Cecilia Springer

• Ph.D.
• Non-Resident Fellow at Boston University

Eco-cities have attracted international attention from governments, corporations, academics and other actors seeking to use sustainable urban planning to reduce urban environmental impacts. China has devoted significant political will and economic resources to the development of new-build eco-city projects, reflecting the Chinese government's goals...

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have become critical tools for assessing the costs and benefits of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Three models currently inform the social cost of carbon dioxide (SCCO2, the net present value of damages from one additional ton of CO2) used by the US federal government, several states, and Canada. He...

China’s leaders are increasingly committed to low-carbon economic development. Although China’s economy has dramatically transformed since the initiation of economic reforms in 1978, it is still structurally different from post-industrial, high-income countries, and economic reform is ongoing. At the same time, China is taking major steps towards r...

• This study provides a novel analysis of energy and technology use in Vietnam’s aluminum industry. Vietnam has the world’s fourth largest bauxite reserves, and is developing a full aluminum supply chain, from bauxite mining to aluminum smelting. Aluminum production is one of the most energy-intensive industrial processes, yet Vietnam has relativel...

China’s ongoing commitment to overseas infrastructure investment through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has ignited concern over environmental impacts. The BRI’s environmental impacts will be determined by China’s decisions not only on what kinds of projects to fund, but also how those projects end up operating relative to projects without Chin...

September 2023 marks 10 years since Chinese President Xi Jinping introduced the notion of a New Silk Road, which would eventually come to be known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). In the past decade, more than 150 countries have signed on to the initiative, with varying degrees of engagement. The BRI is known for infrastructure-led developmen...

Purpose of Review The aim of this paper is to explore methane emissions from China’s fossil fuel industry compared with the USA and Canada, with a focus on the methane emission mechanisms, calculation methods, mitigation potential, and abatement technologies. Recent Findings This paper explores the methane emissions from China’s natural gas indust...

China has played a significant role in enabling overseas coal-fired power plant development through provision of capital and construction services. Following Xi Jinping’s announcement in September 2021 that China would no longer build new coal-fired power projects abroad, the potential scope of affected capacity remains unclear. This perspective ar...

Asia has built 90% of new coal-fired capacity worldwide in the past 20 years, attracting billions of dollars of foreign investment. This paper explores how such foreign investment has affected the environmental performance of a set of 2108 Asian coal power plants. The findings suggest that foreign-funded power plants are on average 3.4% cleaner in...

In the deep decarbonization era against climate change, big cities set ambitious targets for road transport. As China’s capital, Beijing has very strict vehicles quota-limit policies. This study contributes to the literature for its innovations on the evaluation of quota-limit executive policy for big cities which few studies have studied, and its...

As an important conduit of industrial development, industrial parks have contributed significantly to economic development, particularly through the construction of eco-industrial parks (EIPs). With the increase in the number and type of parks, industrial park recycling transformation (IPRT) has been pivotal in developing the circular economy conce...

Deep decarbonization pathways (DDPs) can be cost-effective for carbon mitigation, but they also have environmental co-benefits and economic impacts that cannot be ignored. Despite many empirical studies on the co-benefits of NDCs at the national or sectoral level, there is lack of integrated assessment on DDPs for their energy, economic, and enviro...

Nearly two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions are directly or indirectly linked to human daily activities. Change in people's behavior is key to mitigating climate change. This paper reviews the key factors that affect personal behavior in consumption of food, clothing, housing, transportation, and other various products or services in order...

As a global infrastructure and connectivity effort, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is an important cooperative framework that increasingly affects the global economy, trade, and emission patterns. However, most existing studies pay insufficient attention to consumption-based emissions, embodied emissions, and non-CO2 greenhouse gases (GHGs). Th...

Carbon dioxide emissions trading systems (ETS) are an important market-based mitigation strategy and have been applied in many regions. This study evaluates the potential for a national ETS in China. Using a dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model with detailed representations of economic activity, emissions, and income distribution, we...

Recently, China’s National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) announced the establishment of a nationwide carbon emissions trading system (ETS), which will be the largest ETS in the world. The national ETS directly encourages enterprises to make a low-carbon transition through market mechanisms. In addition, the ETS is a potential source of s...

If all the resources in power supply side, transmission part, and power demand side are considered together, the optimal expansion scheme from the perspective of the whole system can be achieved. In this paper, generation expansion planning and transmission expansion planning are combined into one model. Moreover, the effects of demand response in...

Background: Bis-(2-ethylhexyl) tetrabromophthalate (TBPH) is widely used as a replacement for polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) in commercial flame retardant mixtures such as Firemaster 550. It is also used in a commercial mixture called DP 45. Mono-(2-ethyhexyl) tetrabromophthalate (TBMEHP) is a potentially toxic metabolite. Objectives: We us...