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This study examined the effects of climate change on rice production in 30 Chinese provinces spanning 1998–2017. The study used the pooled mean group technique to capture the long-run and short-run effects of changing climatic conditions on rice production. It further employed the Dumitrescu–Hurlin panel causality test to examine the path of causality between the key variables and rice production. The study found that, in the long run, average temperature negatively influenced rice production, but average rainfall had a positive effect on rice production. The results indicated that the cultivated area and fertilizer usage were positively related to rice production in the long run. The short-run results accentuated that average temperature favourably influenced nationwide rice production, whereas average rainfall had no substantial effect on national rice production. The cultivated area had a significant positive short-term relationship with rice production, although the impact of fertilizer usage on rice production was negligible in the short run. Besides, the results established a bidirectional causality between rice output and the cultivated area, but there was a one-way causality running from fertilizer usage to rice output. Finally, the results indicated that, except for rainfall, a unidirectional causality exists between temperature and rice production. The study, therefore, recommends that in the case of crop failure due to weather conditions, policymakers could implement a new pricing policy to mitigate the deterioration of the farmers’ income. The government must also develop and implement an insurance scheme that compensates farmers for catastrophes induced by rainfall deficiency.

Abstract Power-to-gas (PtG), as a promising technology proposed to store surplus renewable energy (RE), can hardly be commercialized for its low profitability. In this paper, three approaches are proposed in this paper to enhance the profitability of the PtG. Firstly, a cooperative union containing PtG is proposed and its sustainability analysis is undertaken based on Shapley Value method. Secondly, the PtG reaction heat, as an essential by-product of PtG which is valuable and therefore requires further study, is fully exploited for district heating in the operation of regional integrated energy system, which is solved by an improved SOCP method. Thirdly, a symbiosis cooperation mode is designed for wind power and PtG to enhance the benefit of PtG through optimization-based trading strategy, which is a MINLP model and solved by Big-M method. The results show that the daily profit of PtG is significantly increased with the cooperative union as the symbiosis cooperation mode can produce a 15.1% profit lift, meanwhile, exploitation of reaction heat can produce an 8.6% profit lift. Finally, our study reveals the conflict of interest between wind power and the cogeneration. A sensitivity study on the proportion of reaction heat used for district heating is performed to verify the mutually beneficial relation between PtG and the cogeneration. The findings of this paper can guide the commercialization of PtG.

Abstract Over the last decades, electricity markets across OECD countries have been subjected to profound structural changes with far-reaching implications on the economy and the environment. This paper investigates the effect of restructuring – changes in entry regulations, the degree of vertical integration and ownership structure – on GHG emissions. The findings show that competition policies – particularly reducing the degree of vertical integration and increasing privatization – correlate negatively with emission intensity. However, the environmental effect of reducing market entry barriers is generally insignificant. Integration of competition and stringent environmental policies are required to reduce GHG emissions and improve environmental quality.

Although the integrated energy and environmental planning processes of cities and territories with more than 50,000 inhabitants differ, previous studies suggest that long-term, model-based energy planning processes have a common scheme that can also be used as a framework for reviewing the methods and the tools that are used in the integrated energy planning of these cities and territories. This paper first presents a generic integrated energy planning procedure in which the planning activities are divided into four main phases. Second, the methods and the tools that are used for these diverse planning tasks are mapped to the suggested generic planning procedure tasks. Finally, the combined use of these methods and tools in the scope of integrated energy planning are briefly discussed from a mapping point of view.

Abstract The establishment of building energy consumption quota as a comprehensive indicator used to evaluate the actual energy consumption level is an important measure for promoting the development of building energy efficiency. This paper focused on the determination method of the quota, and firstly introduced the procedure of establishing energy consumption quota of public buildings including four important parts: collecting data, classifying and calculating EUIs, standardizing EUIs, determining the measure method of central tendency. The paper also illustrated the standardization process of EUI by actual calculation based on the samples of 10 commercial buildings and 19 hotel buildings. According to the analysis of the frequency distribution of standardized EUIs of sample buildings and combining the characteristics of each measure method of central tendency, comprehensive application of mode and percentage rank is selected to be the best method for determining the energy consumption quota of public buildings. Finally the paper gave some policy proposals on energy consumption quota to help achieve the goal of further energy conservation.

The effect of osmotic pressure on erythritol and mannitol production by an osmophilic yeast strain of Yarrowia lipolytica CICC 1675 using glycerol as the sole carbon source was investigated. Appropriately high osmotic pressure was found to enhance erythritol production and inhibit mannitol formation. A novel two-stage osmotic pressure control fed-batch strategy based on the kinetic analysis was developed for higher erythritol yield and productivity. During the first 96 h, the osmotic pressure was maintained at 4.25 osmol/kg by feeding glycerol to reduce the inhibition of cell growth. After 132 h, the osmotic pressure was controlled at 4.94 osmol/kg to maintain a high dp(ery)/dt. Maximum erythritol yield of 194.3g/L was obtained with 0.95 g/L/h productivity, which were 25.7% and 2.2%, respectively, improvement over the best results in one-stage fed-batch fermentation. This is the first report that a novel osmotic pressure control fed-batch strategy significantly enhanced erythritol production.

Abstract In this study, we propose a novel integrated approach incorporating super-efficiency slack-based measure with undesirable outputs, difference-in-difference and propensity score matching difference-in-difference to explore the effects of carbon trading mechanism on green development efficiency in terms of impact direction, impact degree and impact mode. Taking the provincial data of China from 1999 to 2017 as an example, the empirical results show that China's green development efficiencies have upward, downward and U-shaped trends. Carbon trading mechanism, research and development intensity, and pollution control investment have a positive effect on green development efficiency. However, population capital, urbanization and degree of openness have a negative effect on green development efficiency.

Abstract Considering the sustainable energy strategy for buildings, external wall insulation system is expected to play an important role in building energy conversation. And higher energy efficiency drives our demands for much thicker thermal insulation materials. However, it does not mean that the thicker the better, especially considering various requirements and properties. Among these are materials mechanical strength, aging durability, water resistance, construction difficulty and even fire safety performance. In the following paper to explore fire safety of organic thermal insulation, polyurethane foam (PUF) and extruded polystyrene (XPS) were selected to carry out a series of lab-scale tests over a wide range of widths. What is more, some fire safety aspects have been studied and compared: temperature variation in solid and gas phase, heat and mass transfer process, flame propagation over material surface, flame height, material melting and charring, etc. The aim of exploring relationship between material flammability and width is to help to select a proper width when considering fire safety, and lay a foundation for us to conduct real fire disaster of external insulation system in following study.

An analysis of electricity market reforms already taken place in the UK, Norway, Alberta (Canada) and California (USA) leads to our overall conclusion that the introduction of a competitive generation market, of itself, has failed to deliver reliable service at low and stable prices. The market reform failures are attributed to market power abuse by few dominant sellers (especially at times of transmission congestion), poor market design that invites strategic bidding by suppliers, the lack of customer response to price spikes, capacity shortage caused by demand growth not matched by new capacity, and thin trading of forward and futures contracts that are critical for price discovery and risk management. The paper then explains why an electricity market reform can easily fail to deliver the promised gains of better service at lower and more stable prices. The policy implication is that an electric market reform can be extremely risky, and may lead to a disastrous outcome. Thus, it is imprudent to implement such a reform in countries with limited sites for newgeneration and no indigenous fuels (e.g., Israel and Hong Kong). These countries should therefore consider introducing performance-based regulation that can immediately benefit electricity consumers in terms of lower prices, more stable prices, improved reliability, more choices, while encouraging the electric sector to pursue efficient operation and investment. r 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.