Distributed energy (DE) is receiving lots of attention from the Chinese government. A number of DE projects have been constructed in China. However, there are still numerous problems with DE ...projects. What hinders the development of DE in China? The Huadian Jimei distributed energy project (HJDE) is a typical DE building project that was not completed successfully. This paper focuses on this DE project to explore the barriers to DE development. The research group conducted 13 semi-structured interviews with representatives of institutions and corporations involved in the HJDE project to collect information. Based on the information, three types of problems were determined, and the results indicate that these conflicts between the core stakeholders make DE projects unsuccessful. These problems result from institutional barriers to DE, rooting in the development policy and the current energy market. Moreover, several key stakeholders are not able to play an active role in the design or management of DE projects. The Chinese government will put a much greater effort into the development of future DE projects. Many national support policies and rules will be announced, which are easy to practical use. Under these conditions, 1000 DE projects will be successfully completed until 2015.
•Using stakeholder analysis, this paper focuses on one typical building DE project.•Conflicts between core stakeholders make the DE project cannot be completed.•The barriers are related to the role of electricity consumers in DE projects.•The barriers are also related to current Chinese natural gas and LNG market.•Drivers such as regulation, incentives and so on should be built and modified.
Comprehensive study of the factors influencing household solid waste (HSW) generation is crucial and fundamental for exploring the generation mechanism and forecasting future dynamics of HSW. A case ...study of Xiamen Island, China was employed to reveal the direct and indirect effects of demographic/socioeconomic factors on solid waste generation at the urban household scale. Based on a face-to-face questionnaire and two-stage survey of solid waste generation, a path analysis model was built. Results showed that the proposed path model exhibited good fit indices. Family size and dinning-at-home rate (DR), whose coefficients were −0.40 and 0.43, respectively, were the two major factors influencing HSW directly. Moreover, family size, education level, employment rate and age structure played different degrees of indirect effects on HSW generation through respective paths, which should not be ignored. In terms of total effects, coefficients of family size, DR and employment rate were −0.46, 0.43 and −0.37, respectively, which were three most dominant factors influencing HSW generation. As for waste composition, organic waste was the most representative of HSW dynamics, and was the most sensitive to impact by the factors studied. Quantitative results of this study have important policy implications for sustainable municipal solid waste management.
The rapid socioeconomic development has led to severe pollution of urban soils by heavy metals. It is vital to identify and quantify the factors that affect trace-element pollution for better ...preventing and managing soil pollution. In this study, we collected 179 surface soil samples from Zhangzhou City in a coastal area of south China to determine the concentration of seven heavy metals (As, Cr, Cu, Hg, Ni, Pb, and Zn) and used the Nemerow Pollution Index (Pn) to estimate the level of heavy metal pollution in soils. Eighteen environmental factors, including six natural factors (e.g. soil properties, surface topography) and twelve anthropogenic factors (e.g. industry, road network, land use types and landscape pattern), were evaluated with the geodetector statistical method. The results indicate that the heavy metal contamination of soils in Zhangzhou City was highly heterogeneous. We found that the primary influencing factors for heavy metal concentrations were soil organic matter content, agriculture activities, and landscape pattern. Furthermore, the nonlinear relationship between the primary factors and their interaction factors enhanced soil contamination by the heavy metals. Among the anthropogenic factors, landscape pattern enhanced Pn the most when interacting with natural factor. In addition, the buffer zone should be considered when evaluating the effects of factors such as land use and landscape pattern, because the interactions between landscape pattern and slope aspect produce a maximum effect, accounting for 31.0% of the Pn value on the scale of 800 m. Based on this analysis, we identified the key factors of heavy metal pollution in the soils of Zhangzhou City and proposed strategic procedures for effective soil pollution prevention and treatment in the future.
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•Heavy metals of surface soil were affected by natural and anthropogenic factors.•Geodetector could effectively reveal the interactive effect of influencing factors.•Interactive effects of factors nonlinearly enhanced heavy metals accumulation.•Landscape pattern∩slope aspect explained 31% of soil overall contamination.
Limited success in 3R (reduce, reuse, recycle) implementation and conflicts in waste treatment plant construction call for active and sustained public participation in Chinese waste management. It is ...especially important to identify factors which affect citizen participation in waste reduction and recycling where waste policies are poorly implemented. In this paper we report the results of a research-constructed survey conducted in Xiamen, one of eight cities in China which have been operating waste source separation pilot programs since 2000. The results showed that while more than half of respondents were satisfied with local waste management, waste recycling was still inefficient and largely carried out by the informal sector. Satisfaction rates and basic residential house prices were positively correlated, and the satisfaction rate was higher in newly urbanizing areas than in old downtown and urban village areas. A structural equation model was used to identify key factors influencing citizen environmental willingness to participate in waste management, and this indicated that the most important influencing factor was citizen knowledge, followed by social motivation, while institutional factors had the smallest positive effect. Citizens who were better informed and lived in a community/family with more environmentally friendly behaviors have a greater propensity to participate in sustainable waste management. The model is useful for identifying causal relationships and ranking influencing factors in terms of their importance. The results indicate a waste policy hierarchy in Chinese cities, and future waste management should change from the current legislative-centered strategy. The results can be used to inform decision makers find locally effective strategies to improve public participation in waste management in accordance with socioeconomic and cultural conditions in China.
•The influencing factors behind public participation in waste management were poorly understood in China.•Citizen knowledge and social motivation are the more influential factors than institutional factors.•Knowledge is major barrier that result in poor MSW separation participation.•There is a waste policy hierarchy in Chinese cities.•Future waste management should change from the current legislative-centered strategy to locally effective strategy.
The global phenomenon of urbanization increases the importance of compact-city development. China's rapid urban development has resulted in unprecedented urban population growth and built-up area ...expansion, but its effects on urban morphology and mobility are only partly understood. City compactness can be measured simply using urban spatial form or morphology: the more concentrated the built-up area, the more compact the city is. Here we show that 35 major cities in China are not compact in spatial form and that their compactness is not improving over time. Our results reveal close correlations between changes in urbanization rate and changes in city compactness as well as between city compactness and commuting time (CT), indicating that the high rate of urbanization without adequate planning has contributed to the poor compactness of Chinese cities, which has further increased CT. We suggest that continuing urban sprawl with low land use efficiency and low urban form compactness will make cities in China more congested and threaten China's sustainable urbanization.
Building stock provides favorable material and welfare support to the urbanization process, but also triggers significant resource extraction and carbon emissions. Spatial explicit stock studies have ...focused mainly on developed areas and mature cities, with less attention paid to peri-urban areas. In terms of carbon emission, inconsistent system boundary selection and lack of building life cycle analysis limit the accuracy and comparability of results. Moreover, the absence of spatial distribution of emissions undermines support to regional carbon reduction initiatives. In this study, the Yangtze River Delta Integration Demonstration Area (YRDA), which is considered as a typical peri-urban area in China, was selected to study the spatiotemporal pattern of material flows and stocks at the residential community scale since the reform of the housing system in 1998, and to analyze spatiotemporal dynamics of carbon emissions over the life cycle of buildings. The results show that material inputs in peri-urban areas have experienced a fluctuating increase, with a gradual decline after 2016 as housing policies were tightened, and have a lower residential stock intensity than city centers. Residential carbon emissions also fluctuate while trending upwards, with operation accounting for the highest share of emissions, followed by building material production, with demolition now causing a rapid growth in emissions. Material stocks and residential carbon emissions display significant spatial heterogeneity, and a new concentration area has formed at the intersection of the three administrative districts that of YRDA. The study underscores the influence of economic growth and housing policy on the spatiotemporal pattern of building stocks, flows and carbon emissions, offering insights for cross-boundary ecosystem governance and regional circular economy development.
•Building stock and flow are influenced by both economic growth and housing policy.•Building stock intensity is lower in peri-urban area than that in downtown area.•Carbon emission from material production is second only to that in operation phase.•Carbon emission in demolition increases quickly.•Building flow, stock and carbon emission display significant spatial heterogeneity.
Sludge management accounts for a large share of economic costs and energy consumption in wastewater treatment and has become an important challenge for urban sustainability. Accurately predicting ...regional sludge generation by incorporating spatial characteristics to find carbon reduction potential can help improve the sustainability of wastewater treatment and formulate tailored mitigation strategies. This is especially true in China, which along with the world's largest wastewater treatment capacity, also faces rapid growth in sludge generation, insufficient disposal capacity, and low recycling rates. In this study, data from 3,495 wastewater treatment plants were used to screen sludge driving factors in 338 Chinese cities, and a random forest regression model was used to predict future sludge generation and associated carbon emissions at the provincial level under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways. The results showed that GDP, built-up area, and carbon content of foods had relatively high q-values (above 0.5). Indicating that economic development, urban form, and food consumption were the major factors influencing sludge generation. By 2060, total sludge generation in China is expected to be between 195% and 241% of the 2017 total in the five SSP scenarios. Improved disposal methods should be implemented to reduce carbon emissions in regions that have stable sludge growth, while fast-developing areas should focus on sludge reduction. In Central and Western China, it may be possible to control sludge generation at the source given expected changes in dietary structure and urban compact development change, while in Eastern China greater use of anaerobic digestion and sludge-to-resource treatment may be more effective. Combining anaerobic digestion and low carbon disposal methods could reduce about 50 Mts GHG emissions in China by 2060.
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•Urban form, economy, and food are key factors affecting sludge generation.•A random forest regression was built to fit the nonlinear trends of sludge growth.•A declining growth in provincial sludge generation was forecast until 2060.•Carbon reduction strategies should be based on regional sludge patterns.•A Low Carbon Disposal method can reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2060.
Most of the world＇s cities are concentrated in coastal areas. As a special geographical component of the coastal system, island urban spatial expansion is the outcome of interactions between city ...development and the physical environment. This paper takes Xiamen Island, located in Southeastern China, as an example to analyze island urban spatial expansion and its determinants by combining an analysis of the literature on urban development policies, urban overall plans, population growth and industrial development, with geographical information analysis using historical maps and remote sensing photographs. Firstly, we reviewed the history of the Xiamen City development during the last 100 years, which can be divided into four periods： the embryonic modern city and early development from 1908 to 1949; administrative boundary expansion and infrastructure development from 1950 to 1979; special economic zone construction and rapid urbanization from 1980 to 2003; and Bay City construction since 2003. The dynamic changes to the coastline, island shape, built-up area, transportation, administrative division, and major land use type conversion which occurred during approximately the past 100 years were analyzed and the characteristics of the island urban spatial expansion were concluded： early expansion from a central point, followed by expansion along a section of coastline, and expansion from the coastline inland. Secondly, we discussed the potential determinants of island urban spatial expansion including administrative division adjustment, urban master planning revision, industrial development, topographical factors, coastal area reclamation, transportation expansion, and population growth. Finally, the effects of each potential determinant on island urban spatial expansion were concluded. Island urban spatial expansion is the result of a synthesis of natural and socio-economic factors which are not independent but interacting. Built-up area expansion is the major driver of island land cover and land use changes. By this paper, we hope to provide a scientific reference contributing to the rational understanding of island and coastal sustainable urbanization in China, and the world beyond.
•Design a framework for modeling carbon emissions in China’s power sector.•Employ a methodology that combines top-down, bottom-up and the integration of both.•Showcase on how to combine quotas ...design, quotas allocation, and abatement estimate.
China has started its design of national emissions trading system (ETS), and power sector is included in its initial stage. In this paper, we propose a systematic framework to estimate total carbon emission quota required to meet the national GDP energy intensity target, and allocate the emission quota. The theoretical framework consists of three basic approaches - “top-down”, “bottom-up” and “the integration” approaches, and assumes key parameters such as CO2 emission intensity target, contribution of emission abatement from ETS, coverage range of ETS, and industry emissions standards. Based on actual data from 2011, we forecast development of China’s thermal power industry into 2020 under different official planning scenarios. With the approaches proposed, we show on to adjust the emissions benchmarking at technology level for reaching expected contribution of emissions abatement from ETS. The proposed methodology is informative to ETS market regulators and power utilities.
