Modeling an integrated market for sawlogs, pulpwood and forest bioenergy

Traditionally, most applications in the initial stage of forest supply chain deal with sawlogs to sawmills, pulpwood to pulp or paper mills and forest residues to heating plants. However, in the past decades, soaring prices of fossil fuel, global awareness about CO2 emission and increasing attention to domestic resource security have boosted the development of alternative renewable energy, among which forest bioenergy is the most promising and feasible choice for medium- and large-scale heating and electricity generation. Different subsidies and incentive policies for green energy further promote the utilization of forest bioenergy. As a result, there is a trend that pulpwood may be forwarded to heating plants as complementary forest bioenergy. Though pulpwood is more expensive than forest residues, it is more efficient to transport and has higher energy content. The competition between traditional forest industries and wood-energy facilities, expected to grow in the future, is very sensitive for the forest companies as they are involved in all activities. In this paper, we develop a model that all raw materials in the forest, i.e. sawlogs, pulpwood and forest residues, and byproducts from sawmills, i.e. wood chips and bark, exist in an integrated market where pulpwood can be sent to heating plants as bioenergy. It represents a multi-period multi-commodity network planning problem with multiple sources of supply, i.e. pre-selected harvest areas, and multiple kinds of destination, i.e. sawmills, pulp mills and heating plants. The decisions incorporate purchasing the raw materials in harvest areas, reassigning byproducts from sawmills, transporting those assortments to different points for chipping, storing, wood-processing or wood-fired, and replenishing fossil fuel when necessary. Moreover, different from the classic wood procurement problem, we take the unit purchasing costs of raw materials as variables, on which the corresponding supplies of different assortments linearly depend. With this price mechanism, the popularity of harvest areas can be distinguished. The objective of the problem is to minimize the total cost for the integrated market including the purchasing cost of raw materials. Therefore, the model is a quadratic programming (QP) problem with a quadratic objective function and linear constraints. A large case study in southern Sweden under different scenario assumptions is implemented to simulate the integrated market and to study how price restriction, market regulation, demand fluctuation, policy implementation and exogenous change in price for fossil fuel will influence the entire wood flows. Pair-wise comparisons show that in the integrated market, competition for raw materials between forest bioenergy facilities and traditional forest industries pushes up the purchasing costs of pulpwood. The results also demonstrate that resources can be effectively utilized with the price mechanism in supply market. The overall energy value of forest bioenergy delivered to heating plants is 23% more than the amount in the situation when volume and unit purchasing cost of raw materials are fixed.Forest supply chain; integrated market; bioenergy; wood procurement; wood distribution; quadratic programming

Using ProdRisk–SHOP Simulator for Investment Decisions of Solar and Hydro Hybridization

This paper uses two scheduling tools to compare the economic performance and production outcomes of three investment alternatives in a Norwegian hydropower plant. The investment options considered are 1) Hybridization with Floating Photovoltaics (FPV), 2) Incorporation of an additional creek inlet to the reservoir, and 3) Enhancement of the generator capacity. Specifically, we utilize a short-term deterministic optimization model (SHOP) and a simulator that integrates the deterministic model with a mid-term stochastic model (ProdRisk-SHOP Simulator). Based on 24 years of historical inflow data, market prices, and simulated 10-MWp FPV production from 2000 to 2023, the numerical results of both tools indicate that the additional creek inlet option yields the highest average economic returns, followed by the hybrid configuration. While the upgraded capacity scenario results in the lowest average annual profit, it capitalizes on volatile market conditions by maximizing production during price spikes. ProdRisk-SHOP Simulator outperforms SHOP regarding resource management since in SHOP, the initial and end reservoir water levels are predetermined, whereas in the simulator, they are part of the optimization.Using ProdRisk–SHOP Simulator for Investment Decisions of Solar and Hydro HybridizationacceptedVersio

A Survey and Analysis of Outsourcing in East China

The aim of this study is to investigate whether outsourcing activities in east china are associated with a theoretical framework derived from the literature. By the methodology of Statistics Package for the Social Science (SPSS), the results of survey indicate that outsourcing will more extensively practiced in the future, the principal outsourcing motivation are to reduce costs and focus on core businesses. The purchasing outsourcing has the largest correlation coefficients with short-term contract, the total outsourcing has a significant correlation coefficient with long-term contract at the level of =0.05. The findings indicate that high service quality and mutual trust are the main criteria for selecting outsourcing vendors. However, it is found that outsourcing satisfaction is generally low. The main benefits of outsourcing are to reduce cost, concentrate on core businesses and improve the service quality, while the main problems with outsourcing are legal disputes, disclosure of commercial secrets and conflicts with vendors.Outsourcing; strategy; contract; survey

INTEGRATING SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS INTO CLIMATE FINANCE PROJECTS: ASSESSING THE MARKET IMPACT OF CO-BENEFITS FROM CARBON OFFSETS

By design, climate finance projects have two fundamental features: climate benefits and sustainable development benefits. Climate finance is important for cutting emissions, but it can also deliver significant additional benefits, often termed “co-benefits.” The concept of co-benefits, although lacking a consist definition in the international arena, is so important, especially for the audiences from the developing world. Co-benefits are the backbone of a green and low-carbon development of these developing countries, where promoting high-quality economic development, maintaining economic, financial and energy security, protecting environment and controlling carbon emissions should achieved together. However, how the climate finance market values co-benefits remains poorly understood. By focusing on local co-benefits, this research highlights the importance of valuing co-benefits where projects are located, and how these projects deliver impacts for local communities. This dissertation looks at the question of co-benefits in three specific contexts by using both quantitative and qualitative methods as follows: First, I assess the likelihood that project co-benefits encourage buyers to pay more for Certified Emission Reductions (CERs) within the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the major international offset mechanism within a broader world of carbon finance. Second, I look at potential mechanisms of quality branding associated with the CDM to see whether these indicators in fact attract a price premium attributable to co-benefits. Third, I study the role of offset co-benefits in corporate behavior and decision-making in voluntary carbon markets. My research shows that in the CDM context, a project with a likelihood of delivering more co-benefits receives a higher CER price from buyers. The price difference between projects with the highest co-benefits and lowest co-benefits is $4.9/tCO2e on average or a difference of 27.6 percent. The large variability in the price of CER partially comes from the locations of the buyer and the project, while CER prices do not differ based on the buyer’s profit status, sector, or the number of projects they hosted. In the quality branding context, I see that quality control indicators (particularly the independently generated label of “Gold Standard”) have a significant effect on CER prices with the price premium is in the range of$1.13/tCO2e (6.6% of price increase due to the Gold Standard certification of co-benefits) to $4.2/tCO2e (29%). Additionally, I see a strong commitment from public finance in delivering local co-benefits through their willingness to pay a price premium. In the voluntary carbon markets, I find that corporate motivations show a large degree of consistency and orientation, which aligns with the findings on the purchasing behavior for offset standards. Companies with a primary motivation to reduce emissions will prioritize purchasing cost-effective offset projects. Alternately, companies with primary motivations for non-emission impacts (such as company values or market competitiveness) value co-benefits more, and are willing to pay more to fulfill these goals

Editorial - Biennials, Triennials in China

As one of the earliest ‘exhibitions’, the first Paris Salon was held in the Palais-Royal in 1667, and by 1699, the growth of such public events prompted a move to the Grand Galerie of the Louvre. Salons thus became the public space for art in the modern sense. Soon after, in the eighteenth century, art exhibitions proliferated throughout Europe and in Britain, most notably, there has been the annual summer show of London’s Royal Academy which was first unveiled in 1769. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, European cities and states began to sponsor large international art exhibitions to build up and secure their identities as cultural centres, including the Venice Biennale, founded in 1895, as the world’s oldest biennial and one of the most enduring examples (Altshuler 2008). Since the second half of the twentieth century, particularly in the last three decades, we have seen more and more biennials and triennials established as international art events, and importantly, as vital instruments of economic and cultural development worldwide

Editorial - Making the New World: The Arts of China’s Cultural Revolution

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (Wuchan jieji wenhua da geming), from a general understanding, was launched in 1966 by Mao Zedong for his political agenda and ended with his demise in 1976. It has been seen as a watershed, the defining period of the half-century Communist rule in China. Studies on the Cultural Revolution offer more than historical insight, and they are essential for a better understanding of China today. To mark the 50th anniversary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Centre for Chinese Visual Arts (CCVA) at Birmingham City University convened a two-day international conference hosted at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. This conference, Making the New World: The Arts of China’s Cultural Revolution, invited more than twenty contributors including researchers, curators and artists worldwide to discuss the significance of the arts and culture of the Cultural Revolution, and to reflect upon their impacts on everyday experience in China within socio-political, cultural and global contexts. On the basis of the conference contributions, this special issue has been edited through the further development of selected academic papers and conversations

Editorial - Everyday Legend: Reinventing Tradition in Chinese Contemporary Art

During the early development of the People’s Republic of China, major cities were industrialised and historical architecture was severely neglected. The Cultural Revolution (1966-76) provided an extraordinary example of political mobilisation directed against the material and cultural vestiges of the past. During the infamous movement of the Red Guards, China’s public properties and cultural relics were attacked and numerous art treasures and artefacts were destroyed. The Open-Door policy beginning in 1978 instigated another ‘revolution’ – of economic reform and urban transformation. Thirty years of rapid urbanisation have meant that few traditional constructions have survived, and even the buildings and complexes built during the early PRC proved to be transitory, once they had been removed, reconstructed or replaced

SAM-6D: Segment Anything Model Meets Zero-Shot 6D Object Pose Estimation

Zero-shot 6D object pose estimation involves the detection of novel objects with their 6D poses in cluttered scenes, presenting significant challenges for model generalizability. Fortunately, the recent Segment Anything Model (SAM) has showcased remarkable zero-shot transfer performance, which provides a promising solution to tackle this task. Motivated by this, we introduce SAM-6D, a novel framework designed to realize the task through two steps, including instance segmentation and pose estimation. Given the target objects, SAM-6D employs two dedicated sub-networks, namely Instance Segmentation Model (ISM) and Pose Estimation Model (PEM), to perform these steps on cluttered RGB-D images. ISM takes SAM as an advanced starting point to generate all possible object proposals and selectively preserves valid ones through meticulously crafted object matching scores in terms of semantics, appearance and geometry. By treating pose estimation as a partial-to-partial point matching problem, PEM performs a two-stage point matching process featuring a novel design of background tokens to construct dense 3D-3D correspondence, ultimately yielding the pose estimates. Without bells and whistles, SAM-6D outperforms the existing methods on the seven core datasets of the BOP Benchmark for both instance segmentation and pose estimation of novel objects.Comment: Accepted by CVPR2024. Github Page: https://github.com/JiehongLin/SAM-6