Articles

China needs to manage its coal-dominated power system to curb carbon emissions, as well as to address local environmental priorities such as air pollution and water stress. In this article, the authors examine three province-level scenarios for 2030 that represent various electricity demand and low-carbon infrastructure development pathways.

Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un trading threats with words like “fire and fury”; Pakistan deploying tactical nuclear weapons to counter Indian conventional threats; Russia enunciating an Orwellian doctrine of “escalate-to-de-escalate” that calls for early use of battlefield nuclear weapons; and major nuclear-weapons states modernizing their arsenals — nukes are back. The cruel irony: This is happening after eight years of a president who won the Nobel Peace Prize largely for his vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.

Enormous growth in solar photovoltaic (PV) electricity generation in China is planned, with a goal to provide 10 perecnt of total electricity demand by 2030. However, over much of China, aerosol pollution scatters and absorbs sunlight, significantly reducing surface solar radiation suitable for PV electricity generation. The authors evaluate the impact of aerosols on PV generation and find aerosol-related annual average reductions in eastern China to be more than 20 percent. In winter, aerosols have comparable impacts to clouds over eastern provinces. Improving air quality in China would increase efficiency of solar PV generation. As a positive feedback, increased PV efficiency and deployment would further reduce air pollutant emissions as well.

Environmental conservation programs in China have increasingly emphasized integration of marketbased logic into regulatory programs. But the realization of market logic and the effectiveness of such efforts are widely questioned by scientists and policy analysts. The authors empirically analyze the design, implementation, and outcomes of the ecological restoration program in the Three-Rivers Headwater Region in China, a large-scale conservation scheme aimed at restoring degraded grasslands and improving local livelihoods.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.