ABSTRACT
China wants to play a leading role in international carbon reduction and has ambitious reduction plans. China is one of the largest carbon emitters globally with an increasing trade volume in both national and regional markets. Owing to carbon emissions are regarded as key policy instruments and important financial assets thus It is important to analyze volatility spillovers between national and regional markets. The Diagonal BEKK model is used to examine daily financial returns, conditional covariances, and volatility spillovers across markets before, during, and after COVID-19. The empirical results show that the magnitudes of the spillovers during COVID-19 are much larger than before and after COVID-19 which implies the impact of COVID-19 on China's economy leads to greater risk transmission across carbon markets. China's experience (from regional to national) was useful in informing the channels of risk transmission and helping understand the relevance of carbon markets for investment decisions and public policymaking in the international carbon markets. Finally, we discuss the motivations, challenges, and possible forms of cooperation between China and the Eurozone on establishing a common carbon market are discussed.
ABSTRACT
Vaccination now offers a way to resolve the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is critical to recognise the full energy, environmental, economic and social equity (4E) impacts of the vaccination life cycle. The full 4E impacts include the design and trials, order management, material preparation, manufacturing, cold chain logistics, low-temperature storage, crowd management and end-of-life waste management. A life cycle perspective is necessary for sustainable vaccination management because a prolonged immunisation campaign for COVID-19 is likely. The impacts are geographically dispersed across sectors and regions, creating real and virtual 4E footprints that occur at different timescales. Decision-makers in industry and governments have to act, unify, resolve, and work together to implement more sustainable COVID-19 vaccination management globally and locally to minimise the 4E footprints. Potential practices include using renewable energy in production, storage, transportation and waste treatment, using better product design for packaging, using the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data analytics for better logistics, using real-time database management for better tracking of deliveries and public vaccination programmes, and using coordination platforms for more equitable vaccine access. These practices raise global challenges but suggest solutions with a 4E perspective, which could mitigate the impacts of global vaccination campaigns and prepare sustainably for future pandemics and global warming.