Unveiling the path to sustainable carbon reduction: a comparative analysis of bank-led vs. firm-led carbon finance strategies

With the introduction of the "dual carbon" goals and the rapid expansion of the digital economy, the role of digital finance in promoting sustainable development has become increasingly significant. This study examines how digital finance promotes sustainable development and carbon reduction, as well as its effects on fostering green investment. The findings reveal that digital finance facilitates carbon reduction and green investment through two primary pathways: (1) leveraging financial instruments such as green bonds and carbon funds to provide financial support for green projects. Additionally, related policies that offer subsidies and tax incentives further stimulate green investment, driving its growth. (2) utilizing blockchain technology to enhance information transparency, which enables companies to track carbon emissions in real time, encourages the disclosure of ESG data, and boosts investor confidence in green projects, thereby attracting more capital to the green investment sector. This study concludes that digital finance, through multidimensional innovation and application, not only promotes sustainable development and carbon reduction but also lays a solid foundation and creates ample opportunities for the growth of green investment.

The growing threat of global warming makes it urgent to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. Achieving carbon neutrality is a key strategy to address these challenges and move towards a sustainable, low-carbon future. Comparing the carbon neutrality strategies of different countries and learning from each other's strengths and collaborating, nations can tackle shared challenges more effectively. This study provides a comparative analysis of carbon neutrality strategies adopted by China, the USA, and Germany, examining their respective legal frameworks, energy transitions, and technological innovations. While Germany has established strong legislative support and regulatory measures to promote renewable energy and reduce fossil fuel dependency, the USA's approach has been marked by policy fluctuations due to political shifts, impacting long-term climate strategies. In contrast, China's rapid progress in renewable energy, including wind power, photovoltaics, and electric vehicles, underscores its unique institutional efficiency and market-driven dynamics. The study explores how each nation’s path to carbon neutrality and global role, emphasizes the necessity of international cooperation. By leveraging their strengths, these countries can collectively shape the global climate agenda, setting the stage for transformative collaboration towards sustainable energy solutions and carbon reduction.

As one of the major sources of carbon emissions, the significant spatial disparities in agricultural carbon emissions (ACE) pose a serious challenge to coordinated regional carbon reduction efforts. In order to precisely identify the sources of these ACE differences, this study estimates the ACE of China from 2005 to 2020 across four main emission sources and applies the bidimensional decomposition method of the Gini coefficient to measure and decompose their spatial disparities. Finally, the key factors driving ACE disparities are analyzed using the Quadratic Assignment Procedure (QAP). The results show that China’s total ACE initially declined, followed by an upward trend over the study period. Spatially, emissions were higher in eastern regions compared to western regions, and higher in southern regions compared to northern regions. The differences in paddy field emissions between the central and western regions were identified as the primary contributor to east–west disparities, while differences in agricultural materials emissions between northern and southern regions were the dominant source of north–south disparities. Furthermore, regional differences in agricultural development levels and mechanization capacity were found to be the strongest drivers of spatial ACE disparities. This study provides empirical evidence for formulating region-specific and source-targeted carbon reduction policies. Our findings highlight the importance of addressing regional imbalances, particularly in paddy field management and agricultural material usage, to promote more coordinated and sustainable agricultural carbon reduction across China.

The construction of accurate and interpretable predictive model for high abundance fishing ground is conducive to better sustainable fisheries production and carbon reduction. This article used refined statistical maps to visualize the spatial and temporal patterns of catch changes based on the 2014-2021 fishery statistics of the Japanese sardine Sardinops melanostictus fishery in the Northwest Pacific Ocean. Three models (XGBoost, LightGBM, and CatBoost) and two variable importance visualization methods (model built-in (split) and SHAP methods) were used for comparative analysis to determine the optimal modeling and visualization strategies. Results: 1) From 2014 to 2021, the annual catch showed an overall increasing trend and peaked at 220,009.063 tons in 2021; the total monthly catch increased and then decreased, with a peak of 76, 033.4944 tons (July), and the catch was mainly concentrated in the regions of 39.5°-43°N and 146.75°-155.75°E; 2) Catboost model predicted better than LightGBM and XGBoost models, with the highest values of accuracy and F1-score, 73.8% and 75.31%, respectively; 3) the overall importance ranking of the model’s built-in method differed significantly from that in the SHAP method, and the overall importance ranking of the spatial variables in the SHAP method increased. Compared to the built-in method, the SHAP method informs the magnitude and direction of the influence of each variable at the global and local levels. The results of the research help us to select the optimal model and the optimal visualization method to construct a prediction model for the Japanese sardine fishing grounds in the Northwest Pacific Ocean, which will provide a scientific basis for the Japanese sardine fishery to achieve environmental and economically sustainable fishery development.

The continuous rise in energy demands due to rapid urbanization and human activities puts immense pressure on local governments and cities globally, especially amidst the COVID-19 crisis and economic slowdown. Hence, developing cities and buildings towards net-zero goals is becoming urgent and significantly vital to adopt renewable scenarios in the building sector given the climate crisis. The outcome of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conference of Parties (COP26) agreed on and declared the Glasgow Climate Pact (GCP) which stated the serious concern of climate and weather extremes and their adverse impacts on people and nature that will continue to increase with an additional increment of rising temperature. The GCP reaffirmed the long-term global goal to hold the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 °C below-industrial real levels in addition to recognizing that limiting global warming to 1.5 entails rapid, deep, and sustained reduction in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 45% by 2030 and to contribute towards climate-neutral cities and reasserted the goal of net-zero by 2050. Hence, city leaders should focus on reducing carbon emissions by 2050. Nevertheless, if global warming is to be limited to 1.5 °C, all cities need to be net-zero by 2050 at the very latest. Therefore, net-zero, low-carbon building and clean mobility can play a great role in achieving climate neutrality by 2050. This book chapter aims to address the urgent need to transform the building industry and cities to become low carbon. The chapter highlights the importance of net-zero low-carbon cities. It also presents global examples of net-zero-energy buildings (NZEBs) and how these models contribute to the net-zero target and climate neutrality. Additionally, current policies, actions, and initiatives worldwide and in Egypt towards NZEB to achieve green and sustainable cities have also been examined and discussed. Ultimately, net-zero carbon and managing “transition” remain a huge challenge for cities and regions, but coupling these goals with innovative thinking for the future is primarily essential if cities worldwide are to become resilient enough and meet COP26 outcomes and the GCP.KeywordsCarbon emissionsClimate neutralityEnergyLow-carbon citiesNet-zeroPolicies

Uncertainties in the technological pathway towards low-carbon freight transport under carbon neutral target in China

Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2016, the development of renewable energy has become a strategic consensus of all countries in the world. Since 2020, China has officially put forward the goals of “peak carbon dioxide emissions” in 2030 and “carbon neutrality” in 2060, and actively responded to the global proposition of sustainable development goals and carbon emission reduction in Paris Agreement. According to the statistics of the National Energy Administration, fossil energy such as coal, oil and natural gas accounts for more than 80% in China’s current energy consumption structure, while clean energy such as hydro power, wind power and natural gas accounts for only 25.5%. At the same time, China’s energy consumption is increasing year by year, with the total consumption reaching 5.24 billion tons of standard coal equivalent in 2021, and the reform of energy consumption structure is imminent. The new energy represented by photovoltaic is expected to become the main industry to achieve the goal of carbon neutrality in 2030. Based on the investigation of national and local statistical data, combined with the current development of clean energy and photovoltaic industry, this paper analyzes the operation status of leading photovoltaic enterprises, deconstructs the photovoltaic industry chain, extracts data, grasps the future development direction of photovoltaic industry, and reveals the shortcomings and loopholes in the development of photovoltaic industry. At present, the photovoltaic industry is subject to many industrial chain structures, and the market fluctuation between upstream and downstream industrial chains changes periodically. However, in the long run, the photovoltaic industry is on the rise. If the specific links in the industrial chain can be optimized and cost reduced, the coordination capacity within the industrial chain can be increased, the integration of the industrial chain can be realized as soon as possible, meanwhile, the coverage area of photovoltaic power stations can be promoted, the high-quality sunshine conditions in the western region can be fully utilized, and the regional economy can be driven by the development of photovoltaic industry, so that the promotion of green energy industry can be realized, the economic vitality of the western villages and towns can be developed, and the double cycle of domestic and international economy can be promoted.

Far-reaching changes in daily life present a pressing need to balance energy consumption with environmental impact. Previous research on household carbon emissions generally described its contributors in disposable income, consumption pattern, and household-related lifestyle, whereas they have not fully explored how carbon emissions relate to residents' day-to-day lifestyles. Given that individual lifestyles within a household may be correlated, there is a need to disentangle the clustering effect of household members' lifestyles and their association with household carbon emissions. This study used micro-macro multilevel modelling to examine the structure of individual lifestyles and their impact on household carbon emissions for 8618 multiple occupancy households of 19,816 respondents in the UK Household Longitudinal Study dataset. The results showed that a factor capturing energy-saving lifestyle behaviours significantly reduced housing fuel use emissions and a second capturing transportation and consumption choices cut motor emissions. Interestingly, the contribution of energy-saving lifestyle in cutting down housing-fuel-using emissions becomes more pronounced when household income and household characteristics (e.g., household size, dwelling, house ownership, number of cars, urbanity, employment) were controlled for. Contrarily, the strength of green transportation and consumption lifestyle contributing to lower motor emissions was weakened after controlling for household characteristics. Findings indicated that day-to-day lifestyle not only reflects individual variability in sustainable living but also systematic household variation in carbon emissions. Knowledge of which living patterns are responsible for disproportionately high levels of carbon emissions can enhance effective targeted policy aimed at stimulating sustainable lifestyles and carbon reduction.

Sustainable consumption is a modern trend that marks the emergence of environmental and ethical awareness among consumers in modern markets. The emergence of ethical and green consumption is discussed through this article with reference to key drivers, including corporate responsibility, consumer behavior, regulatory frameworks, and sustainable supply chains. It is concerned with how businesses are addressing the growing need for sustainable products by incorporating sustainable materials, ethical sourcing, and carbon reduction into their operations. It also investigates the impact of technology, online marketing, and social media on consumers’ inclination towards sustainable products. The study also considers problems such as greenwashing, higher cost of production, and accessibility issues that are barriers to mass adoption of sustainable consumption. Through case studies and market trends analysis, the study offers insights into the future of ethical consumerism and how it can propel sustainable long-term economic and environmental benefit.

The rapid and disorderly expansion of urban construction land has exacerbated the contradiction between land use and low-carbon development. In this paper, we use the spatial autocorrelation model and coupling model to analyze the spatial characteristics of the coupled coordination degree of land transfer and carbon emissions in 291 cities in China. The multi-scale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model is used to explore the spatial heterogeneity of the influence of socioeconomic factors on their coupled coordination degree. The results show that: from 2005 to 2015, the scale of land transfer and carbon emissions has been increasing quantitatively and spatially showing a shift from the southeast coast to the central and western regions. In 2005, 2010, and 2015, the global Moran’s I of the coupled coordination degree are 0.3045, 0.3725, and 0.3388, respectively, indicating that the coupled coordination degree between land transfer and carbon emissions has a significant positive spatial autocorrelation. The MGWR model indicates that the influence of socioeconomic factors on the coupling coordination degree has significant spatial heterogeneity at different time nodes. In 2005 and 2015, the coefficients of the NGR on the coupling coordination of land transfer and carbon emissions have obvious stratification characteristics, with the coefficients decreasing from northeast to southwest. In 2010, the high coefficient (0.924∼0.989) of GPC is mainly distributed in the central region. The coefficient of the PD ranges from 0.464 to 0.918, but the difference of influence degree between the southeast coast and the northwest is obvious. This study may provide new clues for sustainable urban development and carbon reduction.

Traditional steel processes are energy-intensive and rely heavily on fossil fuels, contributing to significant greenhouse gas emissions. By adopting electrification technologies, such as electric boilers and compressors, particularly when powered by renewable energy, steel plants can reduce their carbon footprint, enhance process flexibility, and lower long-term operational costs. This transition also aligns with increasing regulatory pressures and market demand for greener practices, positioning companies for a more competitive and sustainable future. This work investigates the potential of replacing conventional steam crackers in a steel plant that relies on the use of fossil fuels, with electrically driven heating systems powered by renewable energy sources. The overall aim was to significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions by integrating electric furnaces and heat pumps into the steel production process. This study evaluates the potential carbon savings from the integration of solar energy in a steel plant with a production capacity of 300,000 tons per month. The solar field required for this integration was found to span an area ranging from 122,142 to 362,360 m�, while the wind field area required is estimated at 550.373 m2. By incorporating solar power into the plant�s energy mix, the analysis reveals a significant reduction in carbon emissions, with an estimated saving of 707,597 tons of CO2 per year.

Under the national “dual-carbon goal” and the pressing demand for sustainable development, eco-city construction and carbon reduction have become critical issues on China’s urban development agenda, closely aligned with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, most studies focus on regional assessments, lacking national-scale evaluations and spatial heterogeneity analysis of obstacles. This study analyzes 280 Chinese cities using a multi-level evaluation system. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and entropy weight methods determine index weights, while the comprehensive evaluation method assesses ecological levels. The obstacle diagnosis model identifies key obstacle factors, and geographically weighted regression (GWR) analyzes spatial heterogeneity, computing carbon intensity to explore relationships with eco-cities development. The findings reveal that (1) the ecological level of Chinese cities exhibits a regional pattern of “high in the east, low in the west”; (2) the primary index-level obstacle factors include total per capita water resources, per capita green space area, college full-time faculty per 10,000 people, the proportion of tertiary industries in gross domestic product (GDP), and college students per 10,000 people; at the element level, the main obstacles are environmental bases, social services, economic potential, and innovative capacity; (3) the GWR model reveals that eastern regions should increase water resources, central regions expand green space, and western and northeastern regions enhance innovative capacity and social services to foster balanced development; and (4) carbon intensity follows a “low in the east, high in the west” pattern, with eco-cities scores significantly negatively correlated with carbon intensity (r = −0.235, p < 0.01). This study provides the first comprehensive national-scale evaluation of eco-cities development, providing reference for the construction of eco-cities.

This study took food-grade polypropylene packaging products as the research project and discussed how to control the polypropylene extrusion sheet thickness and vacuum thermoforming quality and weight. The research objective was to find the key factors for reducing costs and energy consumption. The key aspects that may influence the polypropylene extrusion molding quality control were analyzed using literature and in-depth interviews with scholars and experts. These four main aspects are (1) key factors of polypropylene extrusion sheet production, (2) key factors of the extrusion line design, (3) key factors of polypropylene forming and mold manufacturing, and (4) key factors of mold and thermoforming line equipment design. These were revised and complemented by the scholar and expert group. There are 49 subitems for discussion. Thirteen scholars and experts were invited to use qualitative and quantitative research methods. A Delphi questionnaire survey team was organized to perform three Delphi questionnaire interviews. The statistical analyses of encoded data such as the mean (M), mode (Mo), and standard deviation (SD) of various survey options were calculated. Seeking a more cautious research theory and result, the K-S simple sample test was used to review the fitness and consistency of the scholars’ and experts’ opinions on key subitem factors. There are ten key factors in the production quality, including “A. Main screw pressure”, “B. Polymer temperature”, “C. T-die lips adjustment thickness”, “D. Cooling rolls pressing stability”, “E. Cooling rolls temperature stability”, “F. Extruder main screw geometric design”, “G. Heating controller is stable”, “H. Thermostatic control”, “I. Vacuum pressure”, and “J. Mold forming area design”. The key factors are not just applicable to classical polypropylene extrusion sheet and thermoforming production but also to related process of extrusion and thermoforming techniques in expanded polypropylene (EPP) sheets and polylactic acid (PLA). This study aims to provide a key technical reference for enterprises to improve quality to enhance the competitiveness of products, reduce production costs, and achieve sustainable development, energy savings, and carbon reductions.

ESG (environmental, social, and governance) framework has importance in investing environment due to its direct relevance with sustainable investments and long-term stock performance. ESG carries implications for all sectors of the economy and energy sector is no exception to that. In case of energy sector, it supports the investments in sustainable energy, carbon reduction, and ethical governance. The present study tries to assess the relative importance of ESG disclosure scores on the price discovery process of energy firms in Indian stock market. The study also examines the pricing efficiency of future contracts in leading the spot prices of energy sector stocks of Indian economy. Using the data from 12 energy firms in Indian stock market, this study deploys the standard time series methodology including test of stationarity, co-integration and error correction mechanism to assess the causality between future and spot prices of energy firms. The findings indicates that ESG disclosure scores do not have an impact on price discovery for most of the energy sector companies, with no long-term causality. BHEL, a low ESG level manufacturing and engineering company in the energy sector, shows slightly different results, indicating reverse causality. Similarly, insignificant short-term causal relationships are exhibited by most of the firms, except NTPC and TTPW (Tata Power) show significant short term causality.

Electrocatalysts for oxidation and reduction reactions are crucial for sustainable energy production and carbon reduction. While precious metal catalysts exhibit superior activity, reducing reliance on them is necessary for large-scale applications. To address this, transition metal-based catalysts are studied with strategies to enhance catalytic performance. One promising strategy is heterostructures, which integrate multiple materials to harness synergistic effects. Developing efficient heterostructured electrocatalysts requires understanding their intricate characteristics, which poses challenges. While in situ and operando spectroscopy provides insights, computational materials science is essential for capturing reaction mechanisms, analyzing the origins at the atomic scale, and efficiently exploring innovative heterostructures. Despite growing recognition of computational materials science, standardized criteria for these systems remainlacking. This review consolidates case studies to propose approaches for modeling and analyzing heterostructures. It categorizes heterostructure types into vertical, semivertical, and lateral, defines their characteristics, and propose insights into minimizing or exploiting strain effects from lattice mismatches. Furthermore, it summarizes computational analyses of heterostructure stability and activity across reactions, including oxygen evolution, hydrogen evolution, oxygen reduction, carbon dioxide reduction, nitrogen reduction, and urea oxidation. This review provides an overview to refine heterostructure designs and establish a framework for systematic modeling and analysis to develop efficient electrocatalysts.