Hubacek Klaus

Hubacek Klaus
University of Groningen | RUG · Energy and Sustainability Research Institute Groningen (ESRIG)

About

424
Publications
292,615
Reads
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40,330
Citations
Additional affiliations
March 2019 - present
University of Groningen
Position
  • Professor (Full)
January 2001 - June 2001
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Position
  • PostDoc Position
January 2011 - February 2019
University of Maryland, College Park
Position
  • Professor (Full)

Publications

Publications (424)
Article
Full-text available
Climate change and sustainability linkages provide opportunities to develop and implement synergistic strategies for climate actions and achieve Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Thus, we synthesize the coverage of SDGs in the IPCC’s fifth and sixth assessment reports at a target level. Based on this reflection, we propose the seventh assessmen...
Data
Supplementary Information of Policy relevance of IPCC reports for the sustainable development goals and beyond See the main article here: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resenv.2025.100192
Article
As of May 2022, assets under management of these funds amount to 9.91 trillion USD. Hence, sovereign wealth funds have a significant influence on the financial system due to their substantial economic value. As the current practice of portfolio management is outdated, due to a lack of relevant input factors exploring environmental, social and gover...
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The disparity in environmental impacts across different countries has been widely acknowledged1,2. However, ascertaining the specific responsibility within the complex interactions of economies and consumption groups remains a challenging endeavour3–5. Here, using an expenditure database that includes up to 201 consumption groups across 168 countri...
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Cities are important actors in the global challenge of tackling climate change. They are not only responsible for the majority of emissions but also highly capable of taking action. An important precondition for effective climate mitigation is a city‐level greenhouse gas emission inventory to guide mitigation action. Yet, most cities in developing...
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The integrated and indivisible nature of the SDGs is facing implementation challenges due to the silo approaches. We present the three interconnected foci (SDG interactions, modeling, and tools) at the science-policy interface to address these challenges. Accounting for them will support accelerated SDG progress, operationalizing the integration an...
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Artificial intelligence is rapidly being integrated into Earth science, but how Earth science may benefit artificial intelligence has been overlooked. We call for mutual balancing between the two disciplines and improving cross-disciplinary collaboration. The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in various fields of Earth science (ES...
Article
Soil erosion is a major land degradation process, threatening global agricultural sustainability and carbon cycling. Although geomorphic evidence confirms that human activities have significantly accelerated soil erosion, to what extent humans have altered soil erosion and how to attribute it to different land use changes and economic activities re...
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Achieving European Green Deal (EGD) targets for carbon removal and ecological restoration would reduce agricultural and forestry production within the European Union yet simultaneously extend ecosystem impacts elsewhere. Here we quantify such spillover impacts by coupling an extended multi-regional input–output analysis with an agro-ecological zone...
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The livestock sector represents major challenges to safeguarding environmental integrity. This study comprehensively analyzes ten environmental footprints of the livestock sector from 1995 to 2022, with projections until 2030, and juxtaposes them with the planetary boundaries. We quantify greenhouse gas emissions, land use, water use, particulate m...
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How much and what we eat and where it is produced can create huge differences in GHG emissions. On the basis of detailed household-expenditure data, we evaluate the unequal distribution of dietary emissions from 140 food products in 139 countries or areas and further model changes in emissions of global diet shifts. Within countries, consumer group...
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During the 2007-2008 global financial crisis, many countries enacted clean energy policies as a part of their economic stimulus packages. These policies are believed to have contributed to a significant reduction in the CO2 intensity of electricity. Here we conduct a retrospective overview and evaluation of energy policies’ effectiveness in reducin...
Article
Examining virtual water flows in China, we identified a crucial gap in differentiating between groundwater (GW) and surface water (SW). Understanding the unique roles of virtual GW and SW is vital for local sustainable water use. We firstly track virtual GW and SW flows via inter-provincial trade, using a comprehensive inventory that included GW an...
Article
Hydrogen is gaining tremendous traction in China as the fuel of the future to support the country’s carbon neutrality ambition. Despite that hydrogen as fuel largely hinges on the supply of platinum (Pt), the dynamic interlinkage between Pt supply challenges, hydrogen development pathways, and climate targets in China has yet to be deeply analyzed....
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As China’s economic and population demands grow, the need for biomass imports rises, presenting challenges for sustainable development and global ecosystem protection. Here we examine China’s increasing influence on global ecosystems through its biomass product consumption and trade using the Human Appropriation of Net Primary Productivity framewor...
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Many economies set climate mitigation targets for 2020 at the 2009 15th Conference of the Parties conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen. Yet no retrospective review of the implementation and actual mitigation associated with these targets has materialized. Here we track the national CO2 emissions from...
Article
Addressing the total energy cost burden of elderly people is essential for designing equitable and effective energy policies, especially in responding to energy crisis in an aging society. It is due to the double impact of energy price hikes on households—through direct impact on fuel bills and indirect impact on the prices of goods and services co...
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Understanding the impacts of diets on health and the environment, as well as their association with socio-economic development, is key to operationalize and monitor food systems shifts. Here we propose a health–environment efficiency indicator defined as a ratio of health benefits and four key food-related environmental impacts (greenhouse gas emis...
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While the awareness of the corporate world toward sustainability is growing, how to assess corporate environmental performance objectively and efficiently remains an open question. Here we estimate the relationship between company size and four environmental indicators to understand the environmental performance of nearly 6500 companies, building o...
Preprint
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Although the cause-and-effect relationship between accelerated soil erosion and human activities has been confirmed by geological records, the magnitude and socio-economic drivers of the anthropogenic contribution remain largely unexplained at the country scale. Here, we present an integrated modelling framework that uses multi-source high spatial...
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Decarbonized power systems are critical to mitigate climate change, yet methods to achieve a reliable and resilient near-zero power system are still under exploration. This study develops an hourly power system simulation model considering high-resolution geological constraints for carbon-capture-utilization-and-storage to explore the optimal solut...
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The significant spike in global energy prices induced by the Russian-Ukrainian (RU) conflict is perceived as highly uncertain that may rise household living costs and adversely affect Sustainable Development Goals such as poverty elimination. However, the impacts on human wellbeing are entirely obscured by conventional economic analyses. Using the...
Article
Applying the planetary boundary for the freshwater framework at the regional level is important in supporting local water management but is subject to substantial uncertainty. Previous estimates have not fully investigated the potential of trade in mitigating regional freshwater boundary (RFB) exceedance. Here, we estimate RFB based on the average...
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Understanding the impact of climate fiscal policies on vulnerable groups is a prerequisite for equitable climate mitigation. However, there has been a lack of attention to the impacts of such policies on the elderly, especially the low-income elderly, in existing climate policy literature. Here, we quantify and compare the distributional impacts of...
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Given that the global fleet of coal-fired power plants is mostly new, coal–biomass co-firing power plants with retrofitted carbon capture and storage (CBECCS) are regarded as a promising option for CO2 emissions reduction. However, the effectiveness of CBECCS remains largely unexplored. Here we develop a comprehensive assessment framework featuring...
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Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to food consumption complement production-based or territorial accounts by capturing carbon leaked through trade. Here we evaluate global consumption-based food emissions between 2000 and 2019 and underlying drivers using a physical trade flow approach and structural decomposition analysis. In 2019, emissions...
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The Basel Convention and prior studies mainly focused on the physical transboundary movements of hazardous waste (transporting waste from one region to another for cheaper disposal). Here, we take China, the world’s largest waste producer, as an example and reveal the virtual hazardous waste flows in trade (outsourcing waste by importing waste-inte...
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Capital assets such as machinery and infrastructure contribute substantially to CO2 emissions over their lifetime. Unique features of capital assets such as their long durability complicate the assignment of capital-associated CO2 emissions to final beneficiaries. Whereas conventional approaches allocate emissions required to produce capital assets...
Article
At a time when the links that bind the oil industry – both corporate and state-owned - to finance and governments seemed inextricable and unquestionable, some major changes have occurred that have prompted major financial players and governments to seek a separation strategy. From the Paris Agreement to the change of administration in the United St...
Article
There has been a longstanding debate about the impact of international trade on the environment and human well-being, yet there is little known about such environment and human well-being trade-off. Here, we explore the effect of international trade on the carbon intensity of human well-being (CIWB) globally under the current global trade system an...
Article
Seafood plays a critical role in promoting a nutritious and climate-friendly food system but faces challenges from marine contamination that pose food safety risks. To address these challenges, we developed a Marine Pollution-induced Food System Risk Assessment and Response (MP-FSRAR) model to assess the impact of consumer perceptions of marine pol...
Preprint
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Carbon taxation is regarded as an essential tool for curbing carbon emissions but can be regressive and increase poverty, and moreover lacks universal acceptance among the public and policymakers. Recycling the tax revenue raised to vulnerable households is one promising solution to this issue. However, little is known about the best strategy for d...
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Mainland Southeast Asian (MSEA) countries (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar, and Vietnam) are likely to become one of the next hotspots for emission reduction, since CO2 emissions in this area will have a two-thirds increase by 2040 due to rapid economy growth and associated energy consumption. As one of the most vulnerable areas to climate change...
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The Russia–Ukraine conflict has triggered an energy crisis that directly affected household energy costs for heating, cooling and mobility and indirectly pushed up the costs of other goods and services throughout global supply chains. Here we bridge a global multi-regional input–output database with detailed household-expenditure data to model the...
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In our globalized economy, the consumption of goods and services induces economic benefits but also environmental pressures and impacts around the world. Consumption levels are especially high in the current 27 member countries of the European Union (EU), which are some of the wealthiest economies in the world. Here, we determine the global distrib...
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Although China has developed the world’s largest carbon emissions trading scheme (ETS), there is no official documentation explaining how the current sectorial coverage plan was determined and what sectoral rollout plan is preferred. Here, we contribute to the policy development of the world’s largest carbon market by suggesting a priority list of...
Article
Subnational and non-governmental actors are expected to provide important contributions to broader climate actions. A consistent and accurate quantification of their GHG emissions is an important prerequisite for the success of such efforts. However, emissions embodied in domestic and international supply chains, that can undermine the effectivenes...
Preprint
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The improvement of the habitat of protected areas is of great importance to meet the Convention on Biological Diversity. Using legal means to protect sensitive areas from human interference such as land use change has been an effective way to maintain ecosystem services. Currently 17% of global land is protected yet less effective in face of anthro...
Article
Urban resilience refers to the resilience of a city after external shocks and its ability to prevent, respond and recover from extreme disasters. In 2015, the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN-SDGs) made urban resilience one of the global sustainable development goals. Additional information regarding urban resilience can have a posi...
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Self-reported life satisfaction of China's population has not improved as much as expected during the economic boom, which was accompanied by a significant decline in environmental performance. Is environmental pollution the culprit for the lagging subjective well-being? To explore this issue, this paper adopts the sentiment analysis method to cons...
Preprint
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Despite the increase in vehicle electrification in recent years, the transport sector is still a major contributor to the rise in global carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions. Using dynamic product lifecycle (LC) models, our study analyzes the relationship between lifecycle CO 2 (LC-CO 2 ) emissions and the proportion of electric vehicle sales in Japan....
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A good understanding of household carbon emissions is an important part of forming climate mitigation strategies to achieve the goals set out in the Paris Agreement. Numerous studies have been carried out on emissions from household consumption and the inequality between urban and rural areas in high-income developed countries, but there is a lack...
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China is playing an increasing role in global climate change mitigation, and local authorities need more city-specific information on the emissions trends and patterns when designing low-carbon policies. This study provides the most comprehensive CO2 emission inventories of 287 Chinese cities from 2001 to 2019. The emission inventories are compiled...
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Substantially enhancing carbon mitigation ambition is a crucial step towards achieving the Paris climate goal. Yet this attempt is hampered by poor knowledge on the potential cost and benefit of emission mitigation for each emitter. Here we use a global economic model to assess the mitigation costs for 27 major emitting countries and regions, and f...
Article
Application of carbon trading on the consumption-side to subsidize NEVs (called “carbon trading subsidy (CTS)”) is expected to become the successor policy for the phasing-out purchase subsidy, but there is still a gap between practice and theory in how to apply. This study applies CTS to bus industry and addresses the interaction problem between pu...
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Measurement(s) methane, nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities Technology Type(s) computational modeling technique Factor Type(s) influent and effluent chemical oxygen demand (COD) mass • influent and effluent total nitrogen (TN) mass • removed COD • electricity consumption • emisison factors • was...
Preprint
Full-text available
Hydrogen is gaining tremendous traction in China as the fuel of the future to support the country's carbon neutrality ambitions. The promising role of hydrogen for use as fuel is heavily reliant on platinum (Pt) and the interactions between hydrogen fuel industry and Pt supply constraints have been largely overlooked. In this research, we develop a...
Preprint
Full-text available
The largest 6,529 international corporations are accountable for almost 30% of global CO2e emissions. A growing awareness of the role of the corporate world in the path toward sustainability has led many shareholders and stakeholders to pursue increasingly stringent and ambitious environmental goals. However, how to assess the corporate environment...
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In order to deliver substantial reductions of U.S. residential emissions, cost-effective responses to climate change will need to recognize changes in consumer behavior and lifestyles as important mechanisms to mitigate carbon dioxide emissions. Marketing experts have long recognized the usefulness of developing composite variables to target specific...
Article
Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the U.S. peaked and declined in the first decade of the 21st century, largely attributed to the increased use of natural gas and renewable energy replacing coal. However, if and to what extent household consumption also played a role in this trend is still debated. Finding demand-side options is necessary to hedge...
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Multi‐regional input–output (MRIO) models are widely used to analyze the economic interdependencies between regions in the context of global trade and environmental research. MRIO tables enable us to teleconnect the sectors in different regions along the supply chain and track both direct and indirect impacts of global production. Yet emerging econ...
Article
It is increasingly common to use the Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI) to evaluate national sustainability; however, IWI's highly aggregated components and limited regional cases restrict its further application in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This study extends the traditional three-component IWI framework into six disaggregated...