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The iron and steel industry plays an important role in mitigating global climate change. As the largest steel producer and consumer, China bears the primary responsibility for energy savings and CO 2 emission reduction in the iron and steel industry. In this study, taking China as the empirical context, we analyze the effectiveness of the following four strategies on the potential of energy savings and emission reduction: phasing out backward production capacity in accordance with the current major policies, adjusting the production structure to increase electric arc furnace steelmaking, promoting low-carbon technologies, and switching to clean fuels. Under the principle of cost minimization, the mitigation potential of different strategies until 2030 and the technological development paths for reducing energy and CO 2 emissions in China’s iron and steel industry are identified via an established National Energy Technology model. The results show that promoting low-carbon technologies is the most effective strategy for energy savings and emission reduction alongside cost minimization. Compared with existing policies, these strategies could lead to a cumulative reduction of 818.3 MtCO 2 (4.1%) during the period 2015–2030. Therefore, policy makers should provide financial or administrative support to promote the development of specific production and low-carbon technologies such as non-blast furnace iron-making and endless strip production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are the major contributors to global carbon dioxide emissions; however, the carbon transfers embodied in cities' domestic and foreign trade have not been fully discussed. As carbon emissions from different domestic and foreign trade partners have not been distinguished, and since China's four municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai and Chongqing) carry an increasingly significant responsibility for carbon reduction in China, a multi-scale and multi-regional carbon emission assessment is applied to identify their emission transfers to and from 26 domestic provinces and 184 foreign economies. The results show that the intensities of the four municipalities are mainly above the international standard (0.14 kg/CNY) but beneath the Chinese average (0.24 kg/CNY). 71.72%, 55.35%, 65.34% and 33.65% of their emissions are imported from other regions. Generally, the four municipalities are net recipients of domestic carbon transfers and suppliers of foreign carbon transfers. Carbon transfers from Hebei to Beijing and Tianjin, Zhejiang to Shanghai, and Sichuan to Chongqing as well as from Beijing and Tianjin to Japan and South Korea and from Shanghai and Chongqing to the United States and Germany are identified in domestic and foreign supply chains. The multi-scale and multi-regional simulation and assessment in this work allows us to identify the carbon emissions not only within a city's boundaries but also via inter- and intra-national trade, providing a solid foundation for the carbon emission assessments of Chinese mega cities from an embodied perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China is the world's largest energy consumer and CO 2 emitter. Cities contribute 85% of the total CO 2 emissions in China and thus are considered as the key areas for implementing policies designed for climate change adaption and CO 2 emission mitigation. However, the emission inventory construction of Chinese cities has not been well researched, mainly owing to the lack of systematic statistics and poor data quality. Focusing on this research gap, we developed a set of methods for constructing CO 2 emissions inventories for Chinese cities based on energy balance table. The newly constructed emission inventory is compiled in terms of the definition provided by the IPCC territorial emission accounting approach and covers 47 socioeconomic sectors, 17 fossil fuels and 9 primary industry products, which is corresponding with the national and provincial inventory. In the study, we applied the methods to compile CO 2 emissions inventories for 24 common Chinese cities and examined uncertainties of the inventories. Understanding the emissions sources in Chinese cities is the basis for many climate policy and goal research in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]