Jing-Li Fan

National vulnerability to extreme climatic events: the cases of electricity disruption in China and Japan

Abstract Extreme climatic events are likely to adversely affect many countries throughout the world, but the degrees among countries may be different. China and Japan are the countries with high incidences of extreme weather/disaster, both facing with the urgent task of addressing climate change. This study seeks to quantitatively compare the impacts of extreme climatic events on socioeconomic systems (defined as vulnerability) of the two countries by simulating the consequences of hypothetical same degree of electricity disruption along with extreme events. To do that, two computable general equilibrium models are constructed, by using which three-stage scenarios are simulated for China and Japan, respectively. The results reveal that China and Japan have unequal socioeconomic vulnerabilities to extreme events. (1) Negative impact of the same degree of power outages is bigger on China’s socioeconomic system than on that of Japan, and this difference is more obvious in the very short-run scenario. (2) The decline of China’s GDP, total output, and employment levels is 2–3 times higher than that of Japan, while the difference of the resident welfare levels is sharper, which of China drops 3–5 times of Japan. (3) Structural factors are the main reason for vulnerability differences between China and Japan, including the differences of expenditure structure, factor input structure for production of life requirement sectors, material and energy dependence for the production of industrial sectors, and usage structure of services outputs. Based on these findings, some policy implications and recommendations for fairness issues on climate change adaptation are proposed.

Evolution of CO 2 emissions and driving factors in the Tongzhou District in Beijing

As Beijing put forward its “one core, two wings” development plan, the development and construction in the Beijing Tongzhou District have turned into a national strategy. However, as a municipal district, energy and CO2 emission data and other statistics are difficult to obtain in Tongzhou and CO2 emissions accounting for a district at this level is rare. This study applies the accounting method of city carbon emissions to the district level. Firstly, we account for the CO2 emissions in the Tongzhou District from 2008 to 2015 according to data availability. Secondly, by using the logarithmic mean Divisa index decomposition approach, the Tongzhou CO2 emissions are decomposed into six main driving factors, including population, per capita GDP, industrial structure, energy intensity, energy consumption structure, and energy-related CO2 emission factors. The result shows that (1) from 2008 to 2015, the CO2 emissions in the Tongzhou District first increased and then decreased and peaked in 2011. (2) Population and per capita GDP both contributed to the change in CO2 emissions in the Tongzhou District during the study period and resulted in 407,200 tons and 346,200 tons increase, respectively. The industrial structure, energy consumption intensity, and energy structure exerted inhibiting effects, offsetting 29,300 tons, 571,500 tons, and 29,300 tons, respectively, and the energy consumption intensity was the most important factor. (3) On this basis, we discuss the annual effects of the driving factors. The results of this study provide great significance and references for research in order to implement the low-carbon development and the “one core, two wings” strategy in the Tongzhou District.