中国的能源工业及其污染防治

能源工业是我国的基础工业,也是经济发展的战略重点,同时又是重要的污染源。由于我国能源以煤炭为主,所以能源工业的污染主要是煤的开采利用带来的。因此,应当把煤炭开采、利用造成的污染作为防治重点,从节能降耗、提高燃烧效率、改善能源结构、消除煤炭开采、利用中产生的污染等几个方面入手,从根本上解决能源工业的环境问题,努力处理好经济发展和环境保护的关系,实现能源与环境的协调发展和经济的持续增长。     

陕晋蒙三角区自然环境面临的主要灾害及对策

陕晋蒙三角区是我国未来一个新能源基地,在全国具有重要的地位。本文从该区的特点出发,论述了自然环境的主要灾害及成因,进而提出了减灾的相应措施与建议。     

宁东基地大气PAHs污染特征及呼吸暴露风险

利用主动观测技术对宁东能源化工基地大气PM_2.5、PM_1.0和气相中的PAHs浓度水平、族谱特征、时空分布及来源进行研究,并基于该观测数据对居民呼吸暴露健康风险进行评估.结果表明,宁东基地大气PM_2.5、PM_1.0及气相中∑₁₆PAHs浓度范围分别为：17.95~325.12ng/m³、12.66~311.96ng/m³和26.33~97.88ng/m³,年均浓度分别为（99.42±117.48）ng/m³、（78.88±100.58）ng/m³和（57.89±47.39）ng/m³.宝丰基地冬夏季大气PM_2.5、PM_1.0和气相中∑₁₆PAHs浓度水平均明显高于英力特;宝丰和英力特基地冬季大气PM_2.5、PM_1.0中∑₁₆PAHs浓度水平均明显高于夏季浓度.宁东基地大气中∑₁₆PAHs的浓度水平要高于国内外其他城市,大气PAHs污染较为严重.源解析表明夏季宁东基地PAHs的主要排放源是工业煤燃烧和机动车尾气,冬季则主要来自工业煤燃烧和木材、薪柴等生物质燃烧排放.宁东基地人群暴露于大气PAHs可能会造成平均冬季每百万人中约有33~2628人罹患癌症,夏季每百万人中约有11~834人罹患癌症的风险.     

Potentially recoverable resources: How recoverable?

There are a number of factors which are likely to limit the proportion of potentially recoverable resources that will actually be recovered. The most important of these concern the way minerals are distributed within the crust and trends in energy costs associated with mineral production. This article offers a pessimistic view of the prospects for mineral supplies early in the 21st century. The resource situation is even less hopeful when the possibility of extending the material living standards of the developed countries to everyone likely to be living on earth late next century is considered.     

Land use issues in biomass energy planning

Land availability is a key consideration for evaluating the potential of biomass energy. This depends not only on how much land is physically suitable for growing the biomass crop, but also on the environmental implications of an energy farm and the extent to which land can be freed from competing uses. Energy planning should include inventories to realistically assess the amount of land potentially available for biomass production and the trade-offs involved in using such land for biomass farms.     

How developing countries can engage in GHG reduction: a case study for China

It has been clearly recognized that future global climate change will limit the possibilities for sustainable development in China. To minimize these negative effects, as a practical strategy, we suggest that the Chinese government engage in international cooperation as a key contributor in the prevention of global warming. This suggestion results from numerical estimations of China’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emission trends accompanied with economic growth up to 2100. The results show that China’s gross domestic product (GDP), measured in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), may overtake the sum of the GDPs of the United States and Canada in 2020. It is predicted that GDP per capita may reach US$20,000 and $80,000 in 2050 and 2100, respectively; meanwhile, CO₂ emissions in China will increase from 6.6 billion tons (in carbon equivalent units) in 1990 to 54.6 billion tons in 2100. This means that the global peak concentration of GHG cannot be practically reduced without significant contributions from China. For international cooperation in mitigating global climate change, we introduce a new option, “per-capita emission restricted by assigned amount,” as an accounting rule for GHG reduction. This baseline classifies global CO₂ reduction actions into three categories: compulsory reduction, self-imposed reduction, and voluntary reduction. We suggest that China contribute to world CO₂ reduction according to the following timetable: voluntary reduction until 2012, self-imposed reduction until 2020, and compulsory reduction from 2020. The simulation results also indicate that China can benefit from this strategy in terms of improvements in its domestic economy and environment, for instance, by reducing fossil fuel consumption and the emission of pollutants.

Long-run dynamics of renewable energy consumption on carbon emissions and economic growth in the European union

This paper examines long-run and short-run dynamics of renewable energy consumption on carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and economic growth in the European Union. This study employs cointegration tests, Granger causality tests and vector error correction estimates to examine the direction of Granger causality, the long-run dynamics of economic growth and energy variables on carbon emissions. This study analyses time series data from the World Development Indicators over the period from1961 to 2012. The results of this study support a link between renewable energy consumption, economic growth, industrialization, exports and CO₂ emissions in the long-run and short-run. The results support that the sign of the long-run dynamics from the endogenous variables to the CO₂ emissions variable is negative and significant, which implies that the energy and environmental policies of the European Union aimed at curbing CO₂ emissions must have been effective in the long-term. Furthermore, renewable energy consumption and exports have significant negative impact on CO₂ emissions in the short-run. However, industrialization and economic growth have positive impact on CO₂ emissions in the short-run. The results suggest that both economic growth and industrialization must have been achieved at the cost of harming the environment. The finding suggests that the increasing consumption of renewable energy tends to play an important role in curbing carbon emissions in the region.     

Do energy prices affect employment? Decomposed international evidence

This paper analyzes the energy price-employment nexus and contributes to the literature by showing that it is important to decompose the regulatory effect into demand, cost, and factor-shift effects. This is done by means of a cross-country multi-sectoral dataset. The results show that both rising energy prices and shadow prices of energy have no significant effect on net employment when the manufacturing sectors only are analyzed. While finding significant variations across countries, the average employment effects become significantly positive once jobs in the economy as a whole are considered. This change is driven mainly by larger positive cost effects, which more than offset the negative demand effects and reductions in the positive factor-shift effects. Moreover, the paper reveals that the often implemented approach of using a simple regulation regressor, instead of decomposing the employment effect, can result in biased estimates.     

Temperature effects on mortality and household adaptation: Evidence from China

This paper examines the effects of extreme temperatures on mortality rates, using random year-to-year variation in temperature based on county-level panel data from China. The analysis finds a robust, U-shaped relationship between temperature and mortality rates, indicating that extremely cold or hot temperatures lead to excess deaths. The heat-related (cold-related) effect is 3.5 times (3.2 times) as large as previous findings that used U.S. data, and it is especially large for the elderly population, mainly due to excess deaths caused by cardiovascular diseases. Applying these results to climate change predictions from Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model shows that by 2061–2080 the annual mortality rate is likely to increase by 14.2% if global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century, the estimated health cost of which is around 0.98 trillion Chinese Yuan per year. The paper also explores households’ adaptation behaviors to extreme temperatures. It finds that although urban households adaptively increase energy consumption when they are exposed to cold temperatures and purchase more air conditioners on hot and cold days, rural households are unresponsive to temperature fluctuations. This finding implies that rural people may be more resource constrained and suffer more when extreme temperatures occur.     

Cost pass-through to higher ethanol blends at the pump: Evidence from Minnesota gas station data

We examine the pass-through of wholesale prices to retail prices in the market for E85, which contains 51%–83% ethanol, and in the much larger market for E10, which contains 10% ethanol. We use a panel dataset consisting of monthly observations from 2007 to March 2015 on wholesale and retail prices for 274 Minnesota gas stations that sell both E10 and E85. Consistent with prior research, the cumulative pass-through coefficient for E10 is 1.00 after one month. In contrast, the E85 market is sparse, and although pass-through increased over time, we estimate it to be only 0.53 statewide from 2012 to 2015. Pass-through is higher at stations with more local E85 competitors. In the Twin Cities, which has a high density of E85 stations, pass-through is nearly complete, but outside the Twin Cities slightly less than half the wholesale discount of E85, relative to E10, is passed on to the consumer.