Mei Liu’s research while affiliated with China National Institute of Standardization and other places

Studying the co-benefits of greenhouse gases and air pollutants is highly relevant as China tries to cope with the dual challenges of climate change and pollution control. Over the past ten years, plenty of studies at home and abroad have paid attention to these co-benefits, including policy analysis, model application, case discussion, etc., and various co-benefit theories have been introduced to lay a solid scientific foundation for the development of energy and environmental development policies. In this paper, different definitions and types of co-benefits are provided, and co-benefit evaluation methodology is explained. International and domestic progress in studies on the co-benefits of reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution control are elaborated, and prospects and suggestions on future studies are analyzed.

In 2017, China’s carbon emission trading market was officially launched. This paper summarizes the work of the seven carbon emission trading pilots and the implementation progresses of the key industries that participated in the program. This work serves as an important basis to support the establishment of the standard system of China’s carbon emission trading market.

In 2017, China’s carbon emission trading market was officially launched. This paper investigates on the needs of carbon emission standardization in key industrial fields such as chemical industry, building material industry and paper industry. To provide the standardized support for the stability, expansion and sustainable development of China’s carbon emission trading market, this paper proposes the direction of the standardization construction that is urgently needed by key industries in China’s carbon emission transaction.

The energy consumption and related influence factors of railway transportation are analyzed based on the statistical data of national railway. Then, two transportation energy consumption evaluation indicators, the comprehensive energy consumption per unit service and the emissions of sulfur dioxide, are conducted the correlation analysis, which can derive the estimated emissions of sulfur dioxide between 2003 and 2006 that has been missing. Based on the study, two multivariable linear regression models are formulated: One is comprehensive energy consumption of transportation, and another is the emission of sulfur dioxide. After the analyzation, the result shows that the two important indicators of energy consumption show significant linear relationship with both passenger turnover and freight turnover. According to this, the work predicts the energy consumption of China National Railway in 2016.

Standardization is playing an increasingly important role in reducing greenhouse gas emission and in climatic change adaptation, especially in the "three" greenhouse gas emission aspects (measurement, report, verification). Standardization has become one of the most important ways in mitigating the global climate change. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) has taken many productive measures in actively promoting standardization work to cope with climate change. In April 2014, SAC officially approved the establishment of "National Carbon Emission Management Standardization Technical Committee" In November 2015, SAC officially issued the first 11 national standards on carbon management including < > and the requirements of the greenhouse gas emissions accounting and reporting in 10 sectors including power generation, power grid, iron and steel, chemical engineering, electrolytic aluminum, magnesium smelting, plate glass, cement, ceramics and civil aviation, which proposes unified requirements of "what to calculate and how to calculate" the greenhouse gas emission for enterprises. This paper focuses on the detailed interpretation of the main contents of the first 11 national standards, so as to provide technical supports for users of the standards and to comprehensively promote the emission reduction of greenhouse gas at the enterprise level.

On the basis of summarizing and combing the functions and effects of the long-term implementation of the serial standards on the limitation of energy consumption per unit product in China, this paper focuses on the analysis of the practical demands of the green house gas emission allowances for key industrial enterprises, and puts forward the suggestions on the formulation of relevant standards. The differences and connections between the present standards of the energy consumption per unit product and future standards of greenhouse gas emission allowances in the key industries are discussed. The proposal is provided to the administrations with helpful guidelines and promotes enterprises to establish the clearer GHG emission reduction strategies and to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. These suggestions will provide guarantee for realizing the target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions in China.

The current status of energy saving and environment protection in railway sector is analyzed in this paper. The passenger transport-related energy consumption has degraded dramatically, and the freight-related energy consumption on the decline in general, but the energy consumption per unit grows slightly in last two years, due to the shrinking of rail freight volume. Then, the key effective factors of energy saving and environment protection are presented from the aspects of key facilities and equipment and operation management. Finally, based on the development status of China railway, some new technologies and measures of energy saving and environment protection in four perspectives are proposed, such as life cycle management of railway system, lightweight cabin design and manufacture, comprehensive energy consumption control and energy recycle, and high-efficiency operation.

With the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization in China, domestic demands for copper and aluminium resources increase continuously and the output of copper and aluminium minerals rises steadily. The output of copper in China increased from 0.6 million tons (metal quantity) in 2003 to 1.74 million tons (metal quantity) in 2014, and the output of bauxite increased from 21 million tons in 2006 to 59.21 million tons in 2014. In the meantime, the import of copper and aluminium minerals of China is also on a rise. The import of copper concentrate and bauxite increased from 4.94 million tons and 9.68 million tons in 2006 to 10.08 million tons and 70.75 million tons in 2013 respectively. Copper and aluminium resources are widely applied in fields such as construction, electrical and electronics, machinery manufacturing, and transportation, and serve as important material basis for the national economic and social development of China. Cable industry is a typical industry where copper and aluminium resources are widely used. In this paper, a product assessment model is built from the perspective of product life cycle. Based on CNLCD database, differences in environmental impacts of copper and aluminium cables are analyzed from aspects such as resource acquisition, product production, transportation, utilization, and resource recycling. Furthermore, the advantages and disadvantages of products at different stages with different types of environmental impact are analyzed, so as to provide data support for cable industry in terms of product design and production, etc.