Closing the gap? Top-down versus bottom-up projections of China’s regional energy use and CO₂ emissions☆

Many studies have reported associations between air pollution and health impacts, but few studies have explicitly differentiated the economic effects of PM_2.5 and ozone at China's regional level. This study compares the PM_2.5 and ozone pollution-related health impacts based on an integrated approach. The research framework combines an air pollutant emission projection model (GAINS), an air quality model (GEOS-Chem), a health model using the latest exposure-response functions, medical prices and value of statistical life (VSL), and a general equilibrium model (CGE). Results show that eastern provinces in China encounter severer loss from PM_2.5 and more benefit from mitigation policy, whereas the lower income western provinces encounter severer health impacts and economic burdens due to ozone pollution, and the impact in southern and central provinces is relatively lower. In 2030, without control policies, PM _2.5 pollution could lead to losses of 2.0% in Gross Domestic Production (GDP), 210 billion Chinese Yuan (CNY) in health expenditure and a life loss of around 10,000 billion, while ozone pollution could contribute to GDP loss by 0.09% (equivalent to 78 billion CNY), 310 billion CNY in health expenditure, and a life loss of 2300 billion CNY (equivalent to 2.7% of GDP). By contrast, with control policies, the GDP and VSLs loss in 2030 attributable to ambient air pollution could be reduced significantly. We also find that the health and economic impacts of ozone pollution are significantly lower than PM_2.5, but are much more difficult to mitigate. The Chinese government should promote air pollution control policies that could jointly reduce PM_2.5 and ozone pollution.

The traditional paradigm of centralised electricity systems is being disrupted by increasing levels of distributed generation. It is unclear as to what level of distributed generation is expected, appropriate or optimal in future power systems. Many researchers have focused on how to integrate distributed generation into centralised electricity systems. Such research tends to consider optimality from narrow viewpoints focused on particular aspects of the electricity network such as the distribution network within the confines of a vision of future electricity systems where centralised infrastructure remains. There is a gap in the literature in considering the role of distributed generation (DG) within the context of the entire electricity system and the wider energy sector and how it can drive the development of an electricity system to maintain a centralised approach or increase decentralisation. This paper explores the factors that influence the role of DG in future electricity systems and the existing tools that can be used to explore how these factors can impact the role of DG considering four future visions for electricity systems each with increasing levels of decentralisation. The review concludes that there is no one tool that can be used to explore all of the factors and their impact on the role of DG.

Cities are the major contributors to energy consumption and CO₂ emissions, as well as being leading innovators and implementers of policy measures in climate change mitigation. Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) is an agglomeration of cities put forward by China to strengthen international cooperation among "Belt and Road" countries and promote low-carbon, inclusive, coordinated and sustainable development. Few studies have discussed the emission characteristics of GBA cities. This study, for the first time, compiles emission inventories of 11 GBA cities and their surroundings based on IPCC territorial emission accounting approach, which are consistent and comparable with the national and provincial inventories. Results show that (a) total emissions increased from 426 Mt in 2000 to 610 Mt in 2016, while emissions of GBA cities increased rapidly by 6.9% over 2000–2011 and peaked in 2014 (334 Mt); (b) raw coal and diesel oil are the top two emitters by energy type, while energy production sector and tertiary industry are the top two largest sectors; (c) GBA cities take the lead in low-carbon development, emitted 4% of total national emissions and contributed 13% of national GDP with less than a third of national emission intensities and less than three-quarters of national per capita emissions; (d) Macao, Shenzhen and Hong Kong have the top three lowest emission intensity in the country; (e) most of GBA cities are experiencing the shift from an industrial economy to a service economy, while Hong Kong, Shenzhen, Foshan and Huizhou reached their peak emissions and Guangzhou, Dongguan and Jiangmen remained decreasing emission tendencies; (g) for those coal-dominate or energy-production cities (i.e. Zhuhai, Zhongshan, Zhaoqing, Maoming, Yangjiang, Shanwei, Shaoguan and Zhanjiang) in mid-term industrialization, total emissions experienced soaring increases. The emission inventories provide robust, self-consistent, transparent and comparable data support for identifying spatial–temporal emission characteristics, developing low-carbon policies, monitoring mitigation progress in GBA cities as well as further emissions-related studies at a city-level. The low-carbon roadmaps designed for GBA cities and their surroundings also provide a benchmark for other developing countries/cities to adapting changing climate and achieve sustainable development.

Citation Excerpt :

Globalization leads the modern world towards green sources of energy. Green energy is clean sources of energy that have a lower environmental impact compared to conventional energy technology. Green energy plays a significant role in the strategic energy planning process for any country. Regarding energy resources, India plays an important part on the world scene. However, the energy systems of the different regions and territories varied on various parameters. Therefore, a detailed green energy planning for sustainable development has been studied extensively to find the most suitable common strategy for energy management to answer the following questions: (i) which approaches were predominantly applied in a particular region? (ii) Which evaluating criteria were paid more intentness to energy planning for sustainable development in that region? (iii) Is there any inadequacy of the approaches?. Various decision-making strategies, integrated approaches, combined methods have proposed to characterize the energy management problem by different researchers. In modern power management, the performance of different green energy is evaluated against multiple criteria rather than considering a single factor-consumption. This paper reviews the various work on distinct approaches, integrated approaches, multi-criteria decision-making methods, etc., for green energy planning and scheduling problem. This research not only provides confirmation that the energy management strategies are better than the traditional methods, but also aids the researchers and decision makers in applying the procedures.

This study assesses the economic impacts and environmental co-benefits of large-scale development of renewable energy (RE) in China toward 2050 using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with distinguished improvements in the power sector. Two scenarios are constructed: a reference scenario assuming conventional development of RE and an REmax scenario assuming large-scale RE development by tapping China’s RE potential. The results show that large-scale RE development would not incur a significant macroeconomic cost. On the contrary, it would have significant green growth effects that benefit the growth of upstream industries, reshape the energy structure, and bring substantial environmental co-benefits. If the share of RE reaches 56% in the total primary energy in 2050, then non-fossil power sectors will become a mainstay industry with value added accounting for 3.4% of the GDP, a share comparable to other sectors such as agriculture (2.5%), iron and steel (3.3%), and construction (2.1%). In RE max scenario, the large scale RE development will stimulate the output worth of 1ドル.18 trillion from other RE related upstream industries and create 4.12 million jobs in 2050. In addition to economic benefits, it could substantially reduce the emissions of CO₂ and air pollutants such as NO_x, SO₂.