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The globally booming renewable power industry has stimulated an unprecedented interest in metals as key infrastructure components. Many economies with different endowments and levels of technology participate in various production stages and cultivate value in global renewable power industry production networks, known as global renewable power value chains (RPVCs), complicating the identification of metal supply for the subsequent low-carbon power generation and demand. Here, we use a multi-regional input-output model (MRIO) combined with a value chain decomposition model to trace the metal footprints (MFs) and value-added of major global economies' renewable power sectors. We find that the MFs of the global renewable power demand increased by 97% during 2005-2015. Developed economies occupy the high-end segments of RPVCs while allocating metal-intensive (but low value-added) production activities to developing economies. The fast-growing demand for renewable power in developed economies or developing economies with upper middle income, particularly China, is a major contributor to the embodied metal transfer increment within RPVCs, which is partly offset by the declining metal intensities in developing economies. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a metal-efficient and green supply chain for upstream suppliers as well as downstream renewable power installers for just transition in the power sector across the globe., (© 2023. The Author(s).)

Substantially enhancing carbon mitigation ambition is a crucial step towards achieving the Paris climate goal. Yet this attempt is hampered by poor knowledge on the potential cost and benefit of emission mitigation for each emitter. Here we use a global economic model to assess the mitigation costs for 27 major emitting countries and regions, and further contrast the costs against the potential benefits of mitigation valued as avoided social cost of carbon and the mitigation ambition of each region. We find a strong negative spatial correlation between cost and benefit of mitigating each ton of carbon dioxide. Meanwhile, the relative suitability of carbon mitigation, defined as the ratio of normalized benefit to normalized cost, also shows a considerable geographical mismatch with the mitigation ambition of emitters indicated in their first submitted nationally determined contributions. Our work provides important information to improve concerted climate action and formulate more efficient carbon mitigation strategies., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

Decarbonization of the power sector is one of the most important efforts to meet the climate mitigation targets under the Paris Agreement. China's power sector is of global importance, accounting for ∼25% of global electricity production in 2015. The carbon intensity of China's electricity is still much higher than the global average, but the country has made important strides toward a low-carbon transition based on two main pillars: improvement of energy efficiency and decreasing the share of fossil fuels. By applying a decoupling indicator, our study shows that 21 provinces achieved a "relative decoupling" of carbon emissions and electricity production and the remaining nine provinces achieved "absolute decoupling" between 2005 and 2015. We updated China's emission factors based on the most recent data by also considering the quality of imported coal and compared our results with the widely used Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change coefficients to show the sensitivity of results and the potential error. Our decomposition analysis shows that improvement of energy efficiency was the dominant driver for decarbonization of 16 provincial power sectors, while the access to low-carbon electricity and substitution of natural gas for coal and oil further accelerated their decarbonization.

The first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol came to an end in 2012 and more developing countries began to participate in the new phase of world carbon emission reduction. Kazakhstan is an important energy export country and a pivot of the "Belt and Road Initiative" (BRI). Despite its emissions are relatively small compared with huge emitters such as China and the US, Kazakhstan also faces great pressure in terms of CO 2 emission reduction and green development. Accurately accounting CO 2 emissions in Kazakhstan from both production and consumption perspectives is the first step for further emissions control actions. This paper constructs production-based CO 2 emission inventories for Kazakhstan from 2012 to 2016, and then further analyses the demand-driven emissions within the domestic market and international trade (exports and imports) using environmentally extended input-output analysis. The production-based inventory includes 43 energy products and 30 sectors to provide detailed data for CO 2 emissions in Kazakhstan. The consumption-based accounting results showed that certain sectors like construction drive more emissions and that the fuel consumption in different sectors varies. Furthermore, Russia and China are major consumers of Kazakhstan's energy and associated emissions, with the construction sector playing the most important role in it. The results suggested that both technology and policy actions should be taken into account to reduce CO 2 emissions and that the BRI is also a good chance for Kazakhstan to develop a "Green Economy"., (Copyright © 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

In a globalized economy, production of goods can be disrupted by trade disputes. Yet the resulting impacts on carbon dioxide emissions and ambient particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) related premature mortality are unclear. Here we show that in contrast to a free trade world, with the emission intensity in each sector unchanged, an extremely anti-trade scenario with current tariffs plus an additional 25% tariff on each traded product would reduce the global export volume by 32.5%, gross domestic product by 9.0%, carbon dioxide by 6.3%, and PM 2.5 -related mortality by 4.1%. The respective impacts would be substantial for the United States, Western Europe and China. A freer trade scenario would increase global carbon dioxide emission and air pollution due to higher levels of production, especially in developing regions with relatively high emission intensities. Global collaborative actions to reduce emission intensities in developing regions could help achieve an economic-environmental win-win state through globalization.

Nearly three-quarters of the growth in global carbon emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and cement production between 2010 and 2012 occurred in China. Yet estimates of Chinese emissions remain subject to large uncertainty; inventories of China's total fossil fuel carbon emissions in 2008 differ by 0.3 gigatonnes of carbon, or 15 per cent. The primary sources of this uncertainty are conflicting estimates of energy consumption and emission factors, the latter being uncertain because of very few actual measurements representative of the mix of Chinese fuels. Here we re-evaluate China's carbon emissions using updated and harmonized energy consumption and clinker production data and two new and comprehensive sets of measured emission factors for Chinese coal. We find that total energy consumption in China was 10 per cent higher in 2000-2012 than the value reported by China's national statistics, that emission factors for Chinese coal are on average 40 per cent lower than the default values recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and that emissions from China's cement production are 45 per cent less than recent estimates. Altogether, our revised estimate of China's CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion and cement production is 2.49 gigatonnes of carbon (2 standard deviations = ±7.3 per cent) in 2013, which is 14 per cent lower than the emissions reported by other prominent inventories. Over the full period 2000 to 2013, our revised estimates are 2.9 gigatonnes of carbon less than previous estimates of China's cumulative carbon emissions. Our findings suggest that overestimation of China's emissions in 2000-2013 may be larger than China's estimated total forest sink in 1990-2007 (2.66 gigatonnes of carbon) or China's land carbon sink in 2000-2009 (2.6 gigatonnes of carbon).

In this article, we track how consumption in the United States, a highly developed 'core' country, triggers value added and carbon inequalities around the globe. We consider these two sources of inequality for all commodities and services consumed in the United States, and then for three specific sectors, these being electronics, motor vehicles, and wearing apparel. Our findings show how the production of commodities for U.S. consumption tends to reify inequalities between countries. Larger shares of value added (in comparison to shares of carbon emissions) are generally experienced by more-developed, more-integrated countries, whereas the opposite tendency is experienced in less-developed, less-integrated regions. We note how these between-country differences can depend on the product chains that are analyzed. Our article makes use of a novel combination of social network analysis and multiregional input-output analysis to better capture some intuitive ideas of global trade and its consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China has experienced rapid urbanization in the last three decades, with more than half of the population living in cities since 2012. The extent of urban production and urban lifestyles has become one of the main drivers for China's CO 2 emissions. To analyze drivers of CO 2 emissions we use a consumption-based accounting approach that allocates all emissions along the production chain to the product and place of final consumption, whereas a production-based approach would allocate all emissions to the place of origin. In this study, we focus on the spatial distribution of production activities leading to CO 2 emissions across China as a consequence of final consumption in four Chinese mega cities: Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing. Urban consumption not only causes a large amount of emissions within its territory, but also imposes even much more emissions to its surrounding provinces via interregional supply chains. Results show that more than 48% of CO 2 emissions related to goods consumed in Chongqing and more than 70% for Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin occurred outside of the respective city boundary. In addition to the usual focus on efficiency, our analysis adds insights into the causes of CO 2 emissions by looking at the drivers and types of consumption. Addressing consumption patterns in China's cities is critical for China's low carbon development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There are a small number of countries that have managed to decrease emissions over the last two decades – most of them emerged from the FSU (former Soviet Union ). CO2 emissions for these countries combined have decreased by 35% between 1990 and 2010, while global emissions increased by 44%. Most studies investigate the FSU as a single block ignoring the significant and persistent diversity among countries in the region. This study is the first providing detailed country by country analyses determining factors for changes in post-Soviet republics by applying a disaggregated version of the commonly used (IPAT) index decomposition analysis including energy intensity, affluence industrialization, energy mix, carbon intensity and population. These factors play different roles during different stages of economic development: during economic growth affluence increases emissions being only partly compensated by decreasing energy intensity; whereas during economic recession emission decrease is mainly driven by decreasing affluence and a declining share of fossil fuels. However, there are large and persistent variations in affluence, industrialization, energy intensity and population change among the analyzed countries. These differences should be taken into account when studying energy consumption and carbon emissions in the FSU. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

China faces the challenge of balancing unprecedented economic growth and environmental sustainability. Rather than a homogenous country that can be analyzed at the national level, China is a vast country with significant regional differences in physical geography, regional economy, demographics, industry structure, and household consumption patterns. There are pronounced differences between the much-developed Eastern-Coastal economic zone and the less developed Central and Western economic zones in China. Such variations lead to large regional discrepancies in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Using the 28 regional input-output tables of China for 2002 and 2007 and structural decomposition analysis (SDA), we analyze how changes in population, technology, economic structure, urbanization, and household consumption patterns drive regional CO2 emissions. The results show a significant gap between the three economic zones in terms of CO2 emission intensity, as the Eastern-Coastal zone possesses more advanced production technologies compared to the Central and Western zones. The most polluting sectors and largest companies are state-owned enterprises and thus are potentially able to speed up knowledge transfer between companies and regions. The 'greening' of the more developed areas is not only a result of superior technology, but also of externalizing production and pollution to the poorer regions in China. The results also show that urbanization and associated income and lifestyle changes were important driving forces for the growth of CO2 emissions in most regions in China. Therefore, focusing on technology and efficiency alone is not sufficient to curb regional CO2 emissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Current efficiency targets are based on a production-based logic leading to outsourcing and higher costs. Allocating emissions to the point of consumption may better reflect the ability to pay the costs of mitigating emissions.” [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights • We mapped city-level CO 2 emissions simulated by DMSP/OLS nighttime light imagery. • City-level CO 2 emissions were featured as spatial agglomerations. • The GWR revealed significant spatial heterogeneity in the impacts of different factors. • Private car ownership, PCGDP, energy consumption positively affected CO 2 emissions both globally and locally. • The reminder factors studied in the GWR were found to bi-directionally affect CO 2 emissions. Abstract Cities produce over 70% of the global CO 2 emissions that result from energy use, and thus play a key role in climate mitigation and adaptation. While the factors influencing CO 2 emissions have been subject to extensive study, via research that has explored the path of developing a low-carbon economy, little work has been undertaken at the city level as a result of a deficiency in data availability. Addressing this gap, this study firstly estimated CO 2 emissions of cities in China using Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System (DMSP-OLS) nighttime light imagery. We then analyzed spatial variations in the estimated CO 2 emissions at the city level, using a spatial analytical model, finding significant spatial autocorrelation in CO 2 emissions. Subsequently, we compared the effects of different socioeconomic factors on CO 2 emissions, using both global and local regression models. The results from the global regression model revealed that private car ownership, economic growth, and energy consumption were the major factors promoting CO 2 emissions in China's cities, while population density had an effect in reducing CO 2 emissions. The use of a Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) model provided more detailed results, revealing significant spatial heterogeneity in the impacts of different factors. Economic growth, private car ownership, and energy consumption all posed positive effects on CO 2 emissions while the remainder of the factors studied were found to pose a bidirectional impact on CO 2 emissions in different areas of China. Economic growth and private car ownership were to found to exert the strongest positive effects in the cities of western and central China, and energy consumption was shown to significantly and positively influence CO 2 emissions in the southernmost part of China. Urban expansion and road density were identified as key promoting factors in CO 2 emissions in the northeast of China; and the industrial structure demonstrated significantly positive effects in relation to CO 2 levels in cities located in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The role of foreign direct investment (FDI) was not found to be significant in most cities expect Guangdong, where a significant positive relationship appeared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study addresses the spatiotemporal variations at play in China's CO 2 emissions, based on an estimation of emission levels in the period 1995–2012 and an provincial analysis of the relationship of CO 2 emissions to economic growth and energy consumption. Using a series of econometric models and data on the combustion of fossil fuels and cement manufacturing, the study first estimated CO 2 emission levels during the study period, exploring their spatiotemporal pattern. The results indicate that both China's total and its per capita CO 2 emissions have increased significantly over the study period, with both measures evidencing a similar evolution (albeit one that is characterized by noticeable regional discrepancies at the provincial level and which displays properties of convergence). From a geographical perspective, we found both total and per capita CO 2 emissionsto be higher in China's eastern region than in the country's central and western regions. Panel data analysis was subsequently undertaken in order to quantify the dynamic casual relationship between economic growth, energy consumption, and CO 2 emissions. The empirical results indicated that the variables were in fact cointegrated and exhibited a long-run positive relationship. The results of further Granger causality tests indicated the existence of a bidirectional positive causality between economic growth and energy consumption, as well as between energy consumption and CO 2 emissions, and a unidirectional positive causality running from economic growth to CO 2 emissions. The findings of this study suggest that China is, in the long run, dependent on carbon energy consumption for its rapid economic growth, a dependency which is the cause of considerable increases in CO 2 emissions. China should therefore make greater efforts to develop low-carbon technologies and renewable energy, and improve energy efficiency in order to reduce emissions and achieve green economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although global total fossil fuel CO 2 emissions continued to grow between 2005 and 2016, many developed countries had experienced a decline in their emissions in the past decade, which significantly slowing down the growth of global emissions. Understanding the determinants of emissions trends in economies with continuously decreasing emissions is key to gauging whether efforts to decarbonize heavy industry and energy systems is working. This study selected a "peak-and-decline" panel of 18 economies to carry out a decomposition analysis on CO 2 emissions with six contributing factors using an extended STIRPAT model and estimated the future trend of their CO 2 emissions from both historical and prospective perspectives. The results show that CO 2 emissions and the six determining factors to be stationary after the first difference and to maintain a cointegrated relationship. The two-way fixed effect modeling analysis showed that the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy and variations in energy intensity and fossil CO 2 intensity were the primary factors contributed to the decrease in CO 2 emissions. The Granger causality test reveals that there exists a bi-directional long-run causal link between the renewable energy consumption share and CO 2 emissions, and an uni-directional short-run causal association from industrial structure, GDP per capita and energy intensity to CO 2 emissions. Moreover, the forecasting results indicated that changes in the renewable energy share and fossil CO 2 intensity will be the two primary factors for the decline inCO 2 emissions in the next thirty years, while the contribution from the industrial structure, economic growth, and fossil energy intensity are rather limited. These findings highlight the importance of improved energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy in reducing CO 2 emissions in the eighteen developed countries. • Drivers of declining CO 2 emissions are analyzed from a historical and prospective analysis. • RES, FEI and FCI can explain the decrease in CO 2 emissions. • A bi-directional long-run causal link exists between CO 2 emissions and RES. • RES and FCI will be the two primary factors which will increasingly effect on CO 2 emissions. • The effect of population growth is forecasted to gradually increase subsequently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Iron oxides as constructed wetland matrix reduced CH 4 emissions. • Iron oxides with or without DMRB both showed multiple effects on CH 4 emissions. • Iron oxides increased the relative abundance of methanogens and Geobacter. • Iron oxides promoted AOM and competed with methanogens in the presence of DMRB. Iron oxides and dissimilated metal-reducing bacteria (DMRB) have been reported to result in a reduction in methane (CH 4) emissions in constructed wetlands (CWs), but their mechanisms on CH 4 production and oxidation remains unclear. Here, a set of CW matrix systems (Control, Fe-CWs, and FeB-CWs) was established to analyze the CH 4 emission reduction from various angles, including the valencies of iron, microbial community structure and enzyme activity. The results revealed that the addition of iron oxides promoted the electron transfer between methanogens and Geobacter to promote CH 4 production, but it was interesting that iron oxides also reduced the enzymes involved in the carbon dioxide (CO 2) reduction pathway and promoted the enzymes that participated in anaerobic oxidation of methane (AOM) thereby leading to the overall reduction in CH 4 emissions. Moreover, DMRB could promote iron reduction thereby further reducing CH 4 emissions by promoting AOM and competing with methanogens for organic substrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]