Decarbonization and climate change

Abstract

The summer months of 2021 brought extreme weather events like floods and wildland fires event to previously less affected areas. As a consequence, the topic of climate change is as up-to-date as ever, and with it the question of how to contain and mitigate CO 2 emissions. At the intersection of science, technology, and environmental policy, but also public health, the Review of Policy Research (RPR) presents a platform for this discussion. All articles of our current issue deal with decarbonization and/or climate policy. All of these articles have still been managed by the previous editorial team of the RPR. We take this opportunity to again thank them for their great work and the supportive transition towards us as the new editorial team.We also take this opportunity to announce that we have recruited new support in our team. Since August 2021, Ilana Schröder is the editorial director of the journal and thereby responsible for all administrative questions and concerns related to the RPR journal. She is experienced in this task because she also performs this role for the European Policy Analysis (EPA) journal, and her outstanding work there leaves no doubt that she will continue this excellent performance with the RPR (Bandelow et al., 2021).The current issue compiles five articles that address the topic of decarbonization and climate change from different theoretical and methodological angles: Starting on the individual level, Boudet et al. ( 2021) explore public preferences towards decarbonization policies that have so far received less media attention, such as the promotion of residential electrification and the funding of microgrids. Conducting a binary logistic regression, they find that most people only support the requirement of solar panels on new development, while support for decarbonization policies generally increases with concerns about climate change and openness for smart home technologies, and when respondents are higher educated men. Jagers et al. ( 2021) also investigate public acceptance of a specific policy measure, focusing on carbon taxes. With three identical surveys carried out in Canada, German, and the United States, the authors find that citizens' acceptance of costs associated with carbon taxes can be increased by decreasing income taxes and returning revenue to the public. Overall, citizens are more ready to accept carbon taxes if they feel that the burden is fairly allocated. The article by Guo et al. ( 2021) zooms into a low-carbon pilot city project in China and asks whether this indeed meets its goal of developing innovative low-carbon policy instruments, or simply implements policies decided upon at the national level. Taking a closer look at the subnational authorities and local governments, the authors conclude that rather the latter is the case, and that the initial objective of experimenting with low-carbon development initiatives, which is traced back to a lack of enthusiasm and political will at the local level.Connecting to the implementation of policies related to the com...

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“…Measures that counter climate change are of considerable international urgency [1][2][3][4][5]. Decarbonization is an effective method for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving carbon neutrality [6][7][8][9][10]. In particular, the use of hydrogen energy is the key to decarbonized fuel [11,12].…”