Decarbonizing Construction Through Book & Claim: Policy, Standards, and Verification for Low-Carbon Cement

China announced the goal of carbon peaking by 2035 and carbon neutral by 2060. In 2020, the carbon emission of cement production was 1.32 billion tons, accounting for about 80% of the total carbon emission of building materials in China. The carbon emission of cement production mainly comes from the clinker production. The key to cut emission is to reduce the consumption of fossil energy and limestone. The major measures include energy efficiency improvement, alternative fuel usage, raw material substitution, and new low-carbon cement clinker production technology. This paper illustrates the effect of low carbon technologies application and the carbon reducing potential from this period to 2060. It is predicted that when carbon neutral goal would be achieved by 2060, the carbon reduction from energy efficiency improvement, alternative fuels usage, alternative raw materials usage, low-carbon cement and CCUS technology would be 8%, 4%, 27%, 28% and 33%, respectively. Meanwhile, the 13% of CO2 related with cement producing would be used to curing cement-based materials.

Through allowance limit of carbon emissions and carbon tax policies the Government can encourage enterprises to invest low-carbon technologies and decrease the carbon emissions. Considering the low-carbon technology spillover, the three-stage game model shows that the equivalent carbon tax is not a definite value, but a variable in the certain interval. The maximum tax rate is that the small firms cannot afford but to close. And the minimum value of carbon tax rate is that ensure large enterprises to invest in low-carbon technology. Meanwhile, the carbon emission limit and time are relevant to determine the balance of the carbon tax. At first time, the initial tax rate may be higher in order to promote the large enterprises to invest in low carbon production technology. After a certain period, the Government can reduce the tax rate appropriate in order that can avoid the low-carbon technology transfer fee is too high and prevent the formation of low-carbon technology monopoly. Meanwhile, the government will further use carbon emissions tax to subsidize research and development of low-carbon technologies to decrease low-carbon emission technology transfer prices.

Anomalies in the Values for Consumer Goods with Environmental Attributes

Anomalies in the Values for Consumer Goods With Environmental Attributes

There is growing consensus that business will ultimately have to meet customer needs. In this regard, use of low carbon tech for carbon emission within the whole supply chain has gained attention in recent years. This study proposes a game-theoretic approach to model and analyze the process of utilizing low carbon tech (LCT) considering three players: the supplier, the producer with LCT and the retailer in the end market. We characterize the Nash equilibrium of the sequential game and discuss its features. A special attention is devoted to the analysis of the impact of incentives and market chasm on the equilibrium, in which the low carbon product with LCT and the traditional one may have the utility for the customer.

in recent years, product design concept has extended and expanded continuously. People's attention to low carbon concept improves gradually. In particular, the concept of low carbon and environmental protection starts to fuse in product design so as to improve environmental protection idea of products, and really achieve effective product design and the original intention of project design. This also proposes new requirements and challenges of product designers. Designers need to think over and actively explore how to effectively fuse low carbon and environmental protection concept in actual operation process in practice. This paper simply analyzes the concept of low carbon and environmental protection and deeply discusses the era background of product design under low carbon concept and product design mode. This paper aims to offer effective project suggestions on designers and really drive sustainable development of product design project.

Environmental and biotic habitat attributes affect rocky intertidal community variability in glacially influenced estuaries

Low-carbon City in China

Low-carbon agriculture is essential for protecting the global climate and sustainable agricultural economics. Since China is a predominantly agricultural country, the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by local farmers is crucial. The past literature on low-carbon technologies has highlighted the influence of demographic, economic, and environmental factors, while the psychological factors have been underexplored. A questionnaire-based approach was used to assess the psychological process underlying the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies by 1,114 Chinese rice farmers in this paper, and structural equation modeling (SEM) was empirically employed to test our theoretical model. The results indicated that farmers’ low-carbon production attitude and behavioral efficiency perception directly and positively affected the adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies and indirectly affected it via low-carbon production intention. Besides, production implementation cost and socio-environmental factor could moderate the direct effects of low-carbon production attitude, behavioral efficiency perception, and low-carbon production intention on farmers’ adoption of low-carbon agricultural technologies. In this respect, socio-environmental factor yielded more significant moderating effects. Additionally, this research provides policy implications for promoting low-carbon agricultural technologies in developing countries and regions.

<p indent="0mm">The increasing surge in solid waste generation poses tremendous risks to the safety of the environment, resources, and industry, prompting solid waste management to be a global environmental issue and a grand challenge in the 21st century. Solid waste has a double attribute of resource and environment, which is commonly resolved by recycling and detoxication. Previously, the resource attribute of solid waste was measured with recyclability. To achieve the sound management of solid waste, its environmental attribute discovery plays a crucial role in process selecting and policy formulating, especially for some hazardous industrial waste. In this study, we first proposed the removability concept to indicate the environmental attribute, and then established an environmental attribute measuring method, utilizing an interdisciplinary philosophy of statistical entropy and pollution grade. By measuring the removability of toxic substances towards detoxication, the method determines the potential and difficulty of toxic substance removal and resource recovery under current process conditions. Applying the method, we evaluated the removability of various toxic substances in 24 types of industrial waste. A sensitivity analysis was also picked up to identify the key influencing factors. Finally, we analyzed the feasibility of removing toxic substances from industrial waste by recovery technologies. The research on heavy metals and inorganic non-metallic toxic substances in industrial waste shows that the removability of these toxic substances is correlated with valence and stability. The results range from 11 bit^–1 to 66 bit^–1, revealing a low removability of the above toxic substances. However, the removability of organic toxic substances is related to their degradability. Besides, the combination of heavy metals and organic toxic substances could further decrease the removability of the toxic substances. The sensitivity analysis assessed the influence of different factors on the removability of toxic substances. The results suggest that the component, stability, and concentration of toxic substances have obvious effects on removability. To be specific, lower stability will reduce the difficulty to enrich and remove toxic substances. Thus, the high stability of the toxic substances in industrial waste emphasizes the requirement of an additional energy supply to change the phase composition or valence state of the toxic substances. However, the improvement of removability has an efficiency limit, with the critical value of the limit relating to the initial removability. Compared to virgin mining, the removability of over 50% of toxic substances in industrial waste fails to meet the requirements under the condition of the lowest industrial grade. Meanwhile, the feasibility of toxic substance removal and resource recovery in industrial waste detoxication should take both the types of waste and toxic substances into account. From the perspective of waste, only 6 types of industrial waste among 24 types of industrial waste being studied have a removal index greater than zero, including gold tailings, steel slag, and fly ash. Hence, it is suitable to enable toxic substance removal and impair the environmental attribute by material recovery when treating these 6 types of waste. In contrast, the rest types of industrial waste are of high environmental attributes, making it hard to remove the toxic substances by recovery due to the inferior removability and economic feasibility under the current technological condition. From the perspective of toxic substances, the slight differences of toxic substances in industrial wastes make it difficult to perform targeted separation and precise removal with the same technology. In a conclusion, removability is an intrinsic property of solid waste that can influence extrinsic properties, such as the environmental risk of solid waste sound management. Therefore, we considered incorporating the environmental attribute into the classification of solid waste and carried out the complete process of detoxification and accurate accounting. It will assist the recycling industry in the design of waste treatment and resource recycling, and guide the upgrading of waste disposal technology.

BackgroundNeighborhood environments have been regularly associated with the weight status. Although the evidence is mostly limited to adults residing in western urban settings, the weight status of older adults living in rural areas is also assumed to be significantly affected by their neighborhood environments. This study aimed to identify environmental attributes specific to rural areas that could affect the risk of longitudinal weight gain among older adults (≥ 65 years) in Japan.MethodsWe examined five environmental attributes, i.e., land slope, public transportation accessibility, residential density, intersection density, and the availability of parks and recreational centers, measured by the geographic information system. Our analysis was based on 714 subjects participated in Shimane Community-based Healthcare Research and Education study in 2012 and 2015. Multinomial logistic regression model was conducted to examine the association between each neighborhood environmental attribute and weight change status (gain, loss and unchanged).ResultsWe observed a significant increase in the risk of weight gain as the steepness of the neighborhood land slope increased. There was no significant association between other environmental attributes and risk of weight gain as well as weight loss among older adults.ConclusionLiving in hilly neighborhoods was associated with increased risk of weight gain among rural Japanese older adults. Future research should consider region-specific environmental attributes when investigating their effect on older adults’ weight status.

The new normal economic development stage poses new challenges to China’s low-carbon transformation, which objectively requires enterprises to innovate their emission reduction behaviors, thus giving birth to the thirdparty authorization of low-carbon patented technologies. Technology licensing can effectively realize the rapid flow of low-carbon emission reduction technologies from the third party to enterprises in the industry, reduce the emission reduction costs of enterprises and promote technological progress. Using evolutionary game theory, this paper discusses whether oligarchs buy low-carbon patented technology to reduce the generation cost and improve the competitiveness of enterprises. It is found that there is no evolutionary stable point when the transfer fee of low-carbon technology of third-party institutions is high; When the low-carbon technology transfer fee is appropriate, there are three evolutionary stable points (1,0), (1,1) and (1,1); When the patent transfer fee is low, there are two evolutionary stability points (0,0) and (1,1). In addition, considering the existence of a strong enterprise, this paper studies the impact of the low-carbon technology licensing fee of a third-party institution on the purchase decisions of the two enterprises. Finally, according to the evolution trend of equilibrium results, relevant management implications are given.

This paper takes as a given the need for accelerated progress towards an energy efficient, low carbon economy in response to increasingly powerful climate change and energy supply drivers which are beginning to have a global impact. It argues that markets have huge power to transform themselves but their "will" to do so is heavily conditioned by the nature, magnitude and duration of the value which is perceived, won or lost by those involved in and impacted by that transformation. For energy efficiency and low carbon technologies, there is a gap between the perception of their value by individuals and by society. So far as mitigating (and adapting to) climate change is concerned, there is a global imperative to achieve the societal good of a low carbon economy. The more time we spend not making the transition, the harder it will be for future generations and the more disruptive will be the climate change induced conditions they will face. Many Governments have recognised this imperative and have devised a range of regulatory, fiscal and market interventions to tackle and mitigate climate change. Ever since the Rio Summit in 1992, the UK Government has been among the leading protagonists for action. Its first climate change programme, launched in November 2000, featured new policies and measures designed to achieve reductions in our carbon dioxide emissions. A novel, groundbreaking element in the UK's climate change programme is the Carbon Trust - an independent, business led, Government backed company set up in March 2001. The Carbon Trust's objective is "to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy by helping organisations reduce their carbon emissions and develop commercial low carbon technologies".This paper discusses low carbon technology innovation and commercialisation. It describes the Carbon Trust's roles: (a) to reduce carbon emissions now, using today's know how; (b) to help develop and commercialise new and emerging energy efficiency and low carbon technologies; and (c) to understand the impacts of climate change and help inform the development of Governmental and corporate policies and measures to accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy. It also discusses the nature of innovation and commercialisation; how the Carbon Trust is working to understand it better; and how we have gone about applying our understanding in practice.

With the development of technology and the decrease in prices, power systems are facing a strong growth in the number of end-users with photovoltaics (PVs), battery storages and electric vehicles (EVs). A penetration of low carbon (LC) technologies has an impact not only on the financial aspect, but also on parameters of the power quality (PQ) in the power system. Since most of end-users with renewable energy sources (RES) are connected to a low-voltage (LV) distribution network, there is a high number of single-phase loads and distributed generators (DG) that can cause unwanted effects in LV networks. According to standards, electric energy must be of a certain quality in order to avoid harmful effects on the power system, being both the network or the end-users equipment. One of the PQ parameters is the voltage unbalance. Voltage unbalance occurs in networks with the high share of single-phase loads and generators. Since most loads in households are connected to the only one phase, the voltage unbalance is constantly present in the network, even without LC technologies. Single-phase connected PVs, residential battery storages and EV charging stations can increase voltage unbalance in the system. This paper systematically analyzes a real-world LV network and different stages and shares of connected PVs, residential battery storages and EVs to different phases. The value of the voltage unbalance factor (VUF) is observed for one week in January and August in 10-min intervals. It is shown that connected systems can significantly increase the VUF and potentially cause negative impact on the equipment and the power system as a whole. In turn we analyze a three-phase connection of these new LC technologies and demonstrate how in all analyzed cases PQ values remain within boundaries defined by the EN 50160 and the IEC 61000-3-13.

Agriculture is the second-largest source of carbon emission, which is not only a burden for the government to achieve the goal of carbon emission reduction but also is a huge threat to food security and the sustainable development of agriculture. Therefore, how to quantify the impacts of policy cognition of farmers on their low-carbon agricultural technology adoption is of great importance in China. Based on the survey data from 704 farmers in Jianghan Plain, China, we used the entropy method and Heckman sample selection model to quantify the effects of farmers' policy cognitive degree on their low-carbon agricultural technology adoption behavior and adoption intensity. The results showed that the level of farmers' cognition of low carbon policy should be improved. The average level of farmers' policy cognition was only 1.89. The adoption rate of single low-risk, high-efficiency low-carbon agricultural production technology by farmers was relatively high, but that of multiple low-carbon agricultural technologies was low, with an average adoption intensity of only 1.62. Policy cognition could effectively promote farmers' low-carbon agricultural technology adoption behavior and adoption intensity. Farmers' policy cognition had a significant positive impacts on their low carbon agricultural technology adoption behavior and adoption intensity. Local government should take more effective supporting measures, including strengthening the propaganda, enhancing the training and improving the subsidy standard of low-carbon agricultural technology, to improve farmers' low-carbon agricultural technology adoption intensity. Such strategy would help achieve the target of carbon emission reduction and sustainable development of agriculture.