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Rare earth elements govern today's high-tech world and are deemed to be essential for the attainment of sustainable development goals. Since the 1990s, these elements have been predominantly supplied by one single actor, China. However, due to the increasing relevance of their availability, the United States, who imports 80% of its rare earths from China, recently announced its plan to (re-)enter the rare earths supply market. This paper analyzes the strategic interactions among these two countries in open-loop and Markovian strategy spaces. Particular interest is devoted to the impact of heterogeneous supply concepts on (1) the theoretical optimal timing for the United States (U.S.) to enter the non-renewable resource market; (2) China's optimal supply reaction to the U.S.' entry announcement; (3) the central planner outcome; and (4) the profitability of the suppliers' extraction behavior. By setting up a continuous-time differential game model, we show that in the absence of arbitrage opportunity, (1) the U.S. should always postpone the production launch until its rare earths reserves coincide with those of China; (2) China's monopolistic supply is not shaped by the selected strategy; (3) while the duopolistic Markovian behavior is initially more lucrative than open-loop commitment, the opposite situation emerges as the competition proceeds; and (4) on balance, both countries are financially better off when committing to an open-loop supply path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To meet the energy requirements of sustainable economic growth, policymakers, analysts, and business leaders have increasingly turned to the role that energy efficiency might play. This has resulted in a growing energy efficiency literature, which is examined in this paper. Using bibliometric techniques, we analyze the database of Science Citation Index Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index covering the 1991-2010 period. Of the 8,244 publications, 78.8 % were journal articles, and about 95.5 % were published in English. Based on the h-index, an evaluative indicator, the USA has produced the most influential set of publications on energy efficiency, followed by Canada, UK, Japan, and China. In contrast, China is second to the USA in the volume of its publications. Correspondingly, the University of California at Berkeley, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Tsinghua University were the most productive research organizations. The three most common subjects examined in this body of research were 'energy and fuels', 'environmental sciences', and 'electrical and electronic engineering'. Energy Policy has been the most productive journal, and 'A water and heat management model for proton-exchange-membrane fuel-cells', has had the most citations (587 through May 2012). Based on an analysis of article titles and keywords, we conclude that the hotspots of energy efficiency research have been green communications, renewable energy, and energy sustainability; green communications, in particular, has developed rapidly as a focus of energy efficiency publications in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This comparative study investigates and analyzes by SWOT analysis the nature, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of coal mining industry safety and environmental regulatory regime versus development in China and USA. The study aims to evaluate the present attributes of the regulatory regimes versus both industries' response, and deduce influence of this regulation on Chinese coal mining industry safety and environmental investment. The study presents theories about regulation and development so as to understand the need for regulation. It also draws out the status, types, examples, similarities and differences of the coal mining industry safety and environmental situation and regulatory regimes. Thereafter, SWOT analysis is carried out to examine strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats associated with the current regulatory regimes. Results indicate that China although having numerous coal mine safety and environmental related policies and regulations, their effect is rarely significantly fostering increased safety and environmental investment as well as research and development but reducing fatalities. This trend, therefore, confirms the need for properly designed safety and environmental regulation that fosters investment and technological improvements, so as to achieve sustainable development of the industry. The need is to learn from the US coal industry regulatory framework which has enabled advances in technology aimed at improving productivity while tackling safety and environmental problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]