• Energy Research

The significant spike in global energy prices induced by the Russian-Ukrainian (RU) conflict is perceived as highly uncertain that may rise household living costs and adversely affect Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty elimination. However, the impacts on human wellbeing are entirely obscured by conventional economic analyses. Using the input-output price model and a human needs framework, we assess the impact of energy price shocks caused by the RU conflict on eight dimensions of human needs in 49 countries/regions. Our findings show that the non-material dimension Creation and the material dimension Protection are the most affected human needs globally, with declines of 3.7%–8.5% and 3.6%–8.4%, respectively. Households in BRICS countries are hit hardest on these human needs (2.0-2.2 times the global average) owing to higher price increases and higher energy-dependent consumption patterns. The human need satisfaction of low-income groups is not only severely affected, but also the poorer the country in which they reside, the more serious the decline of their satisfaction, while there is no such problem for higher income groups. Our findings underscore the need to consider both material and frequently overlooked non-material dimensions of wellbeing when designing targeted policies to protect the vulnerable from energy price shocks.

Decarbonisation is a complex systemic issue that involves multiple market failures. Thus, the integrated application of multiple policy instruments is required. This study used the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) method to explore the causality relationship between decarbonisation policies with reference to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the decoupling elasticity of Tapio from a configuration perspective. We found that taxation and regulation are the critical drivers of decoupling, while information and public goods and services are ancillary. Three decoupled policy mixes were tabled, each focusing on a) taxation, b) taxation and economic instruments, and c) trading system and regulations. In contrast, the execution of information and voluntary instruments, as well as the non-implementation of the tax, are essential to non-decoupling. Three combinations that are negative for decoupling were also introduced: a) trade and economic incentives, b) trade, information and voluntary instruments, and c) information, public goods and services, and voluntary instruments. The most valuable policy mix for China is the implementation of taxes, trade, economic and regulations with the provision of auxiliary decarbonised information and public goods and services. The following processes are involved: a) integrate regulations with economic policies for more flexibility; b) introduce the carbon tax and a tax rebate policy to complement the carbon market policy based on research into the feasibility and cost-effectiveness; c) provide information and public services mainly on the consumption side; and d) recommend voluntary policies for innovative practices. On the basis of more cases and a configuration perspective, this study offers various policy mixes that are conducive or not to decoupling and suggestions for optimising China’s decarbonisation policy. We also offered a way to measure the intensity of the decarbonisation policy with respect to the carbon emission structure of sectors.

Although widely recognized as the key to climate goals, coal "phase down" has long been argued for its side effects on energy security and social development. Retrofitting coal power units with biomass and coal co-firing with a carbon capture and storage approach provides an alternative way to avoid these side effects and make deep carbon dioxide emission cuts or even achieve negative emission. However, there is a lack of clear answers to how much the maximum emission reduction potential this approach can unlock, which is the key information to promote this technology on a large scale. Here, we focus on helping China's 4536 coal power units make differentiated retrofit choices based on unit-level heterogeneity information and resource spatial matching results. We found that China's coal power units have the potential to achieve 0.4 Gt of negative CO2 emission in 2025, and the cumulative negative CO2 emission would reach 10.32 Gt by 2060. To achieve negative CO2 emission, the biomass resource amount should be 1.65 times the existing agricultural and forestry residues, and the biomass and coal co-firing ratio should exceed 70%. Coal power units should grasp their time window; otherwise, the maximum negative potential would decrease at a rate of 0.35 Gt per year.

Future climate change is likely to alter cold spell-related disease burden. Few projection studies have considered the potential impact of the aging population with changing population size on cold spell-related disease burdens.We derived the association between cold spells and daily mortality for 272 main cities in mainland China. We combined these associations with modeled daily temperatures from three different climate models under two climate change scenarios and three population scenarios to project excess deaths related to cold spells. Furthermore, we used the factor separation method to calculate the independent contribution of future population size, age structure, and climate change on projected deaths attributable to cold spells.Compared to the baseline period, future excess deaths related to cold spells are expected to increase over most of the decades under RCP 2.6 (81.5% in 2050 s and 37% in 2090 s) and RCP 4.5 (55.5% in 2050 s and -19% in 2090 s). The factor analysis indicated that the rise of the aged population (≥65) substantially would amplify the excess deaths related to cold spells (increase by 101.1% in the 2050 s and 146.2% in the 2090 s). For the near future (2021-2040), population aging could fully offset the influence of decreased cold-spell days. In the middle of this century (2051-2070), the total excess deaths will exhibit significant variation across three scenarios. By the end of 21 century (2081-2100), the population shrinking would reduce the total excess deaths.Excess deaths related to cold spells may still increase in a warming climate and future demographic shifts would produce considerable influences in this increase for different periods.

When evaluating climate policy, previous researchers tend to exaggerate positive employment benefits at aggregate level. Nevertheless, distributional employment at sectoral level is usually neglected, and consequently policy implementation may be impeded by the sectors with severe employment loss. Hence, distributional employment impacts of climate policy should be comprehensively studied. To achieve this target, in this paper, a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model is employed to simulate the Chinese nationwide Emission Trading Scheme (ETS). The CGE model results show that the ETS decreased total labor employment by approximately 3% in 2021, and then this negative impact will diminish to zero in 2024; the ETS will positively affect total labor employment in 2025-2030. The ETS increases labor employment in the electricity sectors and also agriculture, water, heat, and gas production sectors, as these sectors are complementary to the electricity sectors or do not have intensive use of electricity. In contrast, the ETS decreases labor employment in the sectors with intensive use of electricity, including the coal and petrol production, manufacturing, mining, construction, transport, and service sectors. Overall, a climate policy, which covers electricity generation only and is time-invariant, tends to have time-decreasing employment impacts. Because this policy increases labor employment in electricity generation from nonrenewable energy, it cannot help achieve low-carbon transition.

Abstract As current action remains insufficient to meet the goals of the Paris agreement let alone to stabilize the climate, there is increasing hope that solutions related to demand, services and social aspects of climate change mitigation can close the gap. However, given these topics are not investigated by a single epistemic community, the literature base underpinning the associated research continues to be undefined. Here, we aim to delineate a plausible body of literature capturing a comprehensive spectrum of demand, services and social aspects of climate change mitigation. As method we use a novel double-stacked expert—machine learning research architecture and expert evaluation to develop a typology and map key messages relevant for climate change mitigation within this body of literature. First, relying on the official key words provided to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by governments (across 17 queries), and on specific investigations of domain experts (27 queries), we identify 121 165 non-unique and 99 065 unique academic publications covering issues relevant for demand-side mitigation. Second, we identify a literature typology with four key clusters: policy, housing, mobility, and food/consumption. Third, we systematically extract key content-based insights finding that the housing literature emphasizes social and collective action, whereas the food/consumption literatures highlight behavioral change, but insights also demonstrate the dynamic relationship between behavioral change and social norms. All clusters point to the possibility of improved public health as a result of demand-side solutions. The centrality of the policy cluster suggests that political actions are what bring the different specific approaches together. Fourth, by mapping the underlying epistemic communities we find that researchers are already highly interconnected, glued together by common interests in sustainability and energy demand. We conclude by outlining avenues for interdisciplinary collaboration, synthetic analysis, community building, and by suggesting next steps for evaluating this body of literature.