Kai Li
PhD Candidate / Contract
- Name
- K. Li MSc
- Telephone
- +31 71 527 2727
- k.li@cml.leidenuniv.nl
- ORCID iD
- 0000-0002-1324-1386
Kai joined the Industrial Ecology department at CML as a PhD researcher in February 2021. His research centers on assessing and mitigating the environmental impacts of the global plastic waste trade.
Professional experience
Kai Li graduated in 2020 with a MSc degree in Management Science and Engineering at Chongqing University after receiving his BSc degree in Construction Management at Wuhan University of Technology in 2017. During his MSc, Kai did research on Chinese farmland transactions with the knowledge of urban and land economics.
In 2019, he took part in a project aiming to measure energy consumption and operational carbon emissions in the Chinese building sector, which supports his final thesis.
Research topic
Kai is developing a model to quantify the environmental impacts of the global plastic waste trade. His work involves reconciling bilateral trade data, evaluating recycling rates, modeling environmental consequences, and analyzing the effects of related policies. Additionally, Kai has a keen interest in the broader societal and environmental impacts of trade and climate change policy.
PhD Candidate / Contract
- Science
- Centrum voor Milieuwetenschappen Leiden
- CML/Industriele Ecologie
- Li K., Ward H., Lin H.X. & Tukker A. (2024), Traded plastic, traded impacts?: Designing counterfactual scenarios to assess environmental impacts of global plastic waste trade, Environmental Science and Technology 58(20): 8631-8642.
- Li K., Ward H., Lin H.X. & Tukker A. (2024), Economic viability requires higher recycling rates for imported plastic waste than expected, Nature Communications 15: 7578.
- Zhang C., Hu M., Meide M. van der, Di Maio F., Yang X., Gao X., Li K., Zhao H. & Li C. (2023), Life cycle assessment of material footprint in recycling: a case of concrete recycling, Waste Management 155: 311-319.
- Li K., Ma M., Xiang X., Feng W., Ma Z., Cai W. & Ma X. (2022), Carbon reduction in commercial building operations: a provincial retrospection in China, Applied Energy 306(Part B): 118098.
- Chen M., Ma M., Lin Y., Ma Z. & Li K. (2022), Carbon Kuznets curve in China's building operations: retrospective and prospective trajectories, Science of the Total Environment 803: 150104.
- Zhang S., Ma M., Li K., Ma Z., Feng W. & Cai W. (2021), Historical carbon abatement in the commercial building operation: China versus the US, Energy Economics 105: 105712.