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The emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic had an extreme exogenous impact on society and the economy. This paper aims to explore the impacts of the national emergency response and the subsequent emergency response termination on air quality and its policy implications through regression discontinuity design (RDD) estimation by employing panel data on daily air quality from January 1, 2019, to July 31, 2020, for 290 cities in China. The empirical results showed that the emergency response resulted in a significant decrease in most of the major pollutant concentrations within a short time frame, and the average air quality index (AQI) decreased by approximately 11.0%. The concentrations of PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 , NO 2 , and CO decreased by approximately 18.8%, 13.1%, 13.5%, 11.1% and 6.7%, respectively, while the O 3 concentration did not change significantly. Further causal analysis found that mandatory traffic restrictions and the shutdown of industries were two important factors that contributed greatly to air quality improvement. Moreover, since the process of returning to normal daily activities and promoting the economy were gradual, the results showed that air pollution did not rebound immediately after the government called for the "resumption of production and work" and announced the "termination of the emergency response". Our findings suggest that to achieve a substantial and sustainable improvement in air quality, it is necessary to continuously implement strict emission control routines and take co-control measures for various VOCs precursors of ozone. [Display omitted] • Emergency response to COVID-19 (ER) had spill-over effect on air quality. • Empirical analysis was made with RDD to evaluate the impact of ER on air quality. • AQI and PM 2.5 , PM 10 , SO 2 and NO 2 concentrations decreased by approximately 10%. • Traffic restrictions and shutdown of industries during ER were important factors. • Socioeconomic resumption and ER termination did not affect air quality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Full mobilization and effective use of climate aid is of great importance for the low carbon transition of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) countries. This study utilizes the two-step system generalized method of moments model to evaluate the effects of climate aid on carbon emissions reduction and the impact mechanism through energy structure optimization. The panel data of 93 Belt and Road countries from 2000 to 2018 were used for empirical analysis. Results show that climate aid has a significant reduction effect on the carbon emissions intensity of BRI countries, and the dominant component of climate aid, i.e., mitigation aid, corresponds to better carbon emissions reduction benefits than adaptation aid. The impact mechanism demonstrates that the climate aid has dual carbon emissions reduction effects in BRI countries which have an intermediate energy structure. It indicates that climate aid not only directly reduces carbon emissions by increasing carbon reduction resources, but also indirectly reduces carbon emissions by promoting renewable energy and optimizing the energy structure. The results evidence the theory of environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis and channels of climate aid effects. Practical implications from the current study include that more climate finance support should be provided to BRI countries by developed countries, the effectiveness of climate aid should be improved by investing in projects with significant carbon reduction like renewable energy, data monitoring and performance evaluation of climate aid should be strengthened, and China should take its role and make more contributions to the low carbon transition especially energy transition of BRI countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Maintaining crop outputs to feed its large population with limited resources while simultaneously mitigating carbon emissions are great challenges for China. Improving the efficiency of resource use in crop production is important in reducing carbon emissions. This paper constructs a methodological framework combining emergy-based indicator accounting and a nonseparable undesirable output slack-based measurement (SBM) data envelopment analysis (DEA) model. This framework is used to explore the efficiency of inputs and outputs and the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction potential for crop production systems, using Zhejiang province, China, as a case study. It is found that an emergy synthesis and a nonseparable undesirable output SBM-DEA framework is compatible with the case study. Crop production in Zhejiang province has relied heavily on an increase in agrochemical inputs to maintain agricultural output. Energy and chemical fertilizer use are determined as the province’s major carbon emissions sources. Although carbon emissions per unit of monetary output has decreased sharply, the carbon emissions per unit emergy output has increased, demonstrating a high carbon intensity reality. The DEA highlighted the differences in crop production efficiency, resource factor redundancy and carbon mitigation potential in the different prefectures of the province. To conclude this research, policies to support low carbon agriculture development, including subsidizing low carbon agriculture technology development and expansion and the cancellation of subsidies to high carbon production factors, such as chemical fertilizer production and sales, are discussed to conclude the research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable urban water infrastructure planning is vital for all cities in developing countries, where rapid urbanization has exacerbated the increasingly burdened environment. Water sustainability is a prerequisite for economic growth, social equity, and living quality in urban areas. This paper documents the current challenges and summarizes the solutions adopted in water infrastructure planning and management. Then, case studies of how multilateral financial institutions have promoted sustainable water infrastructure planning through economic appraisal and the novel approaches adopted for sustainable water infrastructure planning and asset management, are presented for the three cities of Jiaozhou, Cixi, and Fangchenggang. Conclusions are made based on the comparison and analysis of the experiences drawn from the case studies of how economic analysis could help promote sustainable water infrastructure planning and management. It is illustrated that economic analysis that considers ecosystem services supply should be employed more in water infrastructure planning, operation, and management in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicle (HFCV) is regarded as one of the most promising technical paths towards transportation sector's carbon neutrality in China, to assess the environmental and economic performances of HFCV is of great significance for emission reduction policies construction. This study carries out a fuel-cycle analysis of HFCV in 2020 and 2030 using the GREET model. 19 fuel paths are generated by combining mainstream patterns of HFCV's hydrogen production, storage and transportation, and filling processes. The results show a contradiction at present that, hydrogen production from electrolytic water with renewable energy has the lowest air pollutants and carbon emissions, while the traditional hydrogen production from natural gas, coke oven gas and coal, etc., have better economic performances. However, the decreasing trends of both pollution emissions and costs of HFCVs are expected towards 2030. Specifically, the CO 2 , VOC, NO x , PM 2.5 and SO 2 emissions would decrease by 21.58%, 16.55%, 22.35%, 22.49%, and 18.76%, respectively. The total cost of fuel path with the participation of renewable energy decreases rapidly, which is mainly benefit from its lower environmental externality costs. This study puts forward policy suggestion of improving the hydrogenation infrastructure construction, accelerating the large-scale and low-cost renewable energy hydrogen production. • Fuel-cycle analysis of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle using localized GREET model. • Environmental and economic assessment of 19 fuel paths in 2020 and 2030. • Electrolytic water with renewable energy paths show great pollution reduction effect. • Material and environmental cost of hydrogen fuel cell vehicle drop significantly in 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) and Carbon Emission Trading (CET) are the policy instrument for China to achieve the low-carbon energy transition. Changes in policy combinations will affect the equilibrium state of the interactive system and bring uncertain risks to the expected effects of policy implementation. Given the assumption that the power users undertake RPS assessment and the CET market is extended to industries in addition to the power generation industry, this paper first constructs a game model in the context of RPS and CET where groups of power users and thermal power manufacturers jointly participate. Then, with China's provincial market data, it analyzed the evolution process of group strategy under different policy parameters and described the characteristics of the transition between the stable and unstable states of the system. Finally, a dynamic and differentiated mechanism design for policy parameters is proposed to restrain system oscillations. The simulation results reveal the interaction between market players' strategies, and a quantitative framework for analyzing system stability under different policy parameter combinations is proposed, which can provide an analysis framework for China to implement RPS and CET and deliver a relevant analysis basis for setting policy parameters. • Analyzing the interactive impact of RPS and CET markets on power users. • Construct an evolutionary game framework. • The process between stable and unstable states is characterized. • Dynamic penalty mechanisms can make the system stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, China advanced a policy of establishing a protected area system with national parks as the main body, and so the development of protected areas has entered a transitional period. However, to promote the coordinated development of economic construction and ecological protection of protected areas, their management needs to be more comprehensive and refined. Therefore, a more quantitative and refined spatial planning and management method for protected areas is urgently needed. This study took Sanjiangyuan National Park as the research object and considered the three biodiversity elements of species, ecosystems and landscape. The maximum entropy (MaxEnt) model, Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs (InVEST) model, and Fragstats software were used to determine the areas with highly suitable species habitat, areas of high ecosystem service value and areas of high landscape diversity. Based on these areas, Marxan software was used to calculate the irreplaceability value, identify the boundary of Sanjiangyuan National Park and clarify the gaps of the existing Sanjiangyuan National Park in the space. We suggest that at least 18,569 km 2 of the eastern part of the Sanjiangyuan Region with a high irreplaceability value should be included in the existing Sanjiangyuan National Park. Moreover, the first-level zones were also classified based on irreplaceability, and the second-level functional zones were classified by K-means clustering based on the evaluation of ecological vulnerability and economic construction suitability. The first-level zones include "core conservation zones" and "general control zones", which had areas of 71,758.20 km 2 (57.99%) and 51,980.13 km 2 (42.01%), respectively. The core conservation zones were further zoned into primary vulnerable zones and secondary vulnerable zones. The subzones of the general control zones are multifunctional and they are tourism-grazing-living zones, grazing-living zones, tourism-living zones, tourism zones and other areas., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)