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AbstractThe Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis suggests that, as a country's national income grows, environmental degradation subsides as the population demands a cleaner environment. On the other hand, critics of the Environmental Kuznets Curve claim that many polluting industries simply relocate offshore, where environmental compliance is less costly. They then export their products back to their previous home countries. This is known as the Pollution Haven hypothesis. This article demonstrates how pollution havens can falsely give the appearance of an Environmental Kuznets Curve by analysing lead emissions from the US automotive tyre manufacturing industry.

Abstract Hydrogen is considered a potential game changer for world energy systems and a solution to climate change concerns, as it generates zero waste and it is suited for power generation and transportation. Despite its several advantages, there are significant technical challenges in deploying a stable hydrogen economy including improving its process efficiencies, lowering production costs, maintaining cost-effective transmission and distribution, and exploiting inexpensive and sustainable feedstocks. In this context, a detailed study was conducted to analyze the production sources, technologies, storage and transport systems, and global potential exportable feedstocks to produce hydrogen. A comprehensive analysis of current hydrogen production technologies with their energy efficiencies and hydrogen selling prices was reported in this study. Various hydrogen production technologies with their capital investments and CO2 emissions were also presented. Potential feedstocks for hydrogen production were identified and analyzed through a product space model, which characterizes a network of global exportable products based on their similarities and productive knowledge. It was established that the hydrogen production feedstocks and sources currently used are primarily available in six countries: the United States of America, France, Russia, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Spain. Broadly, the results revealed that the United States of America and Russia shared the highest hydrogen feedstock exports, indicating a higher probability of hydrogen production in these countries. Except for Russia, all the studied countries fell in the most desired quadrant, indicating that they can move in all product space directions to exploit unexplored hydrogen feedstocks for better sustainable economic growth.

Abstract Eradicating poverty and mitigating greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are core issues of global sustainable development goals (SDGs), and China is struggling in realizing these targets. The poverty reduction that leads to popualtion structure and lifestyle changes would have an impact on GHG emission changes. However, few studies have assessed the historical and future impacts of the poverty allevation on China's emissions. Here by linking Chinese Multi-Regional Input Output (MRIO) database to the global MRIO database EXIOBASE, and using provincial household consumption data, we identified the distribution of Chinese household greenhouse gas footprints (HGFs) by income groups in 2015 at the national and provinical levels. Moreover, we focused on the historical impact of poverty alleviation on HGFs during 2010–2015, and developed four scenarios to project future HGFs changes due to poverty alleviation by 2030. We find that eradicating extreme poverty in the secanrio S2, i.e., bringing people to an income above $1.9 daily, does not cause a large emission impact with current technological level. However, lifting people from a higher poverty line of $5.5 per day in the sceanrio S4 results in a 1.6% increase in emissions compared with the scenario S1 without any poverty reduction goals. Furthermore, realizing a higher poverty reduction target will result in an increase of emissions contribution from internatioanl supply chains due to the differences in consumption patterns among different income groups. Our study highlights the conflict between the high poverty alleviaition goal and emission reduciton in China, and reminds us of the need to make more technological efforts for avoiding the large emissions embodied in international supply chains.

Abstract China's carbon emissions have been ranking first in the world. This study filled in the gaps in research, decomposed carbon intensity from the perspective of time, space and industry. A decoupling effort model based on factor decomposition models was constructed to analyze the driving factors of carbon emissions and economic decoupling, which builded a foundation for achieving sustainable economic development. Using the Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index method (LMDI), the paper measured the carbon emission intensity of 29 provinces and cities in China from 1998 to 2019, and decomposed the decoupling effect between GDP and carbon emission on the basis of factor decomposition by tapio. The results showed that: (1) Carbon intensity declined first, then rise lightly, and finally declined steadily. For the primary industry and the tertiary industry, the carbon intensity declined steadily, while the carbon intensity increased accordingly to the overall carbon intensity. In terms of spatial evolution, the regional differences between different provinces decreased correspondingly. (2) The cumulative contribution rates of these three effects, i.e., technological progress, industrial structure and regional scale were 106.3299%, −15.1486% and 8.8188%, respectively. There were obvious differences of these cumulative contribution rates of carbon intensity among different provinces. (3) From the perspective of industrial, technological progress effect is the largest contribution for carbon intensity in the secondary industry. The Industrial structure effect mainly affects the primary and tertiary industries; and no significant difference in regional scale effect. (4) The decoupling effect gradually improved, and technological progress has played an absolute leading role in promoting the decoupling effect. Based on the research results, the key policy recommendation are put forward as follows: (1) Further improve the technological level and support clean technology enterprises. (2) Promote industrial upgrading in backward industrial provinces (3) Promote regional assistance and the introduction of high-quality foreign investment.

Abstract The global steel production has been growing for the last 50 years, from 200 Mt in 1950s to 1 240 Mt in 2006. Iron and steel making industry is one of the most energy-intensive industries, with an annual energy consumption of about 24 EJ, 5% of the world's total energy consumption. The steel industry accounts for 3%–4% of total world greenhouse gas emissions. Enhancing energy efficiency and employing energy saving/recovering technologies such as coke dry quechning (CDQ) and top pressure recovery turbine (TRT) can be short-term approaches to the steel industry to reduce greenhouse gas emission. The long-term approaches to achieving a significant reduction in CO2 emissions from the steel industry would be through developing and applying CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making, and through increasing use of renewable energy for iron and steel making. Thus, an overview of new CO2 breakthrough technologies for iron and steel making was made.

Abstract To empirically verify whether financial risk affects global carbon emissions, this study investigates the financial risk-emission nexus by employing a global balanced panel dataset of 62 countries over the period 2003–2018. Furthermore, we explore the mediation effect of technological innovation on the financial risk-emission nexus. Fully considering potential regional heterogeneity and asymmetry, this study further analyzes the heterogeneous and asymmetric relationships among the variables, such as the difference between regional comprehensive economic partnership countries and other countries. The empirical results indicate that: (1) a mediation effect between financial risk and global carbon emissions exists; in other words, increased financial risk not only reduces global carbon emissions directly, but can also have an indirect impact in mitigating carbon emissions by promoting technological innovation; (2) the impacts of financial risk and technological innovation on global carbon emissions show significant regional heterogeneity; and (3) financial risk and technological innovation show asymmetry across different quantiles. To be specific, technological innovation and financial risk have a significant inhibitory effect on global carbon emissions only in the 10th quantile, while promoting carbon emissions in other quantiles.

Scientifically evaluating the level of low-carbon development in terms of theoretical and practical significance is extremely important to coal enterprise groups for implementing national energy-related systems. This assessment can assist in building institutional mechanisms that are conducive for the economic development of coal business cycle and energy conservation as well as promoting the healthy development of coal enterprises to realize coal scientific development and resource utilization. First, by adopting systematic analysis method, this study builds low-carbon development evaluation index system for coal enterprise groups. Second, to determine the weight serving as guideline and criteria of the index, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is applied using integrated linear weighted sum method to evaluate the level of low-carbon development of coal enterprise groups. Evaluation is also performed by coal enterprise groups, and the process comprises field analysis and evaluation. Finally, industrial policies are proposed regarding the development of low-carbon coal conglomerate strategies and measures. This study aims mainly to guide the low-carbon development of coal enterprise groups, solve the problem of coal mining and the destruction of ecological environment, support the conservation of raw materials and various resources, and achieve the sustainable development of the coal industry.

Abstract Rapid economic growth and accelerating urbanization in the past three decades have accelerated the exhaustion of China’s mineral resources. China is the world’s largest consumer and importer of nickel resources; therefore, a growing domestic demand will increase China’s import dependence and in turn make it potentially vulnerable to supply shortages. One hundred years from 1950 to 2050 were examined for China’s nickel utilization. Identified domestic nickel resources can only sustain China’s industries until 2017, but nickel will reach peak utilization around the year of 2020–2022. Given the 5% annual increase in applications and the growing importation of minerals in China, the carrying duration of nickel resources until 2020 will require a nickel-recycling rate of more than 90%. To sustain China’s nickel utilization, future strategies should foster three solutions: maintaining a high level of imports, adjusting the landscape of nickel applications, and shifting from virgin mining of geological minerals to urban mining of anthropogenic resources.

AbstractAir supply system, as a crucial subsystem of proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC), plays a very significant role in the efficiency and the reliability of the system. In order to better control the air supply subsystem, an appropriate model needs to be established to describe the subsystem covering whole working conditions from PEMFC startup to shutdown. This paper propose a linearized parameter varying (LPV) model based on system identification. To describe the subsystem in different working conditions, the subsystem is identified near 7 equilibrium points. Identification results show that the subsystem can be described as several linear models near equilibrium points. Based on these linear models, a LPV model is proposed solving 2‐D interpolation problem. It is proved theoretically that LPV system has the same steady‐state character and linear model at equilibrium points with identification models. The simulation and experiments results also verify that the LPV model can cover the working conditions from PEMFC startup to shutdown with accuracy both in dynamic condition and steady state.