relationship between the executive stock ownership and innovation efficiency. In addition, with changes in the shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder, equity balance and executive stock ownership are substitutive in terms of their impacts on innovation efficiency. Therefore, this paper proposes the following recommendations. The shareholding ratio of the largest shareholder should be controlled within a reasonable range to help force executives and outside blockholders to make decisions in the company's interests. When implementing an equity balance, companies should avoid shareholders' oversupervision of executives, which may restrict executives' enthusiasm for innovation investment. A moderate degree of freedom for management executives should be appropriate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Clean energy has become one of the more broadly acceptable options for the future transformation of existing energy systems. The energy transformation also requires comprehensive preparatory actions. Organizing a multi-chain clean energy value chain into a complex clean energy network system is likely to be critical to the successful utilization of clean energy in the future. This article proposes a novel concept for a clean energy value co-creation system covering the entire clean energy value chain with division on power generation, energy storage, and end utilization sections. This article mainly analyzes the self-organizing evolution mechanism and value co-creation of the clean energy value co-creation system (CEVCS), which is therefore critical to the further development of the renewable energy industry. First, this article analyzes the connotation and basic structure of CEVCS and introduces the self-organizing characteristics of CEVCS. Second, the self-organizing evolution mechanism of CEVCS is discussed, which is analyzed from four aspects: evolutionary power, evolutionary path, evolutionary form, and evolutionary process. Third, this paper analyzes the information cooperative evolution process of CEVCS, defines the value order parameter, and studies how the constituent elements of CEVCS realize value creation through a synergy mechanism based on the theory of synergy. Then the dissipative structure model and information resource collaborative model of CEVCS are presented. Finally, the conclusions are given in the end. The proposed CEVCS concept would support the effective operation of the clean energy value chain within municipalities by establishing virtual energy cooperatives aimed at meeting energy needs and supporting community development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has been plagued by hazy weather for a long time. Adjusting the energy consumption structure and reducing fossil energy consumption proportions are key to solving environmental problems. The "Electricity substitution" development strategy advocates "substituting electricity for coal, oil, and gas." To establish an efficient energy consumption structure, the strategy is conducive to an increase in the proportion of electricity in the terminal energy consumption market. Therefore, it is important to comprehensively compare the economic and environmental substitution benefits of electricity and other fossil energies when promoting the electricity substitution strategy. In this paper, the energy substitution cost evaluation model is established to compare economic benefits, and a life cycle assessment calculation method is used to obtain the environmental benefits of electricity substitution. Based on the calculation results, the environmental benefits are quantified as the economic cost with an environmental value standard. The comprehensive economic-environmental evaluation results obtained reveal that in the three substitution directions, the effect of substituting electricity for fuel oil is the most obvious. The substitution index considering the economic and environmental cost is 5.25%. "Substituting electricity for oil" can be used as a priority area to promote the electricity substitution strategy. The sensitivity analysis results reveal that reducing the proportion of coal-fired power generation, improving the proportion of clean electricity, and making strict financial penalties for creating pollution, can play strong roles in promoting electricity substitution. This paper provides a new research perspective for the comparison between electricity and fossil fuels. The results from this study can provide references for electricity substitution implementation and relevant policy formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Green growth has become an increasingly important paradigm for sustainable economic growth, resource development, and environmental protection. As the main focus in energy led green growth is a move away from fossil energy to clean energy, sustainable green growth resource development needs to measure both energy and environmental efficiencies. As the largest global energy consumer and carbon emitter, China has had to deal with serious energy and environmental issues in recent years, with its regional green growth performances being poorly assessed. Therefore, green growth clean energy-environmental efficiency assessments were examined in this paper, for which an integrated principal component analysis-data envelopment analysis based analysis approach was developed. It was found that while China's green growth has had a significant increasing trend in recent years, overall it was still at a low level, with the imbalances in China's regional economic development being reflected in its green growth. However, the excellent development and utilization of clean energy in most regions have significantly promoted a continuous improvement in China's green growth and the move toward sustainable resource development and utilization is contributing to long-term green growth. Green growth has also placed new demands on sustainable resource development in China. Therefore, underdeveloped regions that have sustainable resource endowments need to develop industrial systems that have clean energy as the main axis, and developed regions need to develop high-end industries that have low energy consumption and encourage mutual support systems between regions to ensure optimal sustainable resource, green growth development patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the largest energy consumption country, China now pays more and more attention to photovoltaic power generation because solar energy is the largest renewable and sustainable energy reserve in the world. In this case, the photovoltaic power generation plant project plays a crucial role in sustainable development, especially in the underdeveloped northwest region of China. This paper focuses on applying bi-level programing to the multimode resource-constrained project scheduling problem (MRCPSP) in photovoltaic power generation plant construction, which simultaneously considers the practical hierarchical organization structure and an uncertain decision-making environment. A bi-level fuzzy random multiple objective model is developed, wherein the government agency is in the upper decision level, while the contractor is in the lower decision level. Then, motivated by the particular mathematical nature of the proposed bi-level MRCPSP model, a hybrid intelligent algorithm is designed. Finally, a practical case from the Shenneng Futa Kashi-Tashi-Kuergan photovoltaic power generation plant project in a Chinese energy company is applied, and the results validate the practicability of the proposed model and solution algorithm for solving practical photovoltaic power plant project scheduling problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy transportation is an important issue for China's electricity system due to the unbalanced distribution of energy sources and electrical demands. The traditional method of energy transportation (e.g., coal transportation) is challenging due to both the long distance of transportation and the large amount of energy that it requires. In recent years, China has been developing ultra-high voltage (UHV) as an alternative way of transmitting energy over a long distance, and many UHV lines are being planned for construction during the 13th Five-Year Plan (FYP) period. This paper develops a system optimization model for exploring the optimal pathway for long-distance energy transportation in China during the 13th FYP period from the perspective of the minimum cost of an energy transportation system. The results show that (a) although UHV transmission will be increasingly adopted in the 13th FYP period, coal transportation will still play an important role; (b) eight UHV lines are suggested to be built and put into use as a priority in the 13th FYP period; (c) the high technology learning effect, electricity demand, and investment costs of power plants would promote the adoption of UHV. Based on these results, some policy suggestions are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies the hybrid meta-frontier data envelopment analysis model to estimate the energy efficiency of the eastern, central, western, and northeastern regions in China as well as all Chinese provinces during 2003-2012. We further compare the energy efficiency under the regional frontier and the meta-frontier for different provinces and then examine the convergence situation among these four regions in China as well as the national energy efficiency. The results show the evidence of big gaps in the energy efficiency between the provinces under both the regional frontier and the national meta-frontier. In general, the highest energy efficiency lies in eastern China, followed by western China and then northeastern China, with the lowest in central China. Using the technology gap ratio, the findings present that eastern China achieves the national potential optimized production technology, whereas the central, western, and northeastern regions are still some distance away from their own national potential optimized production technology with considerable room for improvement. As for the variation trends of energy efficiency, those of the central and northeastern regions have a convergence tendency, whereas the energy efficiencies of eastern and western China show the characteristics of slight divergence. Moreover, the convergence tendency of energy efficiency for the whole country has not yet been formed. Based on the above research conclusions, we propose a number of energy policy recommendations for China's government in order to improve energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To compensate for the limitation of the energy intensity indicator and to constrain energy consumption growth more directly and severely, China had decided to implement the Total Energy Consumption Control (TECC) policy during the 12th Five-Year Plan (FYP). This paper analyzes the situation of energy consumption in 3 scenarios based on the energy consumption trend during the 11th FYP, the energy intensity reduction target during the 12th FYP, and the TECC policy. The Energy Conservation Comprehensive Evaluation System (ECCES) which includes 5 indicators reflecting energy conservation responsibility and 3 indicators reflecting energy conservation difficulty has been built, and Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Entropy methods are used to determine the weights of 8 basic indicators. According to the ranking of comprehensive evaluation scores of ECCES, 30 provinces are divided into 5 clusters, which are assigned 3%, 3.5%, 4.2%, 5.5%, and 6.8% of controlled energy consumption growth rate, respectively. By comparing and analyzing energy consumption situations in 3 scenarios, we find that the TECC policy has the strongest constraint effect, and can achieve unification of provincial and national energy conservation goals. The provincial decomposition result of energy consumption controlled target of TECC policy roughly remains consistent with the current economic and energy development layout of China that the provinces in southeast coastal developed areas are assigned lower controlled energy consumption growth rate while the backward inland provinces are assigned higher growth rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microalgae are considered a promising biofuel resource to fix carbon dioxide (CO2), which can support social development and environmental improvement in the future. In this paper, characteristics of microalgae growth with two parameters of solar radiation and ambient temperature are investigated based on industrial-scale microalgae bulk growth model of Quinn et al. By using this model, the potential biomass production of microalgae in China is estimated based on data of the available untilled lands and the weather to be 7.38 × 109 tonnes. This is 2.4 times larger than China's energy consumption of 3.08 × 109 tonnes standard coal equivalent in 2010, and satisfies that predicted with an exponentially increasing trend for 2020, and 89% of the amount predicted for 2030. The annual total CO2 emissions reduced is estimated to be 13.5 × 109 tonnes, which can improve the natural environment besides supplying sustainable production in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mid- and long-term energy requirements and greenhouse gas emission scenarios for China were presented by using the Integrated Policy Assessment Model of China. Technologies are the key component to reach a low carbon future. Technologies are identified with the scenario analysis. In order to realize the low carbon future, a technology roadmap was presented to reach the emission reduction up to 2050 in China. Twenty-eight key technologies are given in the paper for the technology roadmap, presenting learning curves. With full adoption of these key technologies, we do see ample opportunities for China to make the emission stable after 2020, without a large increase, and even start to have a deep reduction after 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since China's economic reforms and opening-up policy in 1980, China has experienced significant urbanization. This rapid urbanization has stimulated the growth of energy consumption. To investigate the impacts of urbanization on Chinese households' energy consumption, this paper analyzed the changes in households' direct energy consumption (DEC) and calculated households' indirect energy consumption (IEC) based on an energy input-output model. By applying an input-output structure decomposition analysis model, this paper quantitatively measured the impacts of urbanization on the direct and indirect energy consumption of households in China. We found that the amount of China's urban households' DEC gradually increased from 48.7 million tons of oil equivalent to 185.2 million tons of oil equivalent. In 2012, the proportion of coal products in urban households' DEC decreased from 91.4% in 1980 to 24.3%, while the proportion of petroleum products, natural gas, and electricity in urban households' DEC increased. During 1980 to 2012, China's rural households' DEC increased from 36.7 million tons of oil equivalent to 121.5 million tons of oil equivalent. However, the proportion of coal products was still greater than 50% in 2012. Chinese households' IEC increased from 302.8 million tons of oil equivalent in 1987 to 769.9 million tons of oil equivalent in 2010. In addition, China's urban households' IEC had a faster growth rate than China's rural households' IEC. Urban households' IEC increased from 139.0 million tons in 1987 to 599.8 million tons in 2010, while rural households' IEC fluctuated during the same period, with 163.8 million tons in 1987, 132.2 million tons in 2000, and 170.1 million tons in 2010. Among the impact factors of households' DEC, which include the population, urbanization rate, urban/rural households' DEC per capita and urban/rural households' DEC structure, China's total population has a positive effect on households' DEC growth. The urbanization rate is the other important factor constantly stimulating China's households' DEC growth. For households' IEC, the urbanization rate and per capita consumption had positive effects on the increase in households' IEC. Except for the period from 2002 to 2005, direct energy intensity had a negative effect on the increase in households' IEC in other periods. The Leontief effect on households' IEC was positive from 2000 to 2005 and negative in other subperiods. The results indicate that China needs to integrate energy efficiency, ecological conservation, and social fairness in its “new-type urbanization” planning. Green lifestyles within the household and low-carbon city construction should be encouraged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimal site selection for desert photovoltaic power plants is important to energy output and involves a multicriteria evaluation of many factors. This paper analyzes the factors influencing desert photovoltaic power station site selection and establishes an optimal site selection model for desert photovoltaic power plants using an analytic hierarchy process and geographic information system technology. We selected a typical desert area in northwestern China as the research location to test the model. Validation results were ideal, and the model successfully displayed the optimal site for desert photovoltaic power plants, from which the most suitable site for desert photovoltaic power plants could be selected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]