Reports

A large body of applied research on energy efficiency characterises drivers and barriers to cost-effective home renovations, and identifies personal and contextual influences on renovation decisions. Resulting policies to promote energy efficiency in homes aim to remove barriers or strengthen decision influences.

This paper analyzes the development of unilateral Clean Development Mechanism projects (uCDMs) as the dominant project pattern in China’s CDM market. It intends to reveal the political and economic reasons of such dominance and argues that the uCDMs pattern is particularly favored by powerful actor groups, mainly business actors, involved in the CDM project circle. The corporate or business strategy, interests and day-to-day practices hence become an important governance element to develop and maintain the dominance of unilaterally financed CDM in the market.

Climate change will have a dramatic impact on the timing and flows of water across the globe.  Responses to climate change in a transboundary river basin depend not on national and sub-national capacities alone, but also on the ability of co-riparian nations to communicate, coordinate, and cooperate across their international boundary so as to prevent as well as to take advantage of any benefits that may accrue from coordinated action.  Evaluating transboundary river basins in light of their transboundary adaptive capacity sheds lights on likely ‘hotspots’ or areas of concern, as a lack of

Deliberate large-scale interventions in the Earth’s climate system – known collectively as ‘geoengineering’ – have been proposed in order to moderate anthropogenic climate change. Amidst a backdrop of many ways of framing the supposed normative rationales for or against their use, geoengineering proposals are undergoing serious consideration.

    
Improving the efficiency and performance of the UK residential sector is now necessary for meeting future energy and climate change targets. Building Performance Evaluation and Certification (BPEC) tools are vital for estimating and recommending cost effective improvements to building energy efficiency and lowering overall emissions. In the UK, building performance is estimated using the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) for new dwellings and Reduced SAP (RdSAP) for existing dwellings.

A report by researchers at Tyndall Manchester demonstrates that significant carbon emissions savings can be achieved through the addition of thermal storage to combined heat and power with district heating systems (CHP-DH).  This study complements previous research which established the case for adding thermal storage to improve the viability of CHP-DH systems.

In the last three years, carbon-intensive, coal-dependent South Africa has become one of the leading destinations for renewable energy investment. Investment has gone from a few hundred million dollars in 2011 to $5.7 billion in 2012 (UNEP/BNEF 2013:27) of which approximately $1.5 billion was for wind and $4.2 billion for solar.

Most scientists believe that past and current greenhouse gas emissions make some climate change unavoidable. Much adaptation to these changes will be carried out by organisations, including businesses, households and government agencies. Understanding how organisations may adapt to a changing climate, and developing tools to help them tthrough adaptation processes, is therefore vital.

As nations develop policies for low-carbon transitions, conflicts with existing policies and planning tools are leading to competing demands for land and other resources. This raises fundamental questions over how multiple demands can best be managed. Taking the UK as an empirical example, this paper critiques current policies and practices to explore the interdependencies at the water-energy-food nexus.

The term carbon sequestration refers to any means of locking up CO2 over very long periods in order to mitigate against the effects of anthropogenic climate change. There are three broad types of carbon sequestration:

Coastal communities are more vulnerable to climate change than inland communities because, in addition to changes in meteorological parameters, they are also affected by changes in oceanic parameters, especially increases in sea level and wave heights.