Energy Savings and Carbon Emission Mitigation Prospective of Building’s Glazing Variety, Window-to-Wall Ratio and Wall Thickness

Strategic selection of glazing, its window-to-wall ratio, and wall thickness of building reduce the energy consumption in the built environment. This paper presents the experimental results of solar optical properties of five glasses: clear, tinted bronze, tinted green, bronze reflective, and polymer dispersed liquid crystal glasses. Laterite room models were modeled with four different thicknesses and four different glasses using Design Builder, and thermal simulation tests were carried out using Energy Plus. The energy savings and carbon emission mitigation prospective of a building’s glazing variety, window-to-wall ratio (WWR), and wall thickness were investigated. The results revealed that among the five window glasses studied, the polymer dispersed liquid crystal glazing window (PDLCGW) was found to be the most energy-efficient for low heat gain in laterite rooms. The laterite room with 0.23 m wall thickness and 40% PDLCGW WWR reduced 18.9% heat gain in comparison with the laterite room with 0.23 m wall thickness and 40% clear glass WWR. The laterite room of 0.23 m wall thickness with PDLCGW glazing of 40% WWR enhanced cooling cost savings up to USD 31.9 compared to the laterite room of 0.08 m wall thickness with 40% PDLCGW. The laterite room of 0.23 m wall thickness with PDLCGW glazing of 40% WWR also showed improved carbon mitigation of 516 kg of CO2/year compared to the 0.23 m wall thickness laterite room of 40% WWR with clear glass glazing. The results also showed that the laterite room with 0.23 m wall thickness and 100% clear glass WWR increased heat gain by 28.2% in comparison with the laterite room with 0.23 m wall thickness and 20% clear glass WWR. The results of this article are essential for the strategic design of buildings for energy saving and emission reduction.

Integrated Multi-Attribute Preference Analysis in Fisheries and Solar Power Symbiosis Areas: A Case Study in Cigu, Taiwan

To achieve the 2025 Non-Nuclear Homeland goal and carbon emission mitigation target, the Taiwan government has been developing actively green and renewable energy with low carbon emissions. This study assessed the FSPS development project in the Cigu region of Tainan City to provide a thorough analysis toward making tradeoffs among ecosystem conservation, aquaculture, fisheries, and green power generation development. This study employs the choice experiment method and designs different attributes and levels to discuss the preferences of stakeholders in the policy development choices for ecosystem conservation and FSPS. The hope is that it can balance economic development and ecological conservation. The findings demonstrate that the tourists’ marginal willingness to pay is low. The respondents then give importance to improving biodiversity. Finally, they prefer minimal changes to the status quo with the FSPS policy implementation. These findings can serve as a reference for decision making for regional sustainable development, aquaculture and fishery upgradation, and green power generation and exploitation.

Rationale for a Climate Club Embedded in Article 6 of the Paris Agreement – A Pathway to Carbon Neutrality

Recent times have witnessed an increasing number of countries and private firms pledging carbon neutrality by mid-century. Whilst representing a significant improvement in intentions to tackle climate change, such pledges lack substance and structure. For instance, individual pledges lack coordination and aggregation among peers, while strategies and measures to achieve ambitious targets are largely absent. Moreover, current disagreements obstructing progress in international climate change negotiations further undermine the reliability of carbon neutrality objectives. Effective international policies are needed to foster aggregate mitigation ambitions and the creation of adequate supporting mechanisms. This theoretical paper describes a governance innovation aimed at overcoming such shortfalls and disagreements through a unifying yet customizable pathway towards carbon neutrality. It does so by first outlining a political governance framework based on a climate club interpretation of Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. Secondly, it proposes carbon emission mitigation effort sharing on a per capita basis to ensure efficiency, equity and political feasibility. Thirdly, this paper describes how the supply of certified mitigations of carbon emissions required to satisfy effort sharing-based demand can be assetized as carbon credits by operationalizing Article 6 as a joint certification mechanism. The resulting governance architecture for managing demand and supply of mitigations shifts efforts to tackle climate change from a ‘problem-driven’ cost approach to ‘opportunity-driven’ value creation pathways towards carbon neutrality.

Screening of native microalgae species for carbon fixation at the vicinity of Malaysian coal-fired power plant

Global warming has become a serious issue nowadays as the trend of CO2 emission is increasing by years. In Malaysia, the electricity and energy sector contributed a significant amount to the nation’s CO2 emission due to fossil fuel use. Many research works have been carried out to mitigate this issue, including carbon capture and utilization (CCUS) technology and biological carbon fixation by microalgae. This study makes a preliminary effort to screen native microalgae species in the Malaysian coal-fired power plant’s surrounding towards carbon fixation ability. Three dominant species, including Nannochloropsis sp., Tetraselmis sp., and Isochrysis sp. were identified and tested in the laboratory under ambient and pure CO2 condition to assess their growth and CO2 fixation ability. The results indicate Isochrysis sp. as the superior carbon fixer against other species. In continuation, the optimization study using Response Surface Methodology (RSM) was carried out to optimize the operating conditions of Isochrysis sp. using a customized lab-scale photobioreactor under simulated flue gas exposure. This species was further acclimatized and tested under actual flue gas generated by the power plant. Isochrysis sp. had shown its capability as a carbon fixer with CO2 fixation rate of 0.35 gCO2/L day under actual coal-fired flue gas exposure after cycles of acclimatization phase. This work is the first to demonstrate indigenous microalgae species' ability as a carbon fixer under Malaysian coal-fired flue gas exposure. Thus, the findings shall be useful in exploring the microalgae potential as a biological agent for carbon emission mitigation from power plants more sustainably.

ANALYSIS OF THE IMPACTS OF THE NDC SCENARIO ON ENERGY AND INDUSTRIAL STRUCTURE IN MAJOR COUNTRIES

The IAM model EMRICES was adopted to analyze the energy and industrial structure trends of the major countries in the world. In the aspect of energy consumption, the energy varieties are subdivided and a random shock model is introduced to depict the declining trend of energy intensity in different sectors. In the aspect of industrial structure, CGE model is used to describe the trend of economic growth. The NDC constraints would affect the total economic output and energy consumption of various industries according to the emission reduction cost function in EMRICES. The results show that the global temperature would be 2.61∘C by 2100 under NDC constraints, and it is still unable to achieve the target of 2∘C warming. The global carbon emission mitigation should be paid to more attention. In terms of energy consumption, the proportion of nonfossil energy and natural gas consumption will be greatly increased. The change of industrial competitive advantage represented by location quotient shows that China’s manufacturing competitiveness will decline, but its relative concentration and specialization level are still higher than the global average level. India’s manufacturing development will improve. In the financial sector, the United States would still be the leader.

Carbon Emissions Embodied in India–United Kingdom Trade: A Case Study on North–South Debate

This study is an appraisal of North–South trade and environmental debate on the context of ‘carbon leakage hypothesis’. This article attempts to quantify the CO2 emissions embodied in the bilateral trade between India and the United Kingdom (hereafter mentioned as the UK) using an input–output model-based analysis for the year 2015. It further proposes a hypothetical situation of no trade between India and UK in order to calculate and analyse the contribution of this bilateral trade in global CO2 emissions. The results from this study confirm the possibility of ‘carbon leakage’ from Indian commodity production sectors and find that among two trade partners, the UK is able to avoid more carbon emissions than India through trade which helps the UK to reach their carbon emission mitigation targets. On the average, manufacturing of commodities in India those are to be exported to the UK generates 1.053 kilo-tonnes of CO2 emission per million dollars of export annually and manufacturing of commodities in the UK which are imported to India generates only 0.141 kilo-tonnes of CO2 emission per million dollars of import from the UK annually for the years 2011, 2013 and 2015. This is because of the proportionately higher consumption of more emission-intensive energy items, like coal, and coal products by India in industrial production than the UK. At the end of the article, this study proposes a few suggestions to ensure a decent level of emission imbalance in the trade flows for the anticipation of increasing India–UK bilateral trade in coming days due to post-BREXIT eventualities to reduce the pressure on the global environment. JEL Codes: C67, F64, Q37, Q42