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Abstract China's industrial transformation of the past thirty years, when its GDP has been increasing by an average of 10% per year, has been underpinned by an energy industrial revolution. Electrical energy is the driver of this transformation, with China utilizing latecomer advantages in building an electrical energy generation machine of prodigious size. In terms of electrical energy generated, China's system has expanded twelve-fold in 30 years, from 280 TWh in 1980 to over 3500 TWh in 2010. In this paper we describe the principal features of this remarkable transformation, examining the official projections to 2020, the semi-official projections to 2050, and offering our own projections based on observed logistic industrial dynamics for the uptake of renewable energies as well as the continuing role to be played by fossil fuels, particularly coal. We emphasize the role to be played by China's construction of a ‘strong and smart’ electric power grid, as envisaged in the 12th Five Year Plan released in March 2011, and the complementary proposals to build a national high speed rail system. We see China as on track to phase out fossil fuels altogether in its power production system by the end of the century. We develop an argument as to why it might be expected that fossil fuel utilization will decline while renewable energy utilization might increase in China, constituting a genuine energy industrial revolution.

The shift to renewable energy options and low-carbon technologies, in response to the concerns over energy security and climate change, is proceeding more slowly than many would like. The usual argument against rapid deployment of new technologies is the costs imposed on the economy, commonly interpreted in terms of upfront costs to be borne or involving large cash transfers to fund, for example, efforts to preserve rainforests. In this contribution I argue that such a perspective provides a continuing barrier to taking effective action, whereas a perspective based on creation and use of carbon credits provides a means of avoiding the shock of abrupt industrial change. Carbon credits granted for bona fide carbon load reductions could be created through private initiative, for example by merchant banks, to constitute a market that will complement regulatory-based initiatives such as national emissions trading systems. This is not a novel idea; indeed it is the way that capitalism has funded every major change, including the Industrial Revolution, through the creation of credit. The emergence of a global carbon credit economy is likely to precede a global regulatory system governing climate change and will doubtless help to stimulate the emergence of such a global system.

La inyección de carbón vegetal por toberas en Altos Hornos, aqui denominada Bio-PCI, se presenta como una forma atractiva y realista de reducir significativamente las emisiones de CO2 generadas durante la producción de arrabio. En esta contribución se presenta un resumen de los fundamentos tecnológicos, los beneficios y las limitaciones de la incorporación de la tecnología del Bio-PCI. Adicionalmente se exponen los retos económicos que enfrentan los combustibles renovables a los fósiles, con especial interés en los principales costos de producción del carbón vegetal. En este sentido se plantea una pregunta estratégica: ¿puede la biomasa residual impulsar el desarrollo de la Bio-PCI?. Nuestro análisis conlleva a concluir que la utilización de biomasa residual (residuos forestales y agrícolas) puede reducir sensiblemente el costo del carbón vegetal entre 120-180 USD/t en comparación con biomasa primaria, incrementando su competitividad frente al carbón mineral.

Abstract Capitalism is arguably the most amazing cultural and economic product of humankind. It nurtured political liberty in Europe; it ushered in the industrial revolution in Britain and then around the world; it raised incomes everywhere; and it cleared away centuries of obscurantism and superstition. But it also brought into being a ‘spirit of capitalism’ that is individualist, expansive, acquisitive, ruthlessly rational and insatiable. This spirit has been responsible for commodifying relations and turning the natural world into a ‘resource base’ on the one hand, and a sink for wastes at the other. The industrial scale of this objectification and destruction of the natural setting has proceeded to the point where it is global, and now threatens our industrial civilization with collapse. My purpose in this paper is to sketch an account of how industrial capitalism might be ‘naturalized’, so that it continues to grow and deliver improvements in the quality of life without destroying humankind's resource base, and the biosphere as well. My focus is on rules and institutions rather than policies or prescriptions. My argument is that a green economy is already growing within the old, fossil-fuel economy, and that through competitive dynamics it will dominate by mid-century – unless blocked politically by vested interests.

Abstract How are biofuels to be certified as produced in a sustainable and responsible fashion? In the global debate over this issue, one party to the proceedings seems rarely to be mentioned—namely the commodities exchanges through which a global biofuels market is being created. In this contribution, I propose a solution to the problem of sustainability certification through a biofuels futures contract equipped with ‘proof of origin’ documentation. The proposal does not call for any radical break with current practice, extending existing certification procedures with a requirement for the vendor to provide documentation, probably in barcoded form, of the history of the biofuel offered for sale, including plantation and biorefinery where the biofuel was produced and subsequent blendings it may have undergone. The proposal is thus compatible with the blending practices of large global traders, whose activities are the source of the difficulties of other approaches to certification. It is argued that if such a sustainable futures contract for bioethanol (in the first instance) were to be introduced, then it would likely trade at a premium and become the primary vehicle for North–South trade in biofuels.

Current Kyoto-based approaches to reducing the earth's greenhouse gas problem involve looking for ways to reduce emissions. But these are palliative at best, and at worst will allow the problem to get out of hand. It is only through sequestration of atmospheric carbon that the problem can be solved. Carbon-negative biofuels represent the first potentially huge assault on the problem, in ways that are already technically feasible and practicable. The key to carbon negativity is to see it not as technically determined but as an issue of strategic choice, whereby farmers and fuel producers can decide how much carbon to return to the soil. Biochar amendment to the soil not only sequesters carbon but also enhances the fertility and vitality of the soil. The time is approaching when biofuels will be carbon negative by definition, and, as such, they will sweep away existing debates over their contribution to the solution of global warming.

Abstract Energy futures continue to attract heated debate. There is a well-established tradition associated with centralized giga-scale nuclear systems and continental super grids, which may be contrasted with future trajectories based on decentralized “conventional” renewables such as hydro, wind and solar power. The traditional centralized view emphasizes a seemingly ineluctable direction of evolution based on claimed fossil fuel decarbonization which leads, via nuclear power, to the hydrogen economy. But China and to some extent India are emerging as the principal practitioners of an alternative vision of energy growth, underpinning their vast industrialization efforts, based on conventional renewables that are the products of manufacturing, and whose industrial dynamics are driven by cost reduction achieved by learning curves. In this paper, a critique is offered of the traditional view of a centralized energy future, and a restatement of the real drivers of alternative energy pathways actually being pursued by countries like China and India is offered.

Summary Eco-industrial initiatives, which close industrial loops by turning wastes at one point in a value chain into inputs at another point, are attracting growing interest as a solution to the problem of sustainability of industrial systems. Although Germany and Japan have made important advances in building recycling incentives into their industrial systems and sought competitive advantage from doing so, China is arguably taking the issue even further (in principle) through its pursuit of a circular economy, now enshrined in law as an official national development goal. In this article, we review a number of the eco-industrial initiatives taken in China and compare them using a common graphical representation with comparable initiatives taken in the West and elsewhere in East Asia. Our aim is to demonstrate some common themes across the case studies, such as the transformation from the former linear economy to a circular economy and the evolutionary processes in which dynamic linkages are gradually established over time. We discuss the drivers of these eco-industrial initiatives as well as the inhibitors, setting the initiatives in an evolutionary framework and introducing a notion of Pareto eco-efficiency to evaluate them. We make the argument that China might be capturing latecomer advantages through its systematic promotion of eco-industrial initiatives within a circular economy framework.