Decarbonization Policies Research Articles

Tradeoffs and synergy between material cycles and greenhouse gas emissions: Opportunities in a rapidly growing housing stock

AbstractManagement of building materials’ stocks and flows is a major opportunity for circularity and de‐carbonization. We examine the relationship between material consumption and associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under different scenarios in Israel, a developed country with an already high population density that expects tremendous growth in its housing stock by 2050. We created scenarios of varying housing unit sizes and additional material efficiency practices: fabrication yield, lifetime extension, material substitution, recycling, and their combination, resulting in 18 scenarios. In each scenario, the material flows and stocks needed to supply the housing demand and the resulting life‐cycle GHG emissions are quantified. No single material efficiency practice achieves a reduction in all indicators, suggesting a potential conflict between circular economy and decarbonization policies: The material substitution scenario allows for the biggest reduction in material consumption (12%–40% concrete reduction and 15%–51% steel reduction in 2050 compared with the baseline), while the recycling scenario achieves the biggest reduction in GHG emissions (22%–43% reduction in 2050 compared with the baseline). In the long‐term, the life‐extension scenario reduces most demolition waste. These findings can help policymakers and stakeholders consider the impacts of raw materials consumption and implement this knowledge in light of their priorities in policy packages. The results suggest a narrow window of opportunity within the next decade to influence material consumption and emissions to 2050. The findings could also shed light on the sustainability trajectories of other countries with similarly rapidly developing building stock, which have received little attention in this field.

How are decarbonization policies in the US and Canada shaping low-carbon ammonia production strategies?

How are decarbonization policies in the US and Canada shaping low-carbon ammonia production strategies?

Assessing potential for policy feedback from renewable energy incentive programs

Climate advocates look optimistically to policy feedback as a mechanism for locking-in a decarbonization policy trajectory, but little research has examined whether and how climate legislation creates constituencies that could provide future political support. This article focuses on incentive programs supporting investment in solar PV and the potential for policy feedback through participating households. We first develop a framework of feedback potential that considers the volume and partisanship of incentive program beneficiaries and their distribution across electoral districts. We then apply the framework to New York State’s solar PV incentive program, which enabled over 140,000 households to install solar PV. We find that the number of solar PV incentive beneficiaries is positively associated with Republican vote share, suggesting potential for a strong pro-solar constituency in the pivotal, Republican-led districts. Within electoral districts, however, beneficiaries skew Democratic, raising questions about the direction of policy feedback. The results carry implications for the kind of politics that incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act may set in motion in the coming years.

Beyond the Average: emissions from electricity and the implications of decarbonization policies in Guangdong

Various policy interventions have been proposed to decarbonize the Chinese economy through the electricity sector. This study is the first to use generation-by-plant data to analyze the emissions from the electricity sector in a Chinese region and evaluate the environmental impacts of various policy interventions. Using regression techniques, the average emission factor, marginal emission factor, and marginal displacement factor, are estimated for different pollutants of Guangdong, the most affluent and populous province in China. Results reveal a decline in average emission factors over the sample period of 2017-2021, owing to the expansion of renewable energy. This study also finds a less pronounced disparity between marginal emission factors and average emission factors compared with that in developed countries, probably due to the prevalence of coal-burning plants and lower renewable energy penetration in Guangdong. Using the estimated emission factors, this study also examines the environmental effect of time-of-use tariffs, indirect emissions of electric vehicles, and carbon displacement effect of wind energy. The conclusions reveals that the time-of-use tariffs moderately reduced CO2 emissions, and the extensive adoption of electric vehicles and wind energy substantially reduces carbon emissions, indicating that decarbonizing the economy needs the coordination of various policies.

Which decarbonization policy mixes are better for China's power sector? A simulation balancing aggregate abatement effects and economic impacts

The decarbonization policies are currently being planned or implemented worldwide, particularly for emerging economies such as China. When the government designs a preferred decarbonization policy mix, both environmental and economic impacts should be considered. This paper focuses on decarbonization policy mixes in China's power sector, including renewable electricity subsidies (ES), tradable green certificates (TGC), and two carbon pricing instruments. An integrated model combining a partial equilibrium model and an input-output framework was constructed to investigate their abatement effects and economic impacts. The results show that the combination of multiple decarbonization policies can achieve greater emission reduction or lower economic losses compared to implementing them separately. The mix of carbon pricing and TGC shows the least economic losses; the mix of carbon pricing, ES, and TGC achieves maximum abatement effect. A narrow focus on carbon emission reduction would hinder the economic development. The combination of multiple decarbonization policies can trigger more substantial variations in the supply chain of the power sector than their individual implementation. Those policy mixes including carbon tax may achieve lower carbon emissions and economic losses compared to those including a carbon emissions trading market. Therefore, policymakers should conduct a comprehensive simulation of the multiple impacts of policy mixes before implementing them, encompassing both direct impacts on the power sector and indirect impacts on its upstream sectors.

Decarbonization types of medium‐sized and mid‐cap firms in the manufacturing sector

AbstractThe decarbonization of the manufacturing sector is needed to meet the climate goals set by the Paris agreement. Most research so far has focused on large firms. Yet, medium‐sized and mid‐cap firms also face increasing pressures to decarbonize, particularly in their role as suppliers of large firms. Prior research shows that these firms are very heterogeneous and that approaches to decarbonize are not adopted in isolation but within sets or configurations—hence, a detailed investigation of these configurations is fruitful to understand the multiplicity of responses to decarbonization. Such an understanding allows to develop an effective decarbonization policy for medium‐sized and mid‐cap firms and provide meaningful managerial advice. Using a latent‐profile analysis, our study identifies five distinct decarbonization types of medium‐sized firms in the German manufacturing sector that adopt a specific configuration of decarbonization strategies. These types can be described as decarbonization all‐rounders, internal supply chain decarbonizers, total supply chain decarbonizers, decarbonization laggards and decarbonization sceptics. A comparison of these five decarbonization types reveals significant differences in stakeholder pressures, green capabilities and green innovation as well as firm performance and (structural) firm characteristics.

Production of energy from renewable sources and financial performance of European utilities: A panel-data analysis

Energy transition has become a priority for utilities worldwide.Renewable electricity generation represents one of the pillars of the European decarbonization policy and is included among eligible activities in the Taxonomy Regulation.The limited literature regarding the effects of investments in renewables on the financial performance of firms is fundamentally split in two lines: the first is focused on stock returns, the second concerns the determinants of the financial performance which is measured either through risk or accounting metrics. A limited set of studies has assessed the effects of investments in renewable power generation on the performance of utilities. In this article three linear regression analysis conducted on a panel-data composed of firm-year observations for 64 electric utilities from continental Europe between 2011 and 2020 are presented. The analysis has focused on: (i) profitability (Return-On-Asset), (ii) market valuation (Tobin's q) (iii) risk (Weighted Average Cost of Capital).The results show that the renewable generation share is significantly and positively correlated with the first two indicators, while not correlated with the cost of capital.This could represent a constraint to investments in renewable generation capacity with a negative impact on the achievement of the targets of the European decarbonization policy.

Structural Effects of Economic Shocks on the Macroeconomic Economy–Electricity–Emissions Nexus in India via Long-Term Cointegration Approach

For developing nations to achieve net-zero targets, macroeconomic linkages impacting the decoupling of emissions from economic growth must account for non-linear business cycles and economic shocks. This study aims to delineate decarbonization policy pathways for the Indian electricity sector in the aftermath of COVID-19 by analysing the long-term evolution of the economy–electricity–emissions (3E) nexus during the 2008 financial crisis and during COVID-19, covering the period of 1996Q2 to 2020Q3. Upon testing multiple theoretical 3E systems, it was found that a model internalizing trade, inflation, and stochasticity was able to minimize the reproduction errors from growth to recession phases, as well as predict the rebound effect from an economic crisis. This was revealed to be due to more information within the coefficients in a trade stochastic model. Our results confirm the existence of electricity-associated emission decoupling with capital formation in the long-run, post-crisis, while economic growth and inflation increase CO2 emissions. The main finding highlights the negative feedback loop of inflation->trade->emissions, which shows that GDP and emissions are not directly causal. This long-run macroeconomic dynamic death spiral causes decoupling to be inhibited, where fossil fuel imports should not be subsidized for economic shock rebound, and the risk hedging of energy transition investments should occur in the post-COVID-19 era.

Assessing the environmental justice implications of decarbonizing the US electric grid: estimating changes in asthma exacerbation by race and income

Abstract This paper examines how air quality improvements due to the 100% decarbonization of the US power sector in 2040 can reduce asthma exacerbation among children disaggregated by poverty status, race, and geography. Using spatial datasets that differentiate asthma prevalence by income, race, and state, we find that children living in households with income below the poverty line receive a disproportionate share of the benefits. To obtain these results, we employ several different federally administered datasets: American Community Survey, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), and Poverty Thresholds as provided by the US Census. We find that Black children and poor children, on average, have higher reductions in exposure to PM2.5. Nationally, close to 235 372 asthma exacerbation cases will be averted in 2040 under the decarbonization policy compared with Business-as-Usual. States with significant gains in asthma cases averted per 100 000 are Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Furthermore, since the asthma portion of the BRFSS is not conducted in South Carolina, Colorado, Arkansas, and South Dakota, these states were omitted from the analysis. Across all states with significant gains, children living below the poverty line have larger health benefits than children above the poverty line. Households with child poverty have 50% larger reductions in asthma exacerbations than households without childhood poverty. Black children below the poverty line experience 33% higher health gains compared to Black children per 100 000 above the poverty line, 50% higher health gains compared to White children below the poverty line, and 159% higher than White children above the poverty line. We also provide general methodological insights for quantifying the environmental justice impacts of regulatory policies. We demonstrate why using race and poverty status-based prevalence rates is critical for understanding the distribution of health improvements and evaluating whether policies contribute to environmental justice goals.

Decarbonizing the US Energy System

Recent rapid and unexpected cost reductions in decarbonization technologies have accelerated the cost-effective decarbonization of the US economy, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions falling by 20% from 2005 to 2020. The literature on US economy-wide decarbonization focuses on maximizing long-term GHG emissions reduction strategies that rely mostly on renewable energy expansion, electrification, and efficiency improvements to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. While these studies provide a valuable foundation, further research is needed to properly support decarbonization policy development and implementation. In this review, we identify key decarbonization analysis gaps and opportunities, including issues related to cross-sectoral linkages, spatial and temporal granularity, consumer behavior, emerging technologies, equity and environmental justice, and political economy. We conclude by discussing the implications of these analysis gaps for US decarbonization pathways and how they relate to challenges facing major global emitters.

Addressing hardship and climate change: Citizens' perceptions of costs of living, social inequalities and priorities for policy

AbstractIn the wake of rising energy prices and the cost of living crisis, some have claimed that climate policies are at odds with citizens' more pressing everyday living concerns. Critics challenge these simplifying narratives that shorter term economic and social wellbeing priorities and ‘longer term’ decarbonization policies are in tension with one another and argue that effective policies must treat them as interconnected. Evidence regarding how citizens think about climate policy mostly focus on policy acceptability, highlighting the role of perceptions of effectiveness and fairness, but there is a quite limited conceptualization of contexts of social inequality, and even more limited engagement with the views of marginalized groups whose buy‐in is seen as crucial for effective net zero transitions. This paper reviews the evidence and analyses new data from a small exploratory study with citizens from low income and marginalized backgrounds. In group discussions several participants emphasized the importance of tackling both social hardships and climate priorities, seen by some as interlinked. Further, many described wider societal unfairness relating to experiences of poverty, exploitation, a lack of voice or even recognition and a keen sense of disconnect between politics and their own everyday concerns and lived experiences. I argue that climate policy making should engage more fully with contexts of social inequality and that social wellbeing and systematic action on climate change need to be treated by policy makers and politicians as profoundly interlinked challenges.

Critical Raw Materials, Economic Statecraft and Europe’s Dependence on China

ABSTRACT The People’s Republic of China (PRC) holds a dominant position along wide swaths of critical mineral and technology value chains that are necessary for achieving Europe’s decarbonisation policy goals. Many fear that the PRC will pursue increasingly coercive measures to leverage its supply chain advantage in pursuit of broader geopolitical objectives. Examining three mineral groups in which Beijing has enhanced supply chain restrictions in 2023, namely rare earth elements, gallium and graphite, highlights that the PRC’s priority has long been the pursuit of economic and industrial policy goals rather than a broader diplomatic agenda, though this could change. Arguably, leveraging raw materials is ultimately a weak form of economic statecraft, eliciting effective diversification strategies that in turn weaken a supplier state’s sources of leverage. Europe’s response, while slow to emerge, has been a strategy to reinvest in its own mineral extraction, refining and recycling capacities, on the one hand, and diversify global supply chains by expanding its strategic partnerships, on the other.

A Pan-Asian Energy Transition? The New Rationale for Decarbonization Policies in the World’s Largest Energy Exporting Countries: A Case Study of Qatar and Other GCC Countries

Climate change has become a major agenda item in international relations and in national energy policy-making circles around the world. This review studies the surprising evolution of the energy policy, and more particularly the energy transition, currently happening in the Arabian Gulf region, which features some of the world’s largest exporters of oil and gas. Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and other neighboring energy exporters plan to export blue and green hydrogen across Asia as well as towards Europe in the years and decades to come. Although poorly known and understood abroad, this recent strategy does not threaten the current exports of oil and gas (still needed for a few decades) but prepares the evolution of their national energy industries toward the future decarbonized energy demand of their main customers in East and South Asia, and beyond. The world’s largest exporter of Liquefied Natural Gas, Qatar, has established industrial policies and projects to upscale CCUS, which can enable blue hydrogen production, as well as natural carbon sinks domestically via afforestation projects.

Leveraging machine learning to generate a unified and complete building height dataset for Germany

Building geometry data is crucial for detailed, spatially-explicit analyses of the building stock in energy systems analysis and beyond. Despite the existence of diverse datasets and methods, a standardized and validated approach for creating a nation-wide unified and complete dataset of German building heights is not yet available. This study develops and validates such a methodology, combining different data sources for building footprints and heights and filling gaps in height data using an XGBoost machine learning algorithm. The XGBoost model achieves a mean absolute error of 1.78 m at the national level and between 1.52 m and 3.47 m at the federal state level. The goal is proving the applicability of the methodology at a large scale and creating a useful dataset. The resulting dataset is thoroughly evaluated on a building-by-building level and spatially resolved statistics on the quality of the dataset are reported. This detailed validation found that the building number and footprint area of German building stock is 90.31 % and 94.84 % correct, respectively, and the building height accuracy is 0.59 m at the national level. However, errors are not homogeneous across Germany and further research is needed into the impact of including additional datasets, especially for regions and building types with lower accuracies. This study proves that the chosen methodology is useful for generating a building height dataset and the workflow, with some modifications for regional data availability, can be transferred to other countries. The generated building dataset for Germany constitutes a valuable data basis for the research community in fields such as energy research, urban planning and building decarbonization policy development.

Carbon capture and co-pollutants in a networked power system

Abstract We evaluate how the availability of Carbon Capture (CC) in a networked electricity system affects the emissions of both carbon and of co-pollutants, under a range of plausible technical, economic, and policy scenarios about CC technology, the pace of renewable deployment, the structure of the power grid, and climate policy. We employ a Power Flow model of a three-node, mixed-source network in which fossil fuel power plants may invest in CC via retrofit. Our stylized model retains some of the complexities of a real power system while allowing for a detailed analysis of the impact of power plant operations and transmission constraints. We find that, in a networked system, the availability of CC may lead some generation to move from Natural Gas to Coal, thus leading to a significant increase in co-pollutants. This is of particular concern during the mid-transition, a period when both carbon and non-carbon electrical generation is active. The introduction of CC can lead to an increase in co-pollution even as the energy system transitions toward renewable energy and, surprisingly, co-pollution outcomes can be worse under a stronger decarbonization policy. This insight is important and timely in light of recent rules incentivizing the use of CC. Systems in the early stages of the energy transition may experience an increase in co-pollution if the co-pollutant dynamics are not considered in the first steps of CC policy design.

Public perception and acceptance of CCUS: preliminary findings of a qualitative case study in Greece.

The development and implementation of carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies plays an increasingly important part in European Union (EU) countries' decarbonisation policies and strategies. Several studies have shown the important role social acceptance plays in determining the outcomes of CCUS projects and how social acceptance is shaped by the national and local contexts. Yet most studies on CCUS and social acceptance have focused on a few northern European countries despite the increasing numbers of CCUS projects across the European Union. This study seeks to help address this gap by conducting a case study on how local dynamics shaped people's acceptance and awareness of CCUS in two separate Greek communities. Based on semi-structured interviews with community members near a CCUS pilot plant, and a focus group with community members from a potential storage site, this single case study explores the factors and dynamics that shaped the participants' perceptions of CCUS technologies. Our findings indicate that, despite the low level of awareness of CCUS technologies, participants could draw on their situated knowledge to identify potential drawbacks with their application. We identified scepticism regarding the adoption of new technologies and the organisations involved based on past experiences, and a notable lack of provision of technology and location-specific information as well as public engagement by the project consortium. Our recommendations for future projects and community engagement include the early involvement of the public in project development, location-based transparent information, appropriate channels to facilitate knowledge exchange, and educational initiatives to build communities' capability to influence projects.

Expert and operator perspectives on barriers to energy efficiency in data centers

It was last estimated in 2016 that data centers (DCs) comprise approximately 2% of total US electricity consumption. However, this estimate is currently being updated to account for the massive increase in computing needs due to streaming, cryptocurrency, and artificial intelligence (AI). To prevent energy consumption that tracks with increasing computing needs, it is imperative we identify energy efficiency strategies and investments beyond the low-hanging fruit solutions. In a two-phased research approach, we ask: What non-technical barriers still impede energy efficiency (EE) practices and investments in the data center sector, and what can be done to overcome these barriers? In particular, we are focused on social and organizational barriers to EE. In Phase I, we performed a literature review and found that technical solutions are abundant in the literature, but fail to address the top-down cultural shifts that need to take place in order to adapt new energy efficiency strategies. In Phase II, reported here, we interviewed 16 data center operators/experts to ground-truth our literature findings. Our interview protocols focus on three aspects of DC decision-making: procurement practices, metrics and monitoring, and perceived barriers to energy efficiency. We find that vendors are the key drivers of procurement decisions, advanced efficiency metrics are facility-specific, and there is convergence in the design of advanced facilities due to the heat density of parallelized infrastructure. Our ultimate goals for our research are to design DC decarbonization policies that target organizational structure, empower individual staff, and foster a supportive external market.

Pathways to zero emissions in California’s heavy-duty transportation sector

California contributes 0.75% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and has a target of reaching economy-wide net zero emissions by 2045, requiring all sectors to rapidly reduce emissions. Nearly 8% of California’s GHG emissions are from the heavy-duty transportation sector. In this work, we simulate decarbonization strategies for the heavy-duty vehicle (HDV) fleet using detailed fleet turnover and air quality models to track evolution of the fleet, GHG and criteria air pollutant emissions, and resulting air quality and health impacts across sociodemographic groups. We assess the effectiveness of two types of policies: zero emission vehicle sales mandates, and accelerated retirement policies. For policies including early retirements, we estimate the cost of early retirements and the cost-effectiveness of each policy. We find even a policy mandating all HDV sales to be zero emission vehicles by 2025 would not achieve fleetwide zero emissions by 2045. For California to achieve its goal of carbon neutrality, early retirement policies are needed. We find that a combination of early retirement policies and zero emission vehicle sales mandates could reduce cumulative CO2 emissions by up to 64%. Furthermore, we find that decarbonization policies will significantly reduce air pollution-related mortality, and that Black, Latino, and low-income communities will benefit most. We find that policies targeting long-haul heavy-heavy duty trucks would have the greatest benefits and be most cost-effective.

Energy Security, Climate Change, and Routines as Maladaptive Politics

Abstract Energy transitions suffer from a central political challenge. Future costs of the energy transition are directly linked to investments in mitigation and adaptation measures today, yet governments continue to underinvest in decarbonization policies and are far from meeting legally binding targets. While interdisciplinary explanations trace multiple motives behind inaction, I argue that climate inaction must be embedded in political mechanisms that sustain it. Routines are one such mechanism. Building on literatures of temporality, normative change in international politics, critical energy security studies, and routines, I argue that moments of crises have so far not been transformative in the context of climate and energy security because of how actors construct the politics of crises temporally. The temporal construction of crisis engenders a selective reading of the timescales that are perceived to matter, which in turn gives way to reproducing dominant routines that have historically been thought to secure against crises. Such routines, however, no longer secure outcomes against crises; they reproduce the very cause of climate change, namely the dependence on fossil fuels. I illustrate the explanatory mechanism between crises and routines through a case study of Germany’s energy security response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Domestic renewable energy industries and national decarbonization policy

Does the growth of renewable energy industries catalyze national decarbonization policy? The idea that stronger domestic renewable energy industries increase the political feasibility of stringent energy and climate policies aiming to phase out fossil fuels has been championed by proponents of policy sequencing and underpins the global pivot to green industrial policy. Yet, the conditions necessary for such an effect to materialize have not been fully spelled out and its empirical veracity not been systematically scrutinized. This paper contends that the willingness and ability of renewable energy industries to influence policy should be weaker for fossil fuel phaseout policies compared to green industrial policies because of more diffuse material interests, less access to policymaking, and stronger countermobilization. The first large-scale investigation of this relation using extensive time-series cross-sectional data provides no evidence of a systematic positive effect of renewable energy industry strength on carbon pricing or fossil fuel subsidy phaseouts. These findings challenge the widespread argument that the emergence of domestic low-carbon industries translates into more ambitious decarbonization policy. Scholars and policymakers should scrutinize the mechanisms and scope conditions underlying this assumed relationship.