科普文章

ERL特刊征稿|Toward Carbon Neutrality: Improving Resource Efficiency

13 2月 2023 gabriels

carbon-neutral-sustainable-development-concept

特刊详情

客座编辑

耿涌，上海交通大学
郝瀚，清华大学
Raimund Bleischwitz，德国莱布尼兹热带海洋研究所/英国伦敦大学学院
Anthony Chiu，菲律宾德拉沙大学

主题范围

Carbon neutrality refers to net-zero anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Achieving carbon neutrality by the middle of the 21st century is critical for limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels according to the sixth assessment report released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Carbon neutrality has attracted global attentions. To date, more than 140 countries have set their carbon neutrality targets. These countries contribute more than 88% of the global CO2 emission in total, representing 90% of the global GDP and covering over 85% of the global population.

However, the achievement of carbon neutrality requires wide application of both low carbon technologies, negative emission technologies and nature-based solutions for carbon uptake. But these strategies rely on a large amount of different resources and may be limited by insufficient resource supply, especially those virgin materials, or ongoing resource deterioration. For example, several rare earth elements are necessary for renewable power technologies (eg., wind power and solar power), but their supply has been restricted due to imbalanced and scarce geological concentrations; marine coastal ecosystems could absorb carbon at large scale, but mangrove deforestation continues much alike ocean pollution. Economic cost is another factor influencing the sustainable supply of such resources. Most developing countries may not be able to provide sufficient financial support to support their energy system transition toward carbon neutrality or lack capacity to provide coastal protection. In addition, balancing carbon neutrality and resource management requires a profound transformation of economic and technological development, leading to a need of joint efforts from governments, enterprises, and individuals. Aligning different interests, assessing various benefits and ethical considerations among different stakeholders is still a big challenge. Therefore, the trade-offs between carbon neutrality and sustainable resource management and strategic choices deserve more academic studies.

In order to address these issues, this special issue aims to provide a platform for researchers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, and the general public to share their outstanding research outcomes so that valuable insights can be obtained for preparing appropriate carbon neutrality and resource management policies. Authors are invited to submit their papers to present their innovative strategies, policies, methods, and metrics aspects for improving the overall resource efficiency so that carbon neutrality can be achieved in due time. Topics related with this special issue may include the following ones:

Resource and material constraints towards carbon neutrality;
Resource efficiency improvement in the context of carbon neutrality;
The role of circular economy and blue economy towards carbon neutrality;
International trade perspectives on resources and carbon offsetting;
Carbon neutrality-based nature-based solutions and resource assessments;
The GHG emissions reduction co-benefits of improving resource efficiency;
Metrics on measuring resource efficiency;
Material flow analysis for key resources related with low carbon development;
Supply risks of key resources and mitigation strategies through improving resource efficiency;
Resource policy related with carbon neutrality.

投稿流程

特刊文章与ERL期刊常规文章遵循相同的审稿流程和内容标准，并采用同样的投稿模式。

有关准备文章及投稿的详细信息，可以参阅IOPscience页面的作者指南。

作者可登入期刊主页进行在线投稿，在“文章类型”中选择“特刊文章”，并在“选择特刊”的下拉框中选择“Toward carbon neutrality: improving resource efficiency”。

投稿截止日期：2023年6月30日。

期刊介绍

Environmental Research Letters

2021年影响因子：6.947 Citescore: 9.4
Environmental Research Letters（ERL）以金色开放获取模式出版，作者可选择将原始数据作为补充资料与文章一起发表。所有研究人员可以免费获取这些研究成果。ERL汇聚了关注环境变化及其应对的研究团体和政策制定团体的意见，涵盖了环境科学的所有方面，出版研究快报、综述文章、观点和社论。ERL顺应了环境科学的跨学科发表的趋势，反映了该领域相关的方法、工具和评估战略，得到了来自不同领域的广泛贡献。