Narrow Results

The problems of excessive CO₂ emissions and global warming caused by human activities are becoming more serious. Carbon Tax (CT) and Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) are popular emission mitigation mechanisms. This paper establishes four counter-factual (CF) scenarios with different CT rate, and constructs a dynamic recursive computable general equilibrium (CGE) model, named China Energy-Environment-Economy Analysis (CEEEA) model, to study the impact of different CT rate on the economy, energy and environment. The results indicate that if CT complement ETS, and the cap of ETS is based on grandfathering method, the carbon trading price will reduce due to the changes in carbon allowances demand and supply. CT can share the mitigation pressure from ETS coverages into non-ETS coverages. When CT complement ETS but nothing is changed in mechanism of emission trading, the total emission mitigation effect will reduce slightly but the mitigation cost will reduce significantly. All in all, using CT as the supplement is a good mitigation strategy to release Gross Domestic Product (GDP) loss. But if we want to get more mitigation effect, rising CT rate or a stricter carbon cap may help.

This paper explores the factors that lead to increased carbon dioxide emissions in the 18 countries of the APEC. We apply the LMDI multiplicative decomposing method to 18 countries between 1971 and 2012. We summarize these factors that are as follows: (1) population increase and economic growth play a key role in increased carbon dioxide emissions. (2) All the 18 countries of the APEC have improved their energy efficiency as manifested in the change of energy intensity ($\mathrm{\Delta }I$), which is less than 1 in the 42 years; (3) In terms of energy substitution effect ($\mathrm{\Delta }M$) and fuel coefficient effect ($\mathrm{\Delta }CE$), the decomposition results point out that Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia witnessed growth in $\mathrm{\Delta }M$ and $\mathrm{\Delta }CE$, indicating the only factor to reduce the emissions for these three countries is intensity effect, which gives rise to relatively higher emission for these three countries during the period. In the case of Peru, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, we witnessed increases in $\mathrm{\Delta }M$, but decreases in $\mathrm{\Delta }CE$; In the case of Australia, Canada, Chile, China, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, New Zealand, Taiwan, and the US, there seem to decrease in $\mathrm{\Delta }M$, but increases in $\mathrm{\Delta }CE$ during the 42-year period.

In recent years, with the development of the ethnic minority area economy, minority rural residents’ CO₂ emissions also increased. Therefore, the development of low carbon economy is particularly important. This paper is based on the example of nine kinds of ethnic minorities in Yunnan province to estimate their lifestyle behavior of CO₂ emissions from 2012 to 2014 and analyze their carbon structure. It is concluded that waste generated higher level of CO₂, biological energy utilization rate is relatively low; biogas related facilities penetration rate is not high. According to the present situation of CO₂ emissions, four suggestions are proposed to explore low carbon economy and low carbon lifestyle.

Heating and cooling systems contribute greatly to the energy consumption and CO₂ emissions of many countries. Ground source heat pumps (GSHP) are promising energy saving systems for residential, commercial or industrial heating or cooling purposes. A method to estimate the energy consumption and CO₂ emission of GSHPs is therefore very eminent. This paper reviews the methodology to calculate the energy consumption and CO₂ emission of GSHPs. The discussed methodology is then used to compare the energy consumption and CO₂ emission of an open-loop and closed-loop GSHP using data from field test. It is observed that the open-loop GSHP saves 28% energy and reduces CO₂ by 28% than the closed-loop GSHP in the cooling season. When used for both cooling and heating purposes in the year, the open-loop GSHP saves about 6% energy and reduces about 6% of CO₂ emission than the closed-loop GSHP.