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China's Going Global Strategy and Belt and Road Initiative gained great attention among scholars. Moreover, it is believed that Chinese investments abroad cause serious social and environmental externalities. Hence, in this paper, we examine how China's foreign direct investments influence the carbon emissions of 35 Belt and Road Initiative countries from 2000 to 2019. To do so, we use a panel model that accounts for heterogeneity and country cross-section dependence. Our results show that while other countries' foreign direct investments have contributed to the deterioration of the environment in these countries, Chinese investments have not. This substantiates the hypothesis of the halo effect influence of China's foreign investments as opposed to other countries' investments which may seek a haven for its carbon emissions. These results highlight the importance of source and destination regulations of foreign direct investments in terms of their environmental impact and carbon emissions in the Belt and Road Initiative countries. It also provides a fresh finding on the efficacy of China's foreign investment management policies and regulations in producing the desired environmental outcome in hosting countries.

A primary goal of studying climate change adaptation is to identify the adaptation options that are used to improve crop productivity or reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Many of the adjustments in farm management that farmers adopt do not necessarily represent true adaptations to climate change, an issue often ignored in existing literature and resulting in a risk that policy makers are misled to think that adaptation is easier than it actually is, and thereby underestimate the challenge that climate change presents. The overall goal of this study is to identify whether farmers’ adoptions are enhancing food production and adapting to climate change. The identification uses a plot-level panel from a survey of 619 rural households in three provinces in China and county-level weather data. With the use of plot and county-by-year fixed effects as well as instrumental variable approaches, our estimates show that the autonomous adoptions are not effective in improving crop yields. This implies that farmers’ adoptions cannot be always considered adaptations to climate change. The paper provides a possible explanation for the results and concludes with policy implications.

In this paper, a novel model of a concentrating photovoltaic-photothermochemical (CPV/PTC) hybrid system is proposed. Solar spectrum is separated into several parts to enable photovoltaic (PV) and photothermochemical (PTC) conversion by utilizing the parabolic trough concentrator with a spectral beam splitter. The PV module converts a specific spectral range of solar radiation into electricity directly by the solar cells and the PTC module absorbs the rest solar energy to supply the reaction heat of methanol-steam reforming (MSR) that produces hydrogen for power generation. The energy and exergy analyses on the CPV/PTC hybrid system are carried out. The overall system efficiencies with different splitting wavebands, widths of the solar cells and heat transfer coefficients of the cooling system are investigated. Moreover, the CPV/PTC hybrid system is compared with a single PV or PTC system. The results indicate that the optimal splitting waveband, concentration ratio and heat transfer coefficient of the cooling system are 450 nm-870 nm, 7.9, and 1500 W/(m2 · K), respectively. With the optimization of the proposed CPV/PTC hybrid system, the overall power generation efficiency can reach 25.3%.

BiSbTe has been realized as an ideal p-type thermoelectric material near room temperature; however, its commercial applications are largely restricted by its n-type counterpart that exhibits relatively inferior thermoelectric performance. In this work, n-type BiTeSe based composites Bi2Te2.7Se0.3–f InSb (0 ≤ f ≤ 2.5 vol%) are prepared by a ball milling and spark plasma sintering method. A record-high ZT value of ∼1.22 is achieved at 323 K for Bi2Te2.7Se0.3–1.5 vol% InSb composites. This significant enhancement in thermoelectric performance is attributed to the incorporation of nanostructured InSb into the Bi2Te2.7Se0.3 matrix, which can simultaneously modulate the electrical and thermal transport. InSb with high carrier mobility precipitated in the matrix can strengthen interface scattering at the phase boundaries, which can effectively scatter the heat-carrying phonons and thus yield an extremely low lattice thermal conductivity, while the high power factor is maintained. As a result, a maximum ZT of 1.22 is obtained. The average ZT in the temperature range of 300–425 K for Bi2Te2.7Se0.3–1.5 vol% InSb is 1.14, which is at least 15% larger than that of previously reported values. Our results demonstrate that for n-type bismuth-telluride-based alloys, imbedding nanostructured phases with a high carrier mobility is an effective strategy for enhancing the performance of the state-of-the-art thermoelectric systems.

Rice, China's most important food crop, is highly dependent on irrigation, but an increasing number of extreme drought events have challenged rice production in many regions. This paper investigates the role of local irrigation infrastructure in improving farmers' ability to respond to drought and its effectiveness in mitigating the drought risk in rice production in China. The analysis relies on a moment-based specification of the stochastic production function, capturing mean, variance and skewness effects. Using household survey data from 86 villages in five provinces, we jointly estimate farmers' adaptive irrigation decisions and their effects on rice yield and production risk. Our econometric analyses show that irrigation infrastructure in villages contributes to enhancing farmers' irrigation capacity in adapting to drought, and increased irrigation leads to a significant increase in mean yield and a reduction in exposure to risk as well as downside risk in rice production. The paper concludes with policy implications.

As an arid and semiarid region in that is frequently hit by drought, Northwest China is ecologically vulnerable. Faced with drought and other extreme events, policy makers have given top priority to the formulation and implementation of adaptation policies. This paper investigates the roles of community assets, including community social capital and access to public services, in mitigating the impact of drought in Northwest China. Based on a micro-level dataset of individual households and villages from two provinces, we find a major effect of community assets on grain yields, after controlling for other influences. Our econometric analyses show that the severity of drought in the study areas significantly reduces grain yields. The negative impact of drought, however, can be significantly mitigated in villages with better community assets. Several policies, including enhancing investments in communities’ infrastructure and providing public services related to drought, are recommended to both improve local adaptive capacity to drought and reduce poverty in the drought-prone areas.

To combat pollution, the Chinese government has taken a series of environmental regulations, including requiring cities to report their daily air quality information. This has affected not only the environmental performance of governments and enterprises but also individual happiness. This paper attempts to explore whether and how mandatory air quality information disclosure affects happiness in China, using a difference-in-differences (DID) approach across cities for the waves 2007, 2008 and 2013. Empirical results show that in Chinese cities, people feel less happy over time although there is an increase in GDP per capita. Moreover, it is found that mandatory air pollution index (API) disclosure exerts a significantly positive impact on happiness, mainly by reducing air pollution. Our analysis has policy implications that for developing countries, air quality information disclosure should be encouraged since it is effective in combating air pollution resulting from high economic development and meanwhile it adds to individual happiness.

In this paper, a novel solar thermochemical volumetric receiver/reactor with nanofluid is proposed. Thermal and chemical performance analyses of the volumetric receiver/reactor are numerically investigated and compared with those of the conventional surface receiver/reactor. A two-dimensional axisymmetric heat and mass transfer model coupled with reaction kinetics is developed to predict the temperature distribution and reactant conversion ratio. The effects of particle characteristics including size and volume fraction and solar irradiation intensity are discussed. The results indicate that for the nanofluid with a volume fraction greater than 0.005, an optical path depth of 0.015 m is sufficient to absorb almost 100% of the incident solar energy. The volume weighted average temperature of the volumetric receiver/reactor with a volume fraction of 0.05 and particle diameter of 10 nm can reach 506.0 K which is about 8.8 K higher than that of the surface receiver/reactor leading to a 5.2% increase of the outlet methanol conversion ratio from 56.9% to 62.1% under a typical operating condition. The methanol conversion ratio increases with the reduction of nanoparticle size and the increment of the volume fraction and solar irradiation intensity. The thermochemical efficiency has a maximum value of 48.9% when solar irradiation intensity is 600 W/m2.