Low Carbon Transitions Worldwide
A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 November 2011) | Viewed by 112127
Special Issue Editor
Interests: urban carbon metabolism; ecological modeling; environmental science
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The rising concern on climate change as indicated by the global focus on the Copenhagen Summit implies a possible, or almost inevitable, shift of current economic paradigm to a low-carbon one. Making the transition to a low carbon economy requires active participation of, and presents a significant challenge to the global society, which is currently locked into high carbon technological economic and social regimes.
Actions have been taken in many developed or developing countries by either establishing planning framework or enacting progressive policies to reduce carbon emissions in each of the production sectors and obtain a ‘cleaner’ production paradigm. In the main, these actions have led to effectual reductions in energy consumption and pollution emissions in the focus sectors. For example, the investment in renewable energy suppliers, closure of inefficient power plants and upgrading emissions standards have led to significant decreases in air and water pollution. It is clear that some leading countries have successfully taken the first few steps towards sustainable development. However, as with the development of low carbon-targeted policies, it will be useful to develop scientific and reliable models and decision support systems to check which regulations and policies are working well and which can be further improved for their efficacies. International experience shows that the systematic modeling and ecological accounting for production elements, flows and storages as well as a combination of regulations and financial instruments are most effective in reducing carbon emissions.
To achieve the carbon reductions goal as reinforced by the Copenhagen Accord, specific efforts on ecological accounting based on systems modeling and assessment will be implemented to obtain more fruitful results, which may help make corresponding energy policies to promote the energy efficiencies and reduce carbon emission intensity at each level of the concerned systems, to provoke financial incentives in the form of domestic and international investments for low carbon projects, and to expedite renewable energy and low-carbon technology innovations and applications to realize GHG regulation, and finally to approach real low-carbon economy.
Thereby, we would like to invite professionals from universities, enterprises, and administrative departments responsible for, involved in, or interested in low-carbon projects to make effective comparisons, present and share new ideas, innovations, trends, experiences, and concerns in the environmental accounting based on systems modeling and assessment. We also believe the cooperation of energy industries and researchers may establish an important platform ad attract more participants to exchange knowledge, perspectives and ideas for the low-carbon economy and to discuss the most recent advances in holistic evaluation models, simulation methods and improvements in low-carbon technologies from both theoretical and practical perspectives.
Dr. Bin Chen
Guest Editor
Keywords
- low-carbon industrial park
- low-carbon building and real estate
- low-carbon evaluation and consultant
- multi-scale ecological input-output models
- renewable and substitute energy
- environmental emission accounting
- exergy analysis
- embodied energy analysis
- ecological network analysis
- carbon measurement
- low-carbon technologies
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