Geographies of energy transition: Space,place and the low-carbon economy

This paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process, involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity. The paper draws on a seminar series on the ‘Geographies of Energy Transition: security, climate, governance' hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011, which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography. Focussing on the UK Government's policy for a low carbon transition, the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy. Six concepts are introduced and explained: location, landscape, territoriality, spatial differentiation, scaling, and spatial embeddedness. Examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low-carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent – and contending – potential geographical futures are in play. More attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low-carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low-carbon economy will be like. It also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available.     

China in the transition to a low-carbon economy

China, from its own perspective cannot afford to and, from an international perspective, is not allowed to continue on the conventional path of encouraging economic growth at the expense of the environment. Instead, China needs to transform its economy to effectively address concern about a range of environmental problems from burning fossil fuels and steeply rising oil import and international pressure on it to exhibit greater ambition in fighting global climate change. This paper first discusses China’s own efforts towards energy saving and pollutants cutting, the widespread use of renewable energy and participation in clean development mechanism, and puts carbon reductions of China’s unilateral actions into perspective. Given that that transition to a low carbon economy cannot take place overnight, the paper then discusses China’s policies on promoting the use of clean coal technologies and nuclear power. Based on these discussions, the paper provides some recommendations on issues related to energy conservation and pollution control, wind power, nuclear power and clean coal technologies and articulates a roadmap for China regarding its climate commitments to 2050.     

第十三届“科博会”将举办中国太阳能产业与低碳经济推介洽谈会

<正>随着全球化石能源的日趋枯竭、全球气候急剧恶化,温室气体给人类的生存带来了严峻的挑战,以发展新能源和可再生能源为主体的低碳经济正受到世界各国的重视。中国政府在哥本哈根世界气候大会上承诺,到2020年,中国单位国内生产总值二氧化碳排放比2005年下降40%～45%,届时非化石     

第十三届“科博会”将举办中国太阳能产业与低碳经济推介洽谈会

<正>随着全球化石能源的日趋枯竭、全球气候急剧恶化,温室气体给人类的生存带来了严峻的挑战,以发展新能源和可再生能源为主体的低碳经济正受到世界各国的重视。中国政府在哥本哈根世界气候大会上承诺,到2020年,中国单位国内生产总值二氧化碳排放比2005年下降40%～45%,届时非化石     

Measurement and verification strategies for energy savings certificates: meeting the challenges of an uncertain world

End-use energy efficiency is a cost-effective and rapidly deployable strategy for significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and energy costs. Energy savings certificates (ESCs)—instruments assigning the property rights to energy savings or attributes of those savings—are becoming an effective tool for meeting energy savings and GHG targets. The efficacy of ESCs will depend on the market’s ability to (1) verify the amount of savings that they certify along with the uncertainty of those savings (i.e., quantify their value), (2) clearly assign ownership rights to that value (i.e., state exactly who owns what) and (3) efficiently buy and sell those rights between interested parties (i.e., conduct simple transactions). The measurement and verification (M&V) system governing ESCs will critically impact whether these three criteria are satisfied. An M&V system for ESCs requires the fundamental elements of an M&V system for any regulated energy-efficiency program, but must also address more explicitly the above-mentioned criteria. In this paper, the authors discuss the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP) and specific elements of an M&V system that address components of an ESC system.     

Stock market development and low-carbon economy: The role of innovation and renewable energy

We examine the effect of stock market development (SMD) on the low-carbon economy (LCE). We consider two channels, renewable energy and technological innovation by which this affect occurs. We use the cross-sectional autoregressive distributed lags (CS-ARDL) approach to analyse panel time-series data over the period 1980–2016 for European Union member countries. We demonstrate that SMD impedes LCE in the long run. In contrast, technological innovation (TI) is found to be a driving factor in achieving LCE in the long run. Our results also support the argument that renewable energy consumption and production enhance LCE. Stock market development fosters LCE through the channels of renewable energy and technological innovation. Overall results are robust to the conditions of short- and long-run homogeneity and the cross-sectional dependence in the sample. Our results pose important policy implications.     

Spatial development of hydrogen economy in a low-carbon UK energy system

Hydrogen technologies and infrastructures might play a significant role in meeting ambitious climate and energy policy goals of the UK Government. Nonetheless, studies on hydrogen are either limited in scope in that they do not take into account the relationships with the wider energy system drivers and constraints or do not consider how a hydrogen network might develop geographically. This paper presents a framework where a spatially explicit hydrogen module is embedded in the UK MARKAL Energy System model to explore energy system trade-offs for the production, delivery and use of hydrogen at the sub-national level. A set of illustrative scenarios highlight the competitiveness of hydrogen related infrastructures and technologies as well as imported liquid hydrogen against a stringent emissions reduction target; the effect of emissions reduction trajectory on the development of hydrogen network; the intense resource competition between low carbon hydrogen production and electricity generation, and the importance of economies of scale in hydrogen supply and distribution.     

Catalyzing strategic transformation to a low-carbon economy: A CCS roadmap for China

China now faces the three hard truths of thirsting for more oil, relying heavily on coal, and ranking first in global carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Given these truths, two key questions must be addressed to develop a low-carbon economy: how to use coal in a carbon-constrained future? How to increase domestic oil supply to enhance energy security? Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) may be a technological solution that can deal with today's energy and environmental needs while enabling China to move closer to a low-carbon energy future. This paper has been developed to propose a possible CCS roadmap for China. To develop the roadmap, we first explore major carbon capture opportunities in China and then identify critical CCS-enabling technologies, as well as analyze their current status and future prospects. We find that coal gasification or polygeneration in combination with CCS could be a nearly unbeatable combination for China's low-carbon future. Even without CCS, gasification offers many benefits: once coal is gasified into syngas, it can be used for many different purposes including for alternative fuels production, thereby increasing the domestic oil supply and the flexibility of the energy system.     

低碳经济对中国天然气行业的影响

低碳经济是一种清洁高效的绿色发展模式,是未来世界经济发展的主要趋势.天然气作为一种清洁高效的低碳能源,正面临着前所未有的发展机遇.首先分析了中国所面临的减排压力,随后从实现碳减排和建设低碳城市两方面分析了天然气在中国未来能源结构中所面临的机遇,并结合碳规则与天然气发电的对比,指出天然气作为高效清洁的低碳能源在未来能源结...     

Opportunities and challenges for renewable energy policy in China

Renewable energy is the inevitable choice for sustainable economic growth, for the harmonious coexistence of human and environment as well as for the sustainable development. Government support is the key and initial power for developing renewable energy. In this article, an overall review has been conducted on renewable energy development policy (including laws and regulations, economic encouragement, technical research and development, industrialized support and government model projects, etc.) in China. On this basis, a systematic analysis has been conducted on the disadvantages of renewable energy development policy. On the point of long-term effective system for renewable energy development, a series of policy advice has been offered, such as strengthening the policy coordination, enhancing regional policy innovation, echoing with clean development mechanism, implementing process management, constructing market investment and financing system. It is expected that the above advices could be helpful to ever-improvement of renewable energy development policy.     

China building energy consumption: Situation,challenges and corresponding measures

As one of the biggest parts of total national energy consumption (TNEC), building energy consumption (BEC) catches public eyes and has been regarded as a crucial problem of the current society. For the past 20 years, BEC in china has been increasing at a high speed. To curb the rapid growing of BEC, china has enforced and implemented a series of policies. These include enforcing BEC constraints on new building projects, promoting more environment friendly building designs, establishing a more sophisticated legislation for building energy conservation, and increasing the total budget in the area of BEC control. This article analyzed china BEC situation and the challenges. As the main point, the measures required by China government to improve building energy efficiency were introduced as well.     

Rewarding energy savings rather than energy efficiency: Exploring the concept of a feed-in tariff for energy savings

Financial incentives are important for overcoming certain market barriers to improved energy efficiency and for the adoption of energy efficient technologies. Financial incentives are mainly focused on the introduction of specific technologies, rather than behavioural change. While the declared goal of financial support schemes very often is to save energy or reduce harmful emissions rather than to foster new technologies per se, it is often encountered that such financial support for energy efficient technologies may not ensure real energy savings due to the rebound effect and various market barriers.In the area of renewable energies it is common for financial support to be given to power producers for the verified production of renewable electricity, in the form of a guaranteed financial incentive (feed-in tariff). In the energy efficiency policy research little attention has been paid to the possible use of a “feed-in tariff” in the form of a financial incentive based on the kWh saved by the end-user. This paper discusses the possible setup of a feed-in tariff designed to reward energy savings.     

Potential energy savings and environmental impact by implementing energy efficiency standard for household refrigerators in China

With the rapid economic growth and improvement in standard of living, Chinese people are employing more and more household appliances to make their living convenient and comfortable, of which refrigerators are indispensable. Because refrigerators operate continuously irrespective of seasons and regions, the total electricity consumption of refrigerators is huge and consequently causes severe energy-related environmental issues. China has been paying more and more attention to this and issued a national energy efficiency standard, GB12021.2-2003, for refrigerators. This paper first describes the standard briefly. Then it develops a mathematic model to evaluate the potential energy savings and environmental impacts of the standard. The estimated results indicate implementing the standard will save large energy, as well as benefit greatly to environment. Thus, it is very necessary to implement energy efficiency standard for refrigerators in China.     

浅析中国经济发展与能源消费

在现阶段我国工业化的进程中，能源利用率低、消费结构不合理、供需矛盾加剧等问题目益突出，在很大程度上制约了经济持续快速的增长。为了缓解经济发展与能源消费之间的矛盾，我国必须优化产业结构和能源结构，大力发展能源先进技术，走可持续发展的工业化道路。     

Chillers energy consumption, energy savings and emission analysis in an institutional buildings

Chillers consume more than 40% of the total energy used in the commercial and industrial buildings for space conditioning. In this paper, energy consumption by chillers and chilled water pumps, condenser pumps and fan motors has been estimated using data collected by a walkthrough energy audit for the 16 faculties of the University of Malaya. It has been estimated that chillers and motors and pumps used in chillers consume 10,737 MWh (i.e. 51% of total energy consumption) of electric energy for different percentage of loadings. As chillers are major energy users, variable speed drives are applied in chillers to reduce their energy consumption. It has been estimated that about 8368 MWh annual energy can be saved by using efficient chillers at different loadings. It has also been found that about 23,532 MWh annual energy can be saved for chilled water supply pumps, condenser pumps and cooling tower fan motors by matching required speeds using variable speed drives for 60% of speed reduction. About 1,274,692 kg of CO₂ emission could be avoided for using energy efficient chillers at 50% load. It has been also found that about 2,426,769 kg CO₂ emission can be reduced by using variable speed drives for 60% speed reductions. Payback periods found to be only few months for using variable speed drives in chilled water pumps, condensers and fan motors.     

Potential energy savings and environmental impacts of energy efficiency standards for vapor compression central air conditioning units in China

Owing to the rapid development of economy and the stable improvement of people's living standard, central air conditioning units are broadly used in China. This not only consumes large energy, but also results in adverse energy-related environmental issues. Energy efficiency standards are accepted effective policy tools to reduce energy consumption and pollutant emissions. Recently, China issued two national energy efficiency standards, GB19577-2004 and GB19576-2004, for vapor compression central air conditioning units for the first time. This paper first reviews the two standards, and then establishes a mathematic model to evaluate the potential energy savings and environmental impacts of the standards. The estimated results indicate implementing these standards will save massive energy, as well as benefit greatly to the environment. Obviously, it is significant to implement energy efficiency standards for central air conditioning units in China.     

Tradable certificates for renewable electricity and energy savings

Tradable green certificates (TGCs) schemes have been developed and tested in several European countries to foster market-driven penetration of renewables. These certificates guarantee that a specific volume of electricity is generated from renewable-energy source (RES). More recently certificates (tradable white certificates (TWCs)) for the electricity saved by demand-side energy-efficiency measures (EEMs) have been introduced in some European countries. Recent advances in information and communication technology have opened up new possibilities for improving energy efficiency and increasing utilization of RESs. Use of technological resources such as the Internet and smart metering can permit real-time issuing and trading of TGCs. These technologies could also permit issuing of TWC. This paper reviews current renewable TGC and TWCs schemes in Europe and describes the possibilities for combining them in an Internet-based system. In the proposed combined tradable certificate scheme, both RESs and demand-side EEMs could bid in real time through the Internet to meet a specific obligation. The energy savings from the demand-side measures would be equivalent to the same amount of green electricity production. The paper describes the needed common targets and obligations, the certificate trading rules and the possible monitoring protocol. In particular, the paper focuses on the TWCs verification issues, including the assessment of the baseline, as these poses additional problems for TWCs compared to TGCs.     

Developing a long-term local society design methodology towards a low-carbon economy: An application to Shiga Prefecture in Japan

To tackle global climate stabilization concretely, we have developed a method formulating long-term scenarios towards a low-carbon economy at local level. As a result of the pioneering application of this method to Shiga Prefecture, we have found the following: (i) it is possible to design scenarios for moving towards a low-carbon economy in which CO₂ emission is lowered by 30–50% from the 1990 level by 2030, while the prefecture's gross production continues to grow by 1.6% annually; (ii) in order to halve the emission by 2030, socio-economic structural changes as well as technological measures are essential; and (iii) innovative measures at the prefectural level, such as land planning, renewable energy promotion and lifestyle change, play an increasingly important role as the target reduction rate gets higher.     

Nuclear energy development in China: A study of opportunities and challenges

With rapid economic development, China faces a great challenge to meet its increasing energy demand. Currently, China's energy supply is dominated by coal consumption, while natural gas and oil are in relative short supply. At the same time, nuclear energy is a relatively clean energy without green-house gas emissions. Considering the growing cost of fossil energy and the limited resources in China, oil supply security, coal mining disasters, the domestic environment pressure, and global climate warming, nuclear energy is an inevitable strategic option.