Kuishuang Feng

University of Maryland, College Park | UMD, UMCP, University of Maryland College Park · Department of Geographical Sciences

Recent studies have shown that the high standard of living enjoyed by people in the richest countries often comes at the expense of CO2 emissions produced with technologies of low efficiency in less affluent, developing countries. Less apparent is that this relationship between developed and developing can exist within a single country's borders, w...

The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change aims to keep warming below 2 degrees C while recognizing developing countries' right to eradicate extreme poverty. Poverty eradication is also the first of the Sustainable Development Goals. This paper investigates potential consequences for climate targets of achieving poverty eradication. We find that...

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...

The adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) on a large scale is crucial for meeting the desired climate commitments, where affordability plays a vital role. However, the expected surge in prices of lithium, cobalt, nickel, and manganese, four critical materials in EV batteries, could hinder EV uptake. To explore these impacts in the context of China, t...

The globally booming renewable power industry has stimulated an unprecedented interest in metals as key infrastructure components. Many economies with different endowments and levels of technology participate in various production stages and cultivate value in global renewable power industry production networks, known as global renewable power valu...

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...

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...

The health impact of electric vehicles (EVs) is complex and multifaceted, encompassing reductions in air pollutants, improvements in road safety, and implications for social equity. However, existing studies often provide fragmented insights, lacking a unified framework to comprehensively assess these public health implications. This paper develops...

Emission trading schemes (ETS) are increasingly becoming a popular policy instrument to balance carbon abatement and economic growth. As a globally unified carbon pricing system has not yet been established, whether regionally operated ETSs cause carbon leakage remains a major concern. Taking China’s regional pilot ETSs as a quasi-natural experimen...

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...

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...

China stands as one of the leading producers of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), facing significant challenges in managing the substantial volumes generated. Despite existing regulations, the informal treatment of WEEE persists in some areas due to inadequate recycling networks at the city level. Consequently, there is a critical n...

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has induced immense material consumption and environmental threats while fostering economic development along participating countries. Quantifying recent trends of the material footprint of BRI economies and identifying potential drivers are vital to inform sustainable resource use. However, an assessment on the d...

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....

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...

Achieving sustainable dietary change is essential for safeguarding human and environmental health. However, dietary recommendations based on broad food groups may not accurately reflect real-world realities because individuals select and consume dishes with multiple food items influenced by diverse context-specific factors. Therefore, here we explo...

Steel production is a difficult-to-mitigate sector that challenges climate mitigation commitments. Efforts for future decarbonization can benefit from understanding its progress to date. Here we report on greenhouse gas emissions from global steel production over the past century (1900-2015) by combining material flow analysis and life cycle assess...

The rapid growth of global photovoltaic (PV) installation will produce massive end-of-life (EoL) module in the coming decades. It is crucial to understand when, where, and how much PV wastes will be produced and what are the benefits associated with waste recycling in order to facilitate the circular economy and achieve sustainability of the PV ind...

Transitioning to low-carbon ammonia is vital for China’s carbon neutrality goal; however, the economic viability of large-scale deployment remains uncertain. Here, we combined a prospective life-cycle assessment with an integrated assessment model to evaluate the impact of emission trading system (ETS) on the levelized cost of ammonia (LCOA) for si...

Mitigating methane (CH4) emissions from China's coal mines as the largest contributor to anthropogenic CH4 emissions is vital for limiting global warming. However, the knowledge about CH4 mitigation potentials and economic costs of Chinese coal mines remain poorly understood, which hinders the formulation of tailored CH4 mitigation strategies. Here...

Agriculture is one of humankind's most significant sources of biomass; it also places tremendous pressure on ecosystems through its increasing demand for agricultural products. However, few studies have assessed human pressures on ecosystems from agricultural production and consumption based on a whole-supply-chain perspective. Based on the concept...

Chinese cities are core in the national carbon mitigation and largely affect global decarbonisation initiatives, yet disparities between cities challenge country-wide progress. Low-carbon transition should preferably lead to a convergence of both equity and mitigation targets among cities. Inter-city supply chains that link the production and consu...

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...

China's efforts to mitigate air pollution from its large-scale coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) have involved the widespread use of air pollution control devices (APCDs). However, the operation of these devices relies on substantial electricity generated by CFPPs, resulting in indirect CO2 emissions. The extent of CO2 emissions caused by APCDs in Ch...

International trade affects CO2 emissions by redistributing production activities to places where the emission intensities are different from the place of consumption. This study focuses on the net emission change as the result of the narrowing gap in emission intensities between the exporter and importer. Here we show that the relocation of produc...

The energy supply chains operating beyond a region's jurisdiction can exert pressure on the availability of water resources in the local area. In China, however, there is a lack of transboundary assessments that investigate the effects of energy consumption on water stress within and across river basins. In this study, we therefore investigate tran...

The low-carbon power transition, which is key to combatting climate change, has far-reaching effects on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in terms of issues such as resource use, environmental emissions, employment, and many more. Here, we assess the potential impacts of the power transition on progress toward achieving multiple SD...

Mercury (Hg) is a strong neurotoxin with substantial dangers to human health. Hg undergoes active global cycles, and the emission sources there of can also be geographically relocated through economic trade. Through investigation of a longer chain of the global biogeochemical Hg cycle from economic production to human health, international cooperat...

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...

Australian residents have the highest solar energy installation rate in the world. However, after experiencing rapid growth, the residential installation rate began to decline sharply starting in 2011. In this study, we examine installation data for small and medium-sized solar photovoltaic (PV) devices across 2,413 Australian postcode areas using...

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...

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...

Carbon emissions associated with international trade are significant. The emergence of complex global value chains (GVCs) in recent decades, in which a country can operate as both a consumer and producer simultaneously, has led to a further rise in emissions. The complexity of these GVCs makes it increasingly difficult to determine what country is...

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...

Although quantitative environmental (in)justice research demonstrates a disproportionate burden of toxic chemical hazard risks among racial/ethnic minorities and people in low socioeconomic positions, limited knowledge exists on how racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups across geographic spaces experience toxic chemical hazards. This study analyze...

Toxic chemicals have severe impacts on ecosystem, climate change and human health, and the current toxic releases are inequitably distributed across regions. Investigating the toxic release embodied in final demand by states and income groups can reveal the responsibility transfer of different entities. In this paper, we extended the U.S. multi-reg...

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...

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...

Relocating pollution-intensive factories is one of the most effective measures to meet mandatory environmental regulations in developed cities while simultaneously imposing environmental pressure on the receiving cities. Existing studies often assume that relocated plants produce the same or higher emissions when relocated. However, the current pol...

Increasing agricultural water scarcity is threatening food security and ecosystem sustainability in China. Previous studies showed a deceleration in the growth of irrigation water use in China due to reducing water use intensities of irrigation. However, a finer-scale analysis at the prefecture level is urgently needed to account for the impacts of...

Motivated by carbon neutrality, the large-scale installation of low-carbon solar photovoltaic (PV) will be accelerated in the coming decades. Large-scale PV also signficantly contributes to the sustainable development goals (SDGs), however, where and how much PV need to be installed to promote SDGs need to be thoroughly answered. Here we comprehens...

Shipbreaking activities release hazardous wastes (namely, oil, asbestos, other landfillable wastes, and incinerable wastes) that harm both workers' health and the environment. However, an accurate and detailed emission inventory to support policy design of the greening reform remains lacking. By developing a framework that combines dynamic material...

Mariculture products are generally deemed to have less negative environmental externalities and more nutrient content, and are therefore a promising food substitute for land-based protein products (LPPs). China is the world's largest mariculture producer, with 66% of global production share in 2018. However, different categories of mariculture prod...

Different ways of participating in global value chain (GVC) result in the disparity of international-trade-induced resource and environmental costs, hence inequality between trading economies. This study delves into the trigger and mechanism towards trade-induced energy inequality. First, we explore the trade-induced energy use and energy inequalit...

The globally booming renewable power industry has stimulated an unprecedented appetite for metals as key infrastructure components. Many economies with different endowments and technology levels participate in global renewable power value chains (RPVCs) at different production stages, making it difficult to tell who supplies metals for whose low-ca...

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...

Low-carbon power transition, key to combatting climate change, brings far-reaching effects on achieving Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in terms of resources use, environmental emissions, employment, and many more. Here we assess the potential impacts of power transition on multiple SDGs progress across 49 economies under six socio-economic-c...

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...

China’s power sector as the major CO2 emitter has experienced significant restructuring, which has profound impacts on employment in both power and its upstream sectors. Combining the input-output and structural path analysis, we quantified the direct and indirect impacts of power transformation on employment in China during 2012-2017. The direct e...