The potential implementation of green infrastructure assessment using high-resolution National Agriculture Imagery Program data for sustainable hazard mitigation

As green infrastructure gets its attention in hazard mitigation, it is necessary to improve general understanding on what makes green infrastructure important for hazard and resiliency research. To better understand how green infrastructure fits with more traditional notions of structural and nonstructural mitigation, this study examines the relationship between green infrastructure and ‘structural and nonstructural’ mitigation approaches for hazard mitigation. Also, this study discusses a new measurement of locational aspects and spatial patterns of green infrastructure by utilizing high-resolution data in urban areas, and its potential implementation in hazard mitigation. Compared to previous research using land-use land-cover datasets, the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) utilizing National Agriculture Imagery Program dataset provides an ability to capture green infrastructure in greater detail. A visual comparison suggests that the NDVI data are able to capture and identify more types of ‘green’ land uses in Harris County. The total green infrastructure percentages for Harris County, Texas, based on 1-m high resolution were found to be 61.5% of the area, compared to the 51.5% based on the National Land Cover Database. This study provides support for utilizing high-resolution data to establish guidelines for green infrastructure’s spatial characteristics and sustainable hazard mitigation. The outcomes of this study will be helpful in the strategic planning and implementation of green infrastructure in urban areas with hazard issues.     

Environment and economic feasibility of municipal solid waste central sorting strategy: a case study in Beijing

Although Beijing has carried out municipal solid waste (MSW) source separation since 1996, it has largely been ineffective. In 2012, a “Green House” program was established as a new attempt for central sorting. In this study, the authors used material flow analysis (MFA) and cost benefit analysis (CBA) methods to investigate Green House’s environment and economic feasibility. Results showed that the program did have significant environmental benefits on waste reduction, which reduced the amount of waste by 34%. If the Green House program is implemented in a residential community with wet waste ratio of 66%, the proportion of waste reduction can reach 37%. However, the Green House is now running with a monthly loss of 1982 CNY. This is mainly because most of its benefits come from waste reduction (i.e., 5878 CNY per month), which does not turn a monetary benefit, but is instead distributed to the whole of society as positive environmental externalities. Lack of government involvement, small program scale, and technical/managerial deficiency are three main barriers of the Green House. We, thus, make three recommendations: involve government authority and financial support, expand the program scale to separate 91.4 tons of waste every month, and use more professional equipment/technologies. If the Green House program can successfully adopt these suggestions, 33.8 tons of waste can be reduced monthly, and it would be able to flip the loss into a profit worth 35034 CNY.

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Warm glow from green power: Evidence from Australian electricity consumers

Green electricity products are increasingly made available to consumers in many countries in order to address a number of environmental and social concerns. Most of the literature on this green electricity market focuses on consumers’ characteristics and product attributes that could affect participation. However, the contribution of this environmental consumerism to the overall environmental good does not depend on participation alone. The real impact relies on market participation for green consumers (the proportion of green consumers) combined with the level of green consumption intensity – the commitment levels, or proportion of consumption that is green. We design an online interface that closely mimics the real market decision environment for electricity consumers in Western Australia and use an error component model to analyze consumers’ choice of green electricity products and their commitment levels. We show that product attributes have limited impact on the choice of green products; however, there is still great potential for better participation by improving the design of green electricity programs. When green products are selected, most respondents select the minimum commitment possible, and this is insensitive to the premium being charged on green power, suggesting that we are largely observing a buy-in ‘warm glow’ for carbon mitigation.     

加速我国环保产业的发展

简述了环保产业是未来世纪产业，介绍了国内外环保产业的现状及我国环保产业存在的问题，对发展我国环保产业提出了对策和建议。     

Is energy efficiency capitalized into home prices? Evidence from three U.S. cities

We test for evidence that energy efficiency features are capitalized into home prices in three U.S. metropolitan areas. Using hedonic regressions and multiple matching procedures, we find that Energy Star certification is associated with higher sales prices in two of the markets: the Research Triangle region of North Carolina and Portland, Oregon. We find that local “green” certifications in Portland and in Austin, Texas, are also associated with higher prices and that the estimated price impacts are larger than those from Energy Star. Matching on observables proves to be important in some cases, reducing the estimated impacts compared with models without matching. We calculate the implied energy savings from the estimated premiums and find that, in the Research Triangle market, the Energy Star premiums approximately equal the savings that program is designed to achieve, but in Portland, the premiums are slightly greater than the program's savings due to low energy costs in the region.     

绿色大学建设管理的研究

对绿色校园建设的必要性从高校的优势和学校管理要求方面进行了论述。以辽宁大学为例,探讨了其进行绿色校园建设的主要内容,并提出了污染预防、实施生态工程和进行可持续发展管理的对策。     

齐齐哈尔市绿色食品产业发展的思考

阐明了绿色食品的内涵,产生的历史背景、客观原因,以及发展绿色食品对保障食品安全性、解决农产品国际贸易壁垒,实现农业可续发展的重大意义。在回顾齐齐哈尔绿色食品产生发展历程,目前取得的成效及存在的主要问题基础上,提出了加快齐齐哈尔绿色食品产生发展的思路与对策,着重强调要注重保护和发送生态环境,加强生产为基地建设,建设为龙头企业、加强市场开拓等关键性问题。     

从绿色贸易壁垒谈中国农产品贸易的对策思路

本文运用环境经济学的理论和方法 ,分析了 WTO中的绿色贸易壁垒从质量、成本、营销三个方面对中国农产品贸易产生的影响以及中国目前农产品贸易的形式 ,提出中国在入世后农产品贸易全球化发展中所应采取的对策和建议     

上海市绿色食品的发展前景与策略

为更好地协调环境、资源、食品、健康的关系,适应人们对农产品需求的变化及社会可持续发展的需要,世界各国纷纷提出了发展无污染农产品的设想。我国亦于1990年推出了“绿色食品”活动。该文在综观国内外绿色食品研究和发展概况的基础上,分析了上海市发展绿色食品的有利条件,并提出了发展对策和建议。     

发展绿色经济是21世纪的必要抉择

发展绿色经济是各个国家处理环境与发展关系，实现可持续发展的抉择。本文着重介绍了绿色经济的内容，主要包括绿色产业、绿色贸易、等。在发展绿色经济方面，我国已有一定认识并取得了较大成就，但和发达国家相比还存在较大差距，必须下大力迎头赶上。