UMN Morris and Ever-Green Energy Release Campus Carbon Neutrality Plan

The plan is intended to help the campus achieve full carbon neutrality, beyond electric. In the year since Ever-Green Energy chose the University of Minnesota Morris for the Roadmap to Carbon Neutrality Program, the two organizations have worked together to develop sustainable energy pathways for the campus to pursue. These pathways will help guide UMN Morris in its plan to achieve full carbon neutrality

Carbon Free Boston: Social equity report 2019

OVERVIEW: In January 2019, the Boston Green Ribbon Commission released its Carbon Free Boston: Summary Report, identifying potential options for the City of Boston to meet its goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. The report found that reaching carbon neutrality by 2050 requires three mutually-reinforcing strategies in key sectors: 1) deepen energy efficiency while reducing energy demand, 2) electrify activity to the fullest practical extent, and 3) use fuels and electricity that are 100 percent free of greenhouse gases (GHGs). The Summary Report detailed the ways in which these technical strategies will transform Boston’s physical infrastructure, including its buildings, energy supply, transportation, and waste management systems. The Summary Report also highlighted that it is how these strategies are designed and implemented that matter most in ensuring an effective and equitable transition to carbon neutrality. Equity concerns exist for every option the City has to reduce GHG emissions. The services provided by each sector are not experienced equally across Boston’s communities. Low-income families and families of color are more likely to live in residences that are in poor physical condition, leading to high utility bills, unsafe and unhealthy indoor environments, and high GHG emissions.1 Those same families face greater exposure to harmful outdoor air pollution compared to others. The access and reliability of public transportation is disproportionately worse in neighborhoods with large populations of people of color, and large swaths of vulnerable neighborhoods, from East Boston to Mattapan, do not have ready access to the city’s bike network. Income inequality is a growing national issue and is particularly acute in Boston, which consistently ranks among the highest US cities in regards to income disparities. With the release of Imagine Boston 2030, Mayor Walsh committed to make Boston more equitable, affordable, connected, and resilient. The Summary Report outlined the broad strokes of how action to reach carbon neutrality intersects with equity. A just transition to carbon neutrality improves environmental quality for all Bostonians, prioritizes socially vulnerable populations, seeks to redress current and past injustice, and creates economic and social opportunities for all. This Carbon Free Boston: Social Equity Report provides a deeper equity context for Carbon Free Boston as a whole, and for each strategy area, by demonstrating how inequitable and unjust the playing field is for socially vulnerable Bostonians and why equity must be integrated into policy design and implementation. This report summarizes the current landscape of climate action work for each strategy area and evaluates how it currently impacts inequity. Finally, this report provides guidance to the City and partners on how to do better; it lays out the attributes of an equitable approach to carbon neutrality, framed around three guiding principles: 1) plan carefully to avoid unintended consequences, 2) be intentional in design through a clear equity lens, and 3) practice inclusivity from start to finish

Carbon Neutrality Should Not Be the End Goal: Lessons for Institutional Climate Action From U.S. Higher Education

Aggressive climate action pledges from governments, businesses and institutions have increasingly taken the form of commitments to net carbon neutrality. Higher education institutions (HEIs) are uniquely positioned to innovate in this area, and over 800 U.S. colleges and universities have pledged to achieve net carbon neutrality. Eleven leading U.S. HEIs have already attained this status. Here, we examine their approaches to achieving net carbon neutrality, highlighting risks associated with treating emissions reduction approaches such as carbon offsets, renewable energy certificates, and bioenergy as best practice in isolation from broader policy frameworks. While pursuing net carbon neutrality has led to important institutional shifts toward sustainability, the mix of approaches used by HEIs is out of alignment with a broader U.S. decarbonization roadmap; in aggregate, these carbon neutral schools underutilize electrification and new zero-carbon electricity. We conclude by envisioning how HEIs can refocus climate mitigation efforts towards decarbonization (with net carbon neutrality as a possible milestone), with an emphasis on actions that will help shift policy and markets at larger scales

Strategic Thinking of Global Carbon Neutrality Process and the Routing of China

With the rapid spread of global energy crisis, it is urgent to realize the goal of zero-carbon energy revolution and carbon neutrality. From global perspective, developed countries and developing countries are at different stages of economic and social development. There are differences in progress in carbon neutrality laws and regulations, green technology development, and the large differences in policies and perceptions have led to imbalance and uncertainty in global carbon neutrality actions. On this basis, various parties all contribute to low-carbon and green development, while China faces many practical difficulties in achieving the carbon neutrality goal, which are reflected in higher difficulties than developed countries, improved energy security and transformation risks, insufficient core technology and innovation, and large funding gaps. Therefore, China can build a modern energy system, strengthen modern technology and independent innovation, improve the carbon emissions trading system, accelerate the optimization and upgrading of the whole industrial chain, and cultivate the public’s awareness of low-carbon consumption to help zero-carbon transformation. The role of China in global climate governance is changing, and it will provide Chinese solutions for the sustainable development of other countries and the realization of carbon neutrality goals

Dynamic effect of green financing and green technology innovation on carbon neutrality in G10 countries: fresh insights from CS-ARDL approach

There is a notion that finance plays a crucial role in anthropogenic; however, the emerging trends have been observed to incorporate environmental concerns into sustainable financing. Moreover, technological innovations tend to help in achieving carbon neutrality. This research examines the role of green financing (GFIN) and green technologies in dealing with carbon neutrality in G10 economies from 2000 through 2018. Advanced panel estimations; Cross-Sectional ARDL, cross-sectional dependence, unit root test with and without structural breaks, slope homogeneity, and panel cointegration has applied. The long- and short-run estimates confirm that GFIN and technologies promote carbon neutrality. Moreover, the long-run results endorse the validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve. Similar findings are observed in the short run except for EKC; however, their marginal contribution toward carbon neutrality is relatively higher in the long run. Moreover, the negative sign of the error correction term endorses convergence towards steady-state equilibrium. These results are endorsed by alternative estimators and offer valuable recommendations

Guidebook to Carbon Neutrality in China

This Open Access publication focuses on China’s goal of achieving peak carbon emissions in 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. The book is the first to systematically build a framework combining a top-down and bottom-up analysis of this acute topic. What does carbon neutrality mean for economics in China? Might it imply stagflation or is it an opportunity to maximize the potential of green manufacturing? The book offers a comprehensive analysis of how the pursuit of carbon neutrality may influence the development of China's economy, and the country's biggest industries, while foreseeing the likely changes in people's lifestyles. In total, the book constructs a comprehensive path for China's carbon neutrality drive from the perspective of the green premium. This effort lays the foundation for a discussion of the country's emissions reduction plan. The book goes further, calculating the investment required for different sectors to achieve carbon neutrality, and illustrating the roles of carbon pricing and green finance in this undertaking. The book’s information comes from a network of primary sources, including experts in the field and noted academics, to depict potential low-carbon roadmaps and green transitions in major industries. Emphasized is green development in sectors that will be critical to civilization, including in technology, energy, manufacturing, transportation, and urban planning, which are backed by in-depth discussions and analyses. Accessible and academically rigorous, the work is anchored in the economics of carbon neutrality, extends to potential policy implications and identifies investment opportunities. This valuable reference will attract readers interested in public policy, economics, finance, and investors who seek to better understand China's prospects in the low-carbon economy of the near future

Carbon Neutrality and Bioenergy: A Zero-Sum Game?

Biomass, a renewable energy source, has been viewed as “carbon neutral”—that is, its use as energy is presumed not to release net carbon dioxide. However, this assumption of carbon neutrality has recently been challenged. In 2010 two letters were sent to the Congress by eminent scientists examining the merits—or demerits—of biomass for climate change mitigation. The first, from about 90 scientists (to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, from W.H. Schlesinger et al. May 17, 2010), questioned the treatment of all biomass energy as carbon neutral, arguing that it could undermine legislative emissions reduction goals. The second letter, submitted by more than 100 forest scientists (to Barbara Boxer et al. from Bruce Lippke et al. July 20, 2010), expressed concern over equating biogenic carbon emissions with fossil fuel emissions, as is contemplated in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Tailoring Rule. It argued that an approach focused on smokestack emissions, independent of the feedstocks, would encourage further fossil fuel energy production, to the long-term detriment of the atmosphere. This paper attempts to clarify and, to the extent possible, resolve these differences.carbon neutrality, biomass, wood biomass, bioenergy, carbon dioxide, feedstock, energy, alternative fuel, rational expectations

Sustainability and Carbon Neutrality

Jennifer Thomson, assistant professor of History at Bucknell University, interviews Amanda Wooden, professor of Environmental Studies at Bucknell University and a second anonymous guest. Wooden and Thomson discuss the history and future of sustainability and carbon neutrality on campus. The audio quality is very poor. The anonymous guest discussed the October 31, 2018 Sustainability Forum

Sectoral low-carbon roadmaps and the role of forest biomass in Finland's carbon neutrality 2035 target

As a part of its climate policy, Finnish government facilitated the creation of low-carbon roadmaps by sectors of industry. The roadmap process and the roadmaps were promoted as an international benchmark in COP26. They also form a part of the policy process towards the government's goal of carbon neutrality by 2035. We analyse the need and role of biomass use contained in the roadmaps of the key sectors and compare it to data on available forest biomass. The combined need for forest biomass in the roadmaps is well over 140 Mm(3), which is over double that of the logging level in 2019, and drastically over the roadmaps' projection of future sustainable yield. This creates a challenge for the carbon neutrality goal via the loss of carbon sinks in forests, risking the carbon neutrality target and other sustainability goals. Although, up to date, the roadmaps present the most detailed picture of industrial transformation towards carbon neutrality in an EU member state, they are made unrealistic by the omission of a comprehensive material perspective. The addition of such a perspective and a clear setting of boundaries would increase the viability of the roadmaps as a policy tool.Peer reviewe