Call for papers: "Carbon Emissions and Air Pollution Control in the Course of China's Urbanisation"

For a special issue of the International Journal of Global Energy Issues.

With its rapid economic growth, China has become the world’s largest energy consumer, according to the statistics of BP. Chinese energy consumption relies highly on coal due to the lack of oil and gas resources. In 2012, coal consumption in China was almost equal to the total consumption of all other countries. When coal supports China’s rapid economic growth, it causes severe carbon emissions and air pollution, including the heavy atmospheric haze pollution that occurred frequently in 2013 and 2014.

This has put ever-growing pressure on China in international climate change negotiations and also significantly threatens people’s health and living conditions, both of which pose serious threats to China’s current economic development pattern and total energy consumption cap.

In 2012, the population living in China’s urban areas exceeded that which lived in rural areas for the first time; urbanisation has thus becomes another important characteristic for China beyond industrialisation. New-type urbanisation is considered by the new government to be one of the most important policies for stimulating economic growth. Urbanisation will no doubt require more energy use: residential energy use will increase due to the change of lifestyle, and construction and infrastructure will expand further, which will cause the increase of direct and indirect energy use. Additionally, the related carbon emissions and air pollution will also increase.

Therefore, Chinese policy decision makers face serious challenges to mitigate carbon emissions and cut air pollution during rapid urbanisation. The objective of this special is to encourage academic researchers worldwide to study and analyse the different policies and technologies to harmonise the relationship between carbon emissions mitigation and air pollution reduction and urbanisation in China.

Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Carbon mitigation policies
• Air pollution reduction policies
• Co-benefits between carbon emissions control and air pollution reduction
• Carbon capture and storage technology
• Total energy consumption caps
• Urban emissions
• Household consumption patterns
• Impacts of urbanisation on energy consumption and air pollution

Important Dates

Submission of manuscripts: 31 August, 2014
Notification to authors: 31 October, 2014
Final versions due: 30 December, 2014