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The past decade has seen the development of various scenarios describing long-term patterns of future Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, with each new approach adding insights to our understanding of the changing dynamics of energy consumption and aggregate future energy trends. With the recent growing focus on China's energy use and emission mitigation potential, a range of Chinese outlook models have been developed across different institutions including in China's Energy Research Institute's 2050 China Energy and CO2 Emissions Report, McKinsey & Co's China's Green Revolution report, the UK Sussex Energy Group and Tyndall Centre's China's Energy Transition report, and the China-specific section of the IEA World Energy Outlook 2009. At the same time, the China Energy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) has developed a bottom-up, end-use energy model for China with scenario analysis of energy and emission pathways out to 2050. A robust and credible energy and emission model will play a key role in informing policymakers by assessing efficiency policy impacts and understanding the dynamics of future energy consumption and energy saving and emission reduction potential. This is especially true for developing countries such as China, where uncertainties are greater while the economy continues to undergo rapid growth and industrialization. A slightly different assumption or storyline could result in significant discrepancies among different model results. Therefore, it is necessary to understand the key models in terms of their scope, methodologies, key driver assumptions and the associated findings. A comparative analysis of LBNL's energy end-use model scenarios with the five above studies was thus conducted to examine similarities and divergences in methodologies, scenario storylines, macroeconomic drivers and assumptions as well as aggregate energy and emission scenario results. Besides directly tracing different energy and CO2 savings potential back to the underlying strategies and combination of efficiency and abatement policy instruments represented by each scenario, this analysis also had other important but often overlooked findings.
Urbanization is reshaping China's economy, society, and energy system. Between 1990 and 2008 China added more than 300 million new urban residents, bringing the total urbanization rate to 46%. The ongoing population shift is spurring energy demand for new construction, as well as additional residential use with the replacement of rural biomass by urban commercial energy services. This project developed a modeling tool to quantify the full energy consequences of a particular form of urban residential development in order to identify energy- and carbon-efficient modes of neighborhood-level development and help mitigate resource and environmental implications of swelling cities. LBNL developed an integrated modeling tool that combines process-based lifecycle assessment with agent-based building operational energy use, personal transport, and consumption modeling. The lifecycle assessment approach was used to quantify energy and carbon emissions embodied in building materials production, construction, maintenance, and demolition. To provide more comprehensive analysis, LBNL developed an agent-based model as described below. The model was applied to LuJing, a residential development in Jinan, Shandong Province, to provide a case study and model proof of concept. This study produced results data that are unique by virtue of their scale, scope and type. Whereas most existing literature focuses on building-, city-, or national-level analysis, this study covers multi-building neighborhood-scale development. Likewise, while most existing studies focus exclusively on building operational energy use, this study also includes embodied energy related to personal consumption and buildings. Within the boundaries of this analysis, food is the single largest category of the building energy footprint, accounting for 23% of the total. On a policy level, the LCA approach can be useful for quantifying the energy and environmental benefits of longer average building lifespans. In addition to prospective analysis for standards and certification, urban form modeling can also be useful in calculating or verifying ex post facto, bottom-up carbon emissions inventories. Emissions inventories provide a benchmark for evaluating future outcomes and scenarios as well as an empirical basis for valuing low-carbon technologies. By highlighting the embodied energy and emissions of building materials, the LCA approach can also be used to identify the most intensive aspects of industrial production and the supply chain. The agent based modeling aspect of the model can be useful for understanding how policy incentives can impact individual behavior and the aggregate effects thereof. The most useful elaboration of the urban form assessment model would be to further generalize it for comparative analysis. Scenario analysis could be used for benchmarking and identification of policy priorities. If the model is to be used for inventories, it is important to disaggregate the energy use data for more accurate emissions modeling. Depending on the policy integration of the model, it may be useful to incorporate occupancy data for per-capita results. On the question of density and efficiency, it may also be useful to integrate a more explicit spatial scaling mechanism for modeling neighborhood and city-level energy use and emissions, i.e. to account for scaling effects in public infrastructure and transportation.
China’s future development is likely to have a huge impact on twenty-first century global outcomes. It is therefore surprising that, thus far, so little attention has been given to comparing and evaluating expert forecasts of China’s future in the post-Mao era. This book presents an illuminating and comprehensive summary record of contrasting and competing expert forecasts and judgements about the major issues confronting China within four principal domains – political, economic, environmental, and international. After considering the principal forecasting methods available to experts, the author comments critically on the degree of success achieved in using those methods and emphasises the confusion created by the polarisation of opinion and by the failure of many experts to accept the high degree of uncertainty that characterises most of the key issues. The book recommends a new approach based on the study of a hierarchy of critical uncertainties and on continuing analysis of opposing expert opinions about these uncertainties. It emphasises the potential for both positive and negative outcomes for these critical uncertainties, and the importance of maximising the potential for positive outcomes through improved analytical and policy frameworks. Providing insights for specialists and non-specialists into the most critical issues that will determine China’s future direction, this book will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political, economic, environmental, and international relations issues in China and Asia, as well as to readers in business and government.
A volume on the political economy of clean energy transition in developed and developing regions, with a focus on the issues that different countries face as they transition from fossil fuels to lower carbon technologies.
Argues that China's role as an emerging economic power is destroying the environment, citing their status as the largest market for endangered wildlife, top importer of tropical trees, and biggest emitter of greenhouse gases.
This outlook highlights climate-safe investment options until 2050, policies for transition and specific regional challenges. It also explores options to eventually cut emissions to zero.
"Research from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements."--T.p.
This open access book is an encyclopaedic analysis of the current and future energy system of the world’s most populous country and second biggest economy. What happens in China impacts the planet. In the past 40 years China has achieved one of the most remarkable economic growth rates in history. Its GDP has risen by a factor of 65, enabling 850,000 people to rise out of poverty. Growth on this scale comes with consequences. China is the world’s biggest consumer of primary energy and the world’s biggest emitter of CO2 emissions. Creating a prosperous and harmonious society that delivers economic growth and a high quality of life for all will require radical change in the energy sector, and a rewiring of the economy more widely. In China’s Energy Revolution in the Context of the Global Energy Transition, a team of researchers from the Development Research Center of the State Council of China and Shell International examine how China can revolutionise its supply and use of energy. They examine the entire energy system: coal, oil, gas, nuclear, renewables and new energies in production, conversion, distribution and consumption. They compare China with case studies and lessons learned in other countries. They ask which technology, policy and market mechanisms are required to support the change and they explore how international cooperation can smooth the way to an energy revolution in China and across the world. And, they create and compare scenarios on possible pathways to a future energy system that is low-carbon, affordable, secure and reliable.
The Asia–Pacific Integrated Model (AIM) brings together more than 20 computer simulation models for development and analysis of policy in such diverse fields as climate change mitigation, air pollution abatement, and ecosystem preservation. This first book in a series on the development of AIM focuses on climate change issues and the evaluation of policy options to stabilize the global climate. It presents an overview of the models developed to date, their structure, and the results and analyses presented to policymakers and researchers at the levels of individual Asian countries, the Asia–Pacific region, and the world at large. The contents vary in scope from local to global issues, with discussions of the effects of climate policies, cost analyses of climate policies with their effects on trade, and global scenario analyses. Also included are impact analyses and the effects of promoting environmental technologies.