Zhifu Mi, The Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London, WC1E 7HB, London, UK

Fergus Green, London School of Economics and Political Science, London WC2A 2AE, UK

Dabo Guan, Water Security Research Centre, School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich NR4 7TJ, UK.

Submission Deadline: 30 April 2018

China’s rapid economic growth has simultaneously brought wealth to its people and generated significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. China’s average annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate was approximately 10% over the period 1978-2007. Meanwhile, China’s carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions also rose sharply over the same period, with China surpassing the United States in 2006 as the largest CO₂ emitter in the world and contributing over a quarter of global carbon emissions.

However, the global financial crisis of 2008 damaged China’s economy severely. China’s GDP growth rate dropped from 14% in 2007 to less than 7% in 2016. The Chinese government introduced a large economic stimulus plan, including the domestic Four Trillion Yuan (US$600 billion) Stimulus Package, and established institutions and initiatives to expand foreign investment, including the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Belt and Road Initiatives. In recent years, China’s economy has been unable to continue the double-digit economic growth of previous decades. Instead, the country has entered a new phase of socioeconomic development – a “new normal” – in which large-scale, rapid and multidimensional changes in economic structure are happening. Specifically, China’s production and consumption structure, export and import structure, urban-rural structure, geographic patterns of economic activity, energy mix, and roles in international trade all have been changing in the new normal. China’s central government, meanwhile, has sought — with varying success — to use policy levers to steer these structural shifts toward a development model that achieves better quality (more sustainable and inclusive) economic growth.

The structural changes in China’s economy have major implications for energy consumption as well as carbon emissions. China’s government has made an international commitment to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by around 2030. Yet recent structural changes, along with increases in non-fossil energy production, have so dramatically affected coal consumption that China’s carbon emissions have already started to flatten out — on some accounts they have even been declining since 2013. That said, there are structural forces that threaten to raise carbon emissions in the near future if left unaddressed.

This Special Issue aims to explore the recent and future impacts on carbon emissions of the ongoing structural changes in China’s economy. Topics of interest of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to, the following aspects:

1. The relationship between production and/or consumption and/or investment structure and carbon emissions

2. Urbanization and/or inter-regional structure and carbon emissions

3. Structural changes in the energy mix and carbon emissions

4. Export and/or import structure and carbon emissions

5. Government policy and/or institutional change and carbon emissions

详细信息：https://www.journals.elsevier.com/structural-change-and-economic-dynamics/call-for-papers/call-for-papers-for-a-special-issue-on-structural-changes-an?from=singlemessage&isappinstalled=0