Global commitment towards sustainable energy

Energy is crucial to economic and social development and improves quality of life. However, fossil fuel energy produces greenhouse gases (GHGs) and cannot be sustained for a long time. It is essential to tackle these problems by moving towards renewable and sustainable energy. Some countries, including those in the Arabian Gulf region, are still in the appraisal stage of adopting different forms of renewable energy. This paper reviews the business potential and likely GHG reductions associated with adopting renewable energy in Oman. It is revealed that 1·9 Mt of annual carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by producing 10% of the country’s electricity from renewables. The paper further discusses the global sustainable energy commitment under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and reviews the 2030 targets of some countries that are high producers of GHGs. It is anticipated that if all these planned targets are achieved, the total sustainable energy contribution could grow by nearly 11 000 TWh by 2030. These plans provide guidance for those countries still preparing to submit their plans to the UN

Household Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in China: A decomposition analysis

This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Zhu, Q., and Wei, T. (2015) Household Energy Use and Carbon Emissions in China: A decomposition analysis. Env. Pol. Gov., 25: 316–329, which has been published in final form at doi:10.1002/eet.1675. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving.Although its per capita carbon emissions are still relatively low, China’s aggregated carbon emissions have grown by nearly 4-fold in the last three decades, and now it is the biggest CO2 emitter in the world. There are many reasons for this emissions growth, and much emphasis has been placed on industrial development, but previous research has estimated that 40% of the growth in Chinese CO2 emissions over the 15 years to 2007 can be attributed to household energy consumption. In this paper, we conduct a decomposition analysis to show that in the period from 1978 to 2008 nearly 60% of the growth in Chinese household emissions can be attributed to the increasing number of households and 40% to increasing emissions per household. We also show that over this period emissions growth in urban households has been six times that of rural households. These results have important implications for policy makers seeking to promote reductions in China’s CO2 emissions, relating for example to family planning and urbanization.submittedVersio