This introductory chapter offers a short overview of carbon neutrality, the great expectations surrounding its primary beneficiaries, and the macro opportunities and implications it will have, political, economic, and social. It then quickly narrows the focus to the emerging economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, their evolving nature, and the role envisioned for carbon neutrality in their transformation from oil-based to cleaner, knowledge-based economies. Next, the chapter contextualises the challenges facing GCC countries to effectively transition towards carbon neutrality. The gap between the aforementioned interest and potential of carbon neutrality in the region and the scholarly work on the topic is then highlighted, motivating the need for the current volume. The objectives, scope, and expected contributions of the volume are finally presented.

This concluding chapter presents a high-level overview of the topics and case studies outlined in the earlier chapters, reiterating the main contributions of the book to the literature. The chapter then proceeds with ten takeaways, insights learned, and recommendations derived from the individual chapters. It concludes with a synthesis of the key findings and lessons learned from the various chapters, reflecting on the policy measures, technological innovation, and behavioural change enablers needed for a successful carbon neutrality transition in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.

This chapter investigates the premise and potential benefits of green hydrogen (i.e. extracting hydrogen by using energy generated from renewable sources) for Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. These countries are currently researching and developing new technologies that will enable them to fulfil their international commitments to reducing carbon emissions and greenhouse gases. The aim of this chapter is to explain how green hydrogen – an energy source that produces environmentally friendly energy – works, the opportunities resulting from its application with regard to net zero emissions, as well as the challenges which may hinder its adoption in the GCC region. In addition to having favourable circumstances for producing green hydrogen, these countries’ vast oil reserves provide the hydrocarbons required to produce this innovative energy source. In this context, the green hydrogen industry’s prospects, constraints, as well as potential impacts on the GCC countries’ ability to meet net zero emissions goals and achieve carbon neutrality are studied.

The chapter overviews the current energy demand trends in the building sector for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region and countries. Specifically, the historical trends of the energy efficiency performance of buildings are discussed. The increasing air-conditioning needs due to the hard climate in the GCC region are highlighted, including the impacts of various space cooling technologies and operation strategies on the energy consumption of buildings in the GCC region. In addition, the chapter discusses the main challenges for improving energy performance and achieving carbon neutrality for the built environment in the GCC countries. Finally, the chapter evaluates potential benefits for large-scale energy efficiency programmes specific to new and existing building stocks within the GCC region. The benefits encompass both cost effectiveness as well as energy productivity metrics accounting for the social, economic, and environmental impacts of various large-scale policy programmes with the aim to improve the energy efficiency and carbon neutrality of building stocks.

This chapter focuses on the global decarbonisation policy gap and the need to account for measurable policies for carbon neutrality, specifically in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region. One strategy to raise accountability is policy tracking, a technique that has gained traction in empirical policy analysis. The chapter introduces this technique and provides an example of a methodologically rigorous tracking of climate policies in the GCC countries in response to pledges and obligations under the Paris Agreement. This includes government policies, laws, and measures toward the mitigation goals of the Paris Agreement and carbon neutrality targets. We situate our tracker in the wider landscape of policy metrics and indexes, discuss its features, and present results on mitigation and energy policy responses to the climate crisis in the Gulf. Key conclusions are that stringency, intensity, effectiveness, and sustainability of measures vary widely across the sample and over time. Necessary macroeconomic, fiscal, technological, and social policy measures also vary greatly in terms of their intensity and the public investments made. In some GCC countries, policy measures appear to be disproportionate to the challenges linked to both reaching the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Gulf countries’ very own nationally determined contributions (NDCs), to varying degrees.

Chapter One discusses China’s carbon neutrality objective and the essential strategies to achieve this long-term climate goal. The strategies focus on decarbonising China’s power sector, enabling fuel switch from coal to natural gas, electrifying end-use such as transport and industry, and adopting carbon removal mechanisms. Implementing these strategies will depend on China’s energy legal and regulatory systems. This chapter introduces the research context and structure of the book, highlighting its contribution to academia and practice. The chapters of the book are arranged based on the four essential strategies and pathways to achieve China’s carbon neutrality target, providing legal details concerning the development of China’s energy legal and regulatory systems.

This chapter pivots to social science and reviews the leading literature in respect of the governance of climate intervention. It starts with the influential Oxford Principles that derived from a 2009 report on geoengineering issued by the (British) Royal Society. It proceeds to consider the particular challenges presented by collective action problems like emissions reduction. It notes that the all-voluntary nature of nationally determined contributions under the Paris Agreement render this a rather light touch governance architecture, but that the carbon accounting rules being promulgated are essential to success. Carbon removal is a collective action problem very similar to emissions reduction, such that the Paris Agreement may also prove well suited to governing CDR. Nonetheless, several social scientists see risks in mixing emissions and carbon capture targets and would seek to maintain separate targets for each. As CDR may well continue long after emissions have been reduced to zero, the dynamics of post-zero CDR governance are also considered.

Climate–sincere citizens are frustrated with three decades of global and national failures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, so they are receptive to arguments that they can make a difference by various means, one of which is to make an offset payment to someone else to reduce emissions while they continue to cause emissions when, for example, flying in an airplane. Unfortunately, research shows that a significant percentage of so–called offsets do not reduce emissions from what they otherwise would have been. Instead, offset payments are made to someone for doing something they would have done without the payment. Climate-concerned citizens would have greater impact if they instead made their offset payments to help elect climate–sincere politicians and to make sure that these politicians implement policies that require ezveryone to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, not just the people who buy offsets.