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China’s newly announced carbon neutrality goal manifests its determination to advance green and low-carbon development. The country aims to peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. Consequently, guidelines and action plans have been actively deployed and issued. The carbon neutrality commitment (vision) and its detailed deployment (action) would contribute to climate change mitigation and corporate market value. Therefore, we categorize the carbon neutrality-related events and analyze their impacts on the stock market from July 2020 to March 2021. The main findings are as follows: (1) The action event have increased the carbon neutrality-related stocks by 0.04%, while that of the vision event is  – 0.003%, indicating that investors’ confidence increases when the carbon neutrality commitment is accompanied by specific and detailed guidelines. (2) The impact of carbon neutrality announcement becomes more positive and significant after related events occur repeatedly. (3) Carbon neutrality-related power industry and state-owned enterprises are potential beneficiaries of this decarbonization goal. Our study supplements the literature on climate policy and its economic value, potentially contributing to the next stage of global decarbonization.

This study investigates to what extent climate risks can affect foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows to developing countries and how their governments may respond to this effect. Using national level data between 2004 and 2018 for 108 countries, we estimate the impacts of two types of climate risks, namely physical risk measured by a vulnerability index and transition risk measured by carbon dioxide damage. The results show that both climate risks reduce FDI inflows during the sample period. We further find that better national governance can alleviate these negative impacts. These findings provide important implications to authorities that improving governance can effectively help these countries cope with climate challenges.

Weather conditions critically affect electricity demand. Recently, weather changes have also affected the electricity supply because renewable energy sources have been diffused. Some studies have revealed that weather conditions affect electricity supply or demand. However, few studies have revealed the integrated effects of weather changes on the electricity supply, demand, and market prices. This study aims to reveal the regional weather impact on the German electricity spot market based on combined hourly weather and electricity market data using structural equation modeling. Our results reveal that weather changes affect both demand and supply. First, the effect of weather on electricity supply differs in each state. Our estimation results show a more complex effect of an increase in solar radiation. Second, the electricity demand is also affected by weather conditions, particularly by temperature. Additionally, regional differences in weather conditions create a complex structure of electricity supply and demand. Our results indicate that extreme weather events in specific areas have a significant impact on the electricity market price.

Two emerging policy instruments, carbon pricing and green investments, highlight a complementary relationship between climate mitigation and economic growth. As such, they both advance climate policy differently from command-and-control methods. The central government in China has announced a vision of promoting the two emerging instruments; however, there may be a gap between the central government’s vision and local governments’ practice. This study measured the application of the three instruments (command-and-control, carbon pricing, and green investments) at the city-level, and described the trends in instrument use from 2011 to 2019. The overall evolution was as follows. Local governments adopted diversified instruments, including rapid but not widely developed carbon pricing, and maintained the command-and-control method. The evolution was different in cities that emphasized the co-benefits of climate and air pollution control; this reflected a binary instrument approach that included the development of both command-and-control and green investment methods. The results identified notable gaps in the application of the green investment method between central and local governments; however, in cities that emphasize co-benefits, the efforts to bridge central–local gaps should mainly focus on the carbon pricing method.

Every pair of denim jeans produced contributes 33.4 kg of CO2 into the atmosphere, consumes 3781 L of water, and occupies 12 m2 of land to support its production. The consumption patterns and consumption behaviour of consumers are both vital determinants of their environmental performance and impact. This paper examines the environmental concerns, production knowledge, and related cognitive measures of consumers by mapping their intentions in the process of buying denim jeans. Consumers of denim jeans in mainland China were taken as a sample to achieve our research objective. Specifically, 1392 respondents were quantitatively investigated. The empirical results indicate that production knowledge, the ascription of responsibility, buying attitude, and personal norms are dominant factors in explaining consumers' buying intentions when purchasing denim jeans. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between cognitive factors and buying intentions is mediated by affordability. This study highlights the immediate need to measure the denim industry's ecological footprint (during the production phase) and communicate this to critical industry stakeholders (i.e. macro-level forces, environmentalists, current and potential consumers). The intention is to redefine the purchasing behaviour of future consumers of denim jeans.

The climate is changing, and the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region is vulnerable to the consequences. Many of the region's countries are facing warmer temperatures, a changing hydrology, and more extremes, droughts, floods, heat waves, windstorms, and forest fires. This book presents an overview of what adaptation to climate change might mean for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. It starts with a discussion of emerging best-practice adaptation planning around the world and a review of the latest climate projections. It then discusses possible actions to improve resilience organized around impacts on health, natural resources (water, biodiversity, and the coastal environment), the 'unbuilt' environment (agriculture and forestry), and the built environment (infrastructure and housing). The last chapter concludes with a discussion of two areas in great need of strengthening given the changing climate: disaster preparedness and hydro-meteorological services. This book has four key messages: a) contrary to popular perception, Eastern Europe and Central Asia face significant threats from climate change, with a number of the most serious risks already in evidence; b) vulnerability over the next 10 to 20 years is likely to be dominated by socioeconomic factors and legacy issues; c) even countries and sectors that stand to benefit from climate change are poorly positioned to do so; and d) the next decade offers a window of opportunity for ECA countries to make their development more resilient to climate change while reaping numerous co-benefits.

With the acceleration of the global response to climate change, increasing attention has been paid to the risks associated with climate change mitigation, such as regulation uncertainties and market interactions. As the country with the greatest CO2 emissions globally, China has launched a national carbon market to speed up its climate mitigation. While the national carbon market provides a platform for regional coalitions to reduce emissions, its incomplete sectoral coverage might allow for the strategic behavior of industries in different regions and ultimately affect the efficiency of the carbon market. This paper explores how the sectoral expansion of the national carbon market affects regional emission reductions in China when emissions trading sectors engage in strategic behavior in the output market. From the sectoral perspective, our numerical results show that the strategic effect in the electricity and steel sectors is more significant than in other sectors. From a regional perspective, the western regions of China, which are mostly permit sale regions, have less strategic power than the eastern regions in the output and carbon markets. Finally, this paper suggests that measures, such as the dynamic adjustment of emission allowance allocation, should be considered by policy makers to prevent the widening of regional economic disparities when extending the sectoral coverage of the carbon market in China.

Pakistan is the fifth largest populous nation in the world, and it is endowed with significant wealth in natural resources. During the period 1990–2019, Pakistan suffered an average loss in natural resources per capita. Genuinely sustainable economic growth requires the recognition that long-term prosperity depends upon balancing our demand for nature’s goods and services with its capacity to provide them. This article calculates the natural capital (NC), human capital (HC), produced capital (PC) and inclusive wealth (IW) of Pakistan from 1992 to 2019 at the national level, geographic grid level, and provincial level. The data analysis shows that the growth of NC clearly decreases over the period of the study at all three levels. According to the disaggregated grid cell level data analysis, HC and PC of Pakistan grow positively due to the different measures of government. NC in Pakistan decreases in the areas where the reserve of fossil fuels decreases, and natural land cover is converted to other uses in the process of urbanization. Whether Pakistan’s economy can continue to grow sustainably largely depends upon its NC base. Therefore, maintaining the NC base is a priority for policymakers. The IW estimates for Pakistan offer policymakers a framework to look at three main issues for sustainable development: first, understanding trade-offs across different asset bases and time when making sustainability decisions is critically important; second, understanding social prices and market prices and their deviations; third, the asset side of the national balance sheet is now expanded to include HC and NC.

Rural self-constructed homes in China’s cold-temperate regions often exhibit poor energy performance due to limited budgets and substandard construction, leading to a high reliance on active systems and low climate resilience. This study assesses four passive cooling strategies, nighttime natural ventilation (NNV), envelope retrofitting (ER), window shading (WS), and window-to-wall ratio adjustment (WWR), under 2040–2080 representative future climate conditions using energy simulation, multi-objective optimization, sensitivity analysis, and life-cycle cost assessment. Combined measures (COM) cut annual cooling demand by ~43% and representative peak cooling loads by ~50%. NNV alone delivers ~37% cooling reduction with rapid payback, while ER primarily mitigates heating demand. WS provides moderate cooling but slightly increases winter energy use, and WWR has minimal impact. Economic and sensitivity analyses indicate that COM and NNV are robust and cost-effective, making them the most suitable strategies for low-energy, climate-resilient retrofits in cold-climate rural residences. Since statistically extreme heat events are not explicitly modeled, the findings reflect relative performance under representative climatic conditions rather than guaranteed resilience under extreme heatwaves.