China
Africa
Explore chapters and articles related to this topic
Emissions and the role of renewables
Published in Sumit K. Lodhia, Mining and Sustainable Development, 2018
Benjamin C. McLellan, Syed Ali Ghoreishi-Madiseh Yosoon Choi, Ferri P. Hassani
Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases to mitigate climate change is a global focus of governments and other organisations (UN, 2015). Likewise, emissions of other pollutants that have a detrimental environmental or human health impact are the traditional focus of regulatory efforts that can support a practical minimum threshold for sustainable societies. The usage of energy, and its conversion from primary energy sources (such as coal or oil) into second energy products (e.g. electricity and petroleum), is one of the leading causes of both localised and globally important emissions. Energy intensive industries, such as the mining and minerals sectors, are facing regulatory and social drivers to improve their emissions per unit output of product. In general this can be achieved by two methods: reducing the usage of energy (i.e. improving efficiency) or reducing the emissions from the energy that is used (i.e. reducing emissions intensity). One of the key mechanisms to achieve the latter of these is the use of renewable energy rather than fossil fuels.
Transportation, Energy, And The Environment
Published in Dušan Teodorović, The Routledge Handbook of Transportation, 2015
Emission factor (or emission intensity) is an average estimated rate of a specific air pollutant as a result of a specific activity (such as transportation) per unit of activity (such as passenger miles traveled or vehicles miles traveled), and is used for any pollutant emission. Because of the CO2 significance among the GHG emissions, a valuable metric is the carbon intensity. Similarly to energy intensity, carbon intensity can be defined as the amount of carbon emitted per passenger-mile or ton-mile to enable comparison among passenger and freight modes, respectively. As such, the carbon intensity of different vehicles and modes varies significantly depending on a number of factors including the vehicle’s occupancy rate and energy efficiency. In general, the least to the most carbon intense modes are: intercity and transit bus, rail transportation, shared (two or more persons) automobile, air transportation, and non-shared automobile and truck (Bradley and Associates, 2014; Schipper et al., 2011).
A generic methodological framework for accurately quantifying greenhouse gas footprints of crop cultivation systems
Published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, 2018
As one among a range of ecological/environmental footprints, the GHG footprint is an indicator that specifically measures the impact of agricultural production on climate change (e.g. Biesbroek et al. 2014; Chobtang et al. 2017; Food SCP RT 2013). Because the total net GHG emission is quantified by summing up the net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), CH4, and N2O in CO2 mass equivalents at a given time horizon (CO2eq; hereinafter referred to as the CO2 equivalents for the 100-year time horizon, if not specified), a GHG footprint is also referred to as a carbon footprint in some studies (e.g. Gan et al. 2014; Hillier et al. 2009). The so-called GHG emission intensities presented by some researchers (e.g. Chen et al. 2014; Grassini and Cassman 2012) can also be referred to as the GHG footprints, as they are quantified by fully including the emissions and uptakes of all categories within an entire life cycle for the formation of a product or from all sectors of anthropogenic activity of an economic entity. A GHG emission intensity is expressed as the yield-scaled life-cycle net GHG emission (in CO2eq) from a production system or GDP-scaled net GHG emission (in CO2eq) from all anthropogenic activity sectors of an economic entity (e.g. a country, region, or the world). A GDP-scaled GHG emission intensity can be estimated for a regional/national economic entity or the whole world following the IPCC’s GHG inventory methodologies (e.g. IPCC 1997, 2000, 2006). It is usually included by a country in its National Inventories or Communications submitted to the secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (http://unfccc.int/national_reports/). Many other researchers, however, have reported significantly different GHG emission intensities estimated using the net emissions within only a portion of a life cycle for the formation of a product. In such a circumstance, the GHG emission intensity is obviously different from a GHG footprint or carbon footprint.