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Low-carbon energy transitions envision deep decarbonization of the consumption, distribution, and production of the energy system. Urban areas are the frontier for low-carbon transitions. Despite increasing attention on the role of urban politics in urban energy transitions, transition governance in China still follows a rather functionalist and instrumentalist logic that highlights the government's leadership in resource mobilization. Disproportionate report of successful cases has reinforced this governing logic, while shadowed the political dynamics of transition processes, particularly the role played by local communities. Through a failed case of solar experimentation in Shenzhen, China, this article shows that the success of low-carbon experiments is not necessarily guaranteed by the strong governance capacities of local governments. Strong social resistance can produce a countering effect on the outcome of low-carbon experiments. The study calls for future research to adopt a more dynamic and holistic perspective of urban energy transitions and to take account of the mediating or even countering effects of urban politics.

Climate change and sustainable development are the defining challenges of the modern era. The field of sustainability transitions seeks systematic solutions for fundamental transformations of socio-technical systems towards sustainability, and exploring the role of policy mixes has been a central research agenda within the field. In the extant literature, there exists a lack of both conceptual and empirical research on the vertical dimension of policy mixes for sustainability transitions. This study provides a multilevel and evolutionary interpretation of the vertical interactions of policy mixes in the process of industrial path development towards sustainability transitions. An exemplary case of solar water heating (SWH) technology in Shandong Province in China is presented, capturing both the bottom-up and top-down processes of interactions. On the one hand, urban-level policy initiatives can inform higher-level policymaking; on the other hand, national-level priorities can greatly configure policy strategies for lower-level governments. Moreover, as the industry matures, the interactions of multilevel policy mixes evolve from simpler, unidirectional patterns to more complex, bidirectional ones through a vertical policy-learning feedback mechanism. This study generates two important policy implications that extend beyond the Chinese context: first, dynamic vertical interactions between multilevel governments indicate the need to develop more nuanced perspectives on the design of policy mixes; second, policy makers need to hold a more dynamic view of policy mixes by recognizing their temporal and coevolutionary nature through the policy learning process.

Urban sustainability transitions have been increasingly imperative to address global environmental challenges, and local governments are expected to play a critical role. There is a pressing need to explore local governments' underlying motivations and their impacts on governing practices. Taking China as an example, this paper builds an incentive matrix to distinguish the levels of local governments' economic interest and environmental interest in specific low-carbon innovations and investigates how different incentive typologies affect their governing practices. By comparing four Chinese municipal governments' incentives and governing practices in promoting solar water heater adoption, this paper finds that Chinese local governments' environmental incentive is still not compelling or stable enough, while governments that are motivated by economic interests would resort to more substantial governance practices to promote the low-carbon innovations. These results indicate potential in latecomer cities in developing both economic and environmental incentives towards low-carbon innovations because green activities could also be favored if they are well aligned with local economic development.

Purpose of review In the past decade, China has made remarkable achievements in the development of renewable energies. This article adopts a geographical perspective for China's current wave of renewable energy transitions, by viewing the transition outcomes through the lenses of spatial clustering and socio-spatial embeddedness. Recent findings We find that many renewable energy industry clusters have emerged nationwide and different patterns are uncovered for the clustering in extant literature, either through bottom-up agglomeration around pioneering enterprises, or driven by top-down government strategy and planning. There is scant research on the reconfiguration of socio-spatial arrangements, which is an important but very often neglected facet of energy transitions. We further discuss the regional disparities in China's renewable energy development, in which resource-rich regions are mainly in the north part of China, while central, eastern, and southern regions possess substantial advantages in fostering industry clusters. Summary In the end, we propose two avenues for future research: firstly, to explore why different clustering patterns emerge in a certain region but not in another, and what implications these cases of clustering can draw for other regions in China or other latecomer countries; secondly, to uncover how renewable energy application and popularization shape local socio-spatial arrangements.

Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- About the Editors -- Affiliation of Editors, Coeditors, and Contributors -- 1 Environmental Impacts of Heavy Metals in Agroecosystems and Amelioration Strategies in Oceania -- Introduction -- Background Concentrations of Heavy Metals in Australian and New Zealand Soils -- Sources of Metals in Agroecosystems -- Environmental Impact -- Amelioration Strategies -- Regulatory Control -- Summary and Conclusions -- References -- 2 Environmental Concerns of Pesticides in Soil and Groundwater and Management Strategies in Oceania -- Introduction -- Usage -- Behavior and Fate in Soil -- Pesticide Residues in the Environment -- Management and Remediation Options -- Summary and Conclusions -- Acknowledgments -- References -- 3 Metal Pollution of Soil and Groundwater and Remediation Strategies in Japan -- Introduction -- Regulations and Control -- Metals in Soil, Groundwater, Fertilizers, and Sewage Sludges of Japan -- Remediation Strategies -- Daily Intake of Heavy Metals by Japanese -- Application of Sewage Sludge and Other Biosolids to Land and Heavy Metal Accumulation -- References -- 4 Impact of Radionuclides on Soil, Groundwater, and Crops and Radionuclide Cleanup in Japan -- Introduction -- Meteorological Data in Japan -- Fallout Radionuclides (137Cs, 90Sr, Pu, etc.) Deposited on Soil -- Migration of Radionuclides in Soil and Groundwater -- Transfer of Radio nuclides to Crops -- Decontamination of Radionuclides -- Summary and Conclusions -- Acknowledgments -- References -- 5 Effect of Anthropogenic Organic Compounds on the Qyality of Soil and Groundwater and Remediation Strategies in Japan -- Introduction -- Nationwide Survey Results -- Site Investigation for Volatile Organochlorines -- Remediation Technologies for Subsurface Pollution -- Summary and Conclusions -- References.

Recent years have witnessed the proliferation of urban experiments responding to low-carbon and sustainable transitions. There is a tendency of prioritizing the role of government interventions in transitions while neglecting the agency of other parties. This tendency is especially true in China, where an authoritarian governance dominates the transition process. The Rizhao case, however, exhibited a distinct bottom-up pattern in the early-stage development of solar water heater (SWH) technology, when both the civil society and the market were still immature. Through this rare case of urban energy transitions in China, this study looks into the sociotechnical experiments from the bottom-up. The study shows that before the intervention of local governments, a niche market of SWH technology was established and consolidated successfully in Rizhao through the mutual effects of both resident-led social experimentation and entrepreneur-led technological experimentation. The study further uncovers that in a less-developed civil society in China, the diffusion of novel innovations relied heavily on interpersonal social networks.

Combing the global value chain framework and linear innovation process model, this paper analyzes the innovation performance of low-carbon technological innovation activities under the global value chain and the influencing factors. Other than previous research on sustainable technological innovation with major focus on radical innovation and socio-technical system transitions activities, this paper places focus on the general innovation characteristics of low-carbon technologies through an integrating view of global value chain and linear innovation process. This paper proposes an analytical framework of the linear innovation process under the global value chain, and uses factor analysis and a DEA-Tobit two-stage method to analyze the low-carbon technological innovation performance and its influencing factors of China's manufacturing industry under global value chain. The results show that the low-carbon technological innovation performance is diverse across different manufacturing industries in China. Moreover, among the three major influencing factors, government regulation is the only factor that shows a positive influence on low-carbon technological innovation performance, yet the effect is quite weak. Technology push displays a negative effect, and the impact of market pull on low-carbon technological innovation performance is not significant.

15 Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Analysis of Natural Organic Matter16 EPR, FTIR, Raman, UV-Visible Absorption, and Fluorescence Spectroscopies in Studies of NOM; 17 Synchrotron-Based Near-Edge X-Ray Spectroscopy of NOM in Soils and Sediments; 18 Thermal Analysis for Advanced Characterization of Natural Nonliving Organic Materials; Index.

Transformations of the energy system are unfolding in China at an unprecedented scale and pace. The dynamics of China's energy transitions impact global trends of energy decarbonisation. Transition theories within the Anglophone academic tradition have been used to examine this process, but they tend to misrepresent the social, cultural, and political structures that shape energy transitions in China. This paper proposes a move from an analysis of energy transitions "with Chinese characteristics" to alternative thinking on energy transitions truly rooted in Chinese epistemological and philosophical constructs. The correlative epistemology refers to a Chinese tradition of social studies that describes the cosmos as a structured order of relations (guanxi). This tradition sees guanxi as the fundamental constituent of Chinese society. Such a relational focus enables a culture-led reading of China's energy transitions, thus responding to calls for transition theories "from elsewhere." In particular, correlative interpretations of innovation and transition processes in China frame energy transitions within broader societal transformations, define the operation of transition governance, and reveal that pre-existing guanxi networks shape the activities of actors in transition processes.

AbstractThe new Bintulu water supply was built in the early 1980s to serve a major development of the town of Bintulu in Sarawak, East Malaysia, arising from the extraction of natural gas from the South China Sea. The water supply was designed to supply 78 Ml/d. The works comprise earth dams forming a pumped storage reservoir, a river intake, pumping stations, pipelines, a water‐treatment works, treated water storage and a distribution system. The treatment works and distribution system are being built in two phases. The first phase was completed in 1983, and the second phase is to be constructed in 1990–91.The paper describes the initial planning of the scheme, including water‐demand forecasts, the design and construction of the Phase I works, and problems encountered during its operation. It also highlights the exceptionally rapid implementation programme and stability problems at the main earth dam.

A review of global and national energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments between 2000 and 2018 reveals that global public energy RD&D and cleaner energy RD&D investments dramatically increased, but then plateaued after 2009. In absolute values, nuclear energy has held steady, fossil energy contracted, and clean energy RD&D quadrupled. As a percentage of overall investments, both fossil fuel and nuclear investments contracted during the period. This review compares the energy innovation priorities of the world's largest economies using the metric of public expenditures on energy RD&D. China and India have become important global public investors in energy innovation, now among the top five globally. Priorities set by the Chinese and Indian governments will thus influence new energy technology breakthroughs in the coming years. The US and Chinese governments are now competing for first place in clean energy RD&D, depending on whether or not nuclear and cross-cutting technologies are included. India has dedicated substantial funding to indigenizing nuclear power technologies. Energy RD&D by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in major emerging economies remains skewed toward fossil fuels and nuclear. Reforming SOE expenditures to move away from fossil fuels could have a major impact on global energy technology trajectories, making a material difference in the quest to decarbonize the energy system.