Search

Abstract: The Chinese government has promulgated a wide variety of low-carbon initiatives to control the rapid growth of energy consumption and carbon emissions in the cities. Past records, however, show that the central government's policies are often poorly implemented or distorted by local officials. Using a case study from the city of Changchun, this paper examines how and why the issue of poor implementation persists despite the establishment of the Energy Conservation Target Responsibility System (ECTRS). As a key institutional mechanism providing local officials with political incentives to implement low-carbon policies, the ECTRS has been constrained by a number of problems, including a poorly designed scoring system, weak targets, the use of energy intensity instead of absolute energy consumption as a policy objective, and the lack of reliable local energy statistics. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In different regions of China, climate change has various influences on urban and rural residential energy consumption, which also shows that the research on it could be profoundly vital in order to formulate the energy-saving and emission-reducing policies. Based the provincial panel data from 2000–2016, the extended stochastic impacts by regression on population, affluence, and technology (extended STIRPAT) model was utilized to evaluate the impacts of climate change on residential energy consumption in different Chinese regions. The results show that: (1) during 2000 to 2016, the urban and rural energy consumption enlarged by 878.83 billion kWh and 488.98 billion kWh, respectively. In addition, electricity and oil have occupied more proportion in urban energy consumption, while coal still plays an important role in rural residential energy consumption (28.2%). (2) Heating degree day (HDD) and cooling degree day (CDD) have positive influences on urban and rural residential energy consumption in different areas, and the elastic coefficients are 0.028–0.371 and 0.066–0.158, respectively. (3) The elastic coefficient of CDD in urban areas of southern regions (0.158) is much larger than that in northern regions (0.068). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1980 and 2007, in the Chinese building sector in urban and rural areas, coal was mainly substituted with electricity and natural gas. Growing income will further increase energy consumption and CO-emissions in the building sector. Using an econometric model, disaggregated energy demand and related CO-emissions in the residential sector as well for the whole economy are estimated and forecasted until 2050. In 2009, the Chinese government pledged itself to reduce CO-intensity by 40%-45% in 2020 compared to 2005. Aim of this article is to assess to which extent the measures in the building sector in China can contribute to this target. Main results of the analysis are: (a) The primary energy source coal was mainly substituted by electricity generated with coal. Apart from convenience gains, the environmental advantages are questionable. (b) Between 2010 and 2050, energy demand in the building sector will grow by 2.0%-4.1% per annum leading to CO-emissions at least almost tripling from about 560 mill. tons in 2010 to about 1,500 mill. tons in 2050. (c) The energy efficiency gains in the building sector and other sectors of the Chinese economy, however, are not enough to fulfill the national CO-intensity targets. The reduction of the CO-intensity of GDP would be 37.2% in the BAU-scenario, and 31.9% in the LOW-scenario. Only in the HIGH-scenario (46.3%), the economy is growing efficient enough relative to the induced CO-emissions. The remaining CO2-emission reductions could be gained by additional promotion of renewable energies (mainly solar and geo-thermal) in the building sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents abstracts on land use planning topics, including "Historical Amnesia: New Urbanism and the City of Tomorrow," "More Than Sector Theory: Homer Hoyt's Contributions to Planning Knowledge" and "Methodology for the Survival Analysis of Urban Building Stocks."