Compared to the environmental legislation of many developed countries, China’s environmental legislation was initiated late, beginning in 1979, but nevertheless has obtained considerable achievements. As many as thirty environmental laws have provided rules regarding prevention and control of...

As the biggest emerging and developing country, and the second largest economy on the planet, China’s road to sustainability has attracted global attention; therefore, we need to have a deeper understanding to address this issue at very different levels. This editorial mainly reviews the...

With China’s rapid economic development and urbanization process, cities are facing great challenges for tackling anthropogenic climate change. In this paper we present features, trajectories and driving forces for energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from four Chinese mega-cities...

The complicated nature of regional development requires a more integrated approach to reflect its systematic picture. Multi-scale integrated analysis of societal metabolism (MSIASM) is such an approach as it integrates economic, social and ecological dimension. In this paper, we employ such an...

Issues on climate change have been recognized as serious challenges for regional sustainable development both at a global and local level. Given the background that most of the artificial carbon emissions are resulted from the energy consumption sector and the energy is also the key element...

Decoupling human well-being and local economic growth from resources consumption and environmental degradation has been recognized as a common vision to meet global sustainability. This paper taking Shenyang city as studied case aims to measure the decoupling process by proposing a set of new...

Wind power can help ensure regional energy security and also mitigate both global greenhouse gas and local air pollutant emissions, leading to co-benefits. With rapid installation of wind power equipment, it is critical to uncover the embodied emissions of greenhouse gas and air pollutants from...

The combustion of fossil fuel contributes to not only global warming but also the emissions of air pollutants. In China, the rapid growth of energy consumption leads to a large quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) and air pollutant emissions. Although many measures have been proposed by the local...

Cities consumed 84% of commercial energy in China, which indicates cities should be the main areas for GHG emissions reduction. Our case study of Shenyang in this paper shows how a clear inventory analysis on GHG emissions at city level can help to identify the major industries and societal...