Topic: Assessing CO2 Emissions of High-Speed Rail in China
Speaker: Professor ZHANG Anming, Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia
Host: Professor LI Zhichun, Department of Management Science and Information Management, School of Management of HUST
Time and Date: 10:00 a.m. -12:00 a.m., Nov. 22, 2021
https://nus-sg.zoom.us/j/83604283777?pwd=dksvTXNHNFVkdG94akdudzFadEhzdz09
Meeting ID: 836 0428 3777 Password: 201314
This seminar consists of three parts. In the first part, I'll introduce the general background on climate change, transportation, and high-speed rail (HSR) development in China. In the second part, I'll discuss in detail a paper "Assessing Carbon Dioxide Emissions of High-Speed Rail: The Case of Beijing-Shanghai Corridor" (with Peiyu Chen, Yuan Lu and Yulai Wan). This paper provides an ex-post assessment of net CO2 emissions of the Beijing-Shanghai HSR by including both the mode substitution and traffic generation effects with a life-cycle approach. We are among the first authors to examine the emissions effects of a long-haul HSR and to consider the effects of avoided infrastructure expansion and vehicle manufacturing due to traffic diversion. We find that avoided infrastructure expansion plays a limited role in offsetting CO2 emissions from the construction of an HSR infrastructure, but the reduced demand for passenger vehicles can offset a larger share of emissions from the manufacturing of HSR rolling stock. Initially, too much traffic was diverted from ordinary-speed rail (OSR) to HSR, increasing emissions at the operation stage. As traffic diverted from road and air increased, the net emissions at the operation stage turned negative, offsetting emissions from infrastructure construction and vehicle manufacturing. In the last part, I'll extend the discussion and further discuss the avenues for future research.
Speaker Profile:
Anming Zhang is a Full Professor in Operations and Logistics and holds Vancouver International Airport Authority Chair Professor in Air Transportation at Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC). He served as the Head of the Operations and Logistics Division, Sauder School of Business (2003-2005), and as the Director of UBC’s Centre for Transport Studies (2003-2004). He is the President of the World Air Transport Research Society (ATRS) and was, in 2020, the President of Transportation and Public Utilities Group (TPUG) of American Economic Association. Dr. Zhang is the recipient of the “Yokohama Special Prize for Outstanding Young Researcher” awarded at the 7th World Conference on Transportation Research (WCTR) in Sydney, Australia in 1995, and of the “WCTR-Society Prize”, awarded to the overall best paper of the 8th WCTR in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1998. In June 2014, he won the “Best Overall Paper Prize” at the annual ITEA (International Transport Economics Association) Conference on Transportation Economics, Toulouse School of Economics, France. Currently, he is also in the Executive Committee of WCTR.
