Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Innovation in clean energy and cleantech more broadly is underfunded by the private sector. Although the potential benefits of public spending are high, the most effective ways for governments to stimulate innovation and improve the cost and performance of clean technologies remain uncertain. ...

    Options:
    A. The US Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) operates a high-risk high-reward funding style that has been associated elsewhere with well-known successes in defence.
B. Since 2009, ARPA-E has provided research teams in universities, industry and national labs with roughly US$3 billion total in research and development (R&D) funding as well as access to expert technical guidance and business mentorship.
C. These interventions may be especially impactful for startups, which are more agile than large firms and often faster to develop new technologies but are also cash-constrained and more likely to go under.
D. ARPA-E's funding model is being considered internationally for scale-up in the context of the energy transition.
E. As such, evidence of ARPA-E's impact is needed to inform governments' clean energy spending.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that startups that received funding from ARPA-E in its first year of operation filed twice the number of patents in subsequent years compared to other similar firms without ARPA-E funding. This was true even when accounting for the age of the firm, its cleantech sub-sector (for example, energy efficiency or energy storage), and its pre-2010 patenting and venture capital (VC) financing. ...

    Options:
    A. ARPA-E is therefore either directly enhancing the ability of awardees to innovate and/or selecting highly innovative firms to receive non-dilutive cash and other forms of support.
B. ARPA-E startups also had better business outcomes, including VC fundraising, survival and being acquired or going public, compared to firms that applied for ARPA-E funding in 2010 and were 'encouraged' by ARPA-E but not ultimately funded.
C. However, ARPA-E startups did not have better business outcomes than the larger pool of US cleantech startups that did not apply for ARPA-E funds (Fig. 1).
D. We combined data from Cleantech Group's i3 platform and US Department of Energy (DOE) spending records to identify US cleantech firms that were startups (5 years or less after founding) in 2010.
E. We compared US patent filings and business outcomes of the 25 startups funded by ARPA-E in 2010 to the average similar US cleantech startup, and also compared them specifically to firms funded by another DOE programme and those rejected by ARPA-E in the same year.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We combined data from Cleantech Group's i3 platform and US Department of Energy (DOE) spending records to identify US cleantech firms that were startups (5 years or less after founding) in 2010. We compared US patent filings and business outcomes of the 25 startups funded by ARPA-E in 2010 to the average similar US cleantech startup, and also compared them specifically to firms funded by another DOE programme and those rejected by ARPA-E in the same year. ...

    Options:
    A. In our statistical analyses, we performed a matching procedure to ensure that our sample is balanced along four important dimensions: age, technology sub-sector, prior patenting activity and prior VC financing.
B. The observed advantage in patenting cannot be interpreted as a definitive causal impact of ARPA-E funding, because it is also possible that ARPA-E was able to select firms with a high propensity to patent beyond the observable control variables.
C. We find that startups that received funding from ARPA-E in its first year of operation filed twice the number of patents in subsequent years compared to other similar firms without ARPA-E funding.
D. This was true even when accounting for the age of the firm, its cleantech sub-sector (for example, energy efficiency or energy storage), and its pre-2010 patenting and venture capital (VC) financing.
E. Innovation in clean energy and cleantech more broadly is underfunded by the private sector.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Most Indian households now have access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), with over 80 million having acquired an LPG connection through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), under a capital cost subsidy. And yet, three-quarters of rural households still use solid fuels to meet some of their cooking needs. ...

    Options:
    A. While adopting a clean cooking fuel is necessary, it is not sufficient to eliminate household air pollution.
B. Both, the sustained use of cleaner fuels and the cessation of solid fuel use are required.
C. To achieve this, policymakers need a better understanding of the factors that cause households to discontinue LPG use after adoption as well those factors that promote sustained use.
D. We estimate the odds of a PMUY beneficiary using LPG for all cooking needs are about 56% lower than those of a general customer, controlling for baseline socioeconomic and geographic differences.
E. We find that households with irregular and uncertain cash flows — those dependent on agriculture or on daily wages — have lower odds of using LPG as their main cooking fuel, perhaps owing to the recurring and inflexible cost of LPG refills.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We estimate the odds of a PMUY beneficiary using LPG for all cooking needs are about 56% lower than those of a general customer, controlling for baseline socioeconomic and geographic differences. We find that households with irregular and uncertain cash flows — those dependent on agriculture or on daily wages — have lower odds of using LPG as their main cooking fuel, perhaps owing to the recurring and inflexible cost of LPG refills. ...

    Options:
    A. Households in villages with a greater proportion of LPG primary users have higher odds of increased LPG use, suggesting a possible peer-effect or influence of other village-specific factors such as access to biomass and LPG availability.
B. Further, cattle ownership — which facilitates access to dung cakes — and easy access to firewood are major hindrances to increased LPG use.
C. We use primary survey data from over 9,000 rural households in 6 Indian states — Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.
D. Data was collected in two rounds, in 2014-15 and 2018, from the same households.
E. To ensure sustained use after adoption, interventions in clean cooking energy must tie in with broader rural development.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We use primary survey data from over 9,000 rural households in 6 Indian states — Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Data was collected in two rounds, in 2014-15 and 2018, from the same households. ...

    Options:
    A. We classify LPG-consuming households from both rounds in three categories: (1) exclusive users, those reporting LPG as their only cooking fuel; (2) primary users, those reporting LPG as their 'primary cooking fuel' but also reporting use of other fuels; (3) minority users, the LPG users reporting non-LPG fuels as their primary fuel (Fig. 1).
B. We assess the impact of several factors (such as primary source of income, PMUY benefaction, cattle ownership, age of the LPG connection, LPG availability and so on) that enable and hinder progression from minority use of LPG to exclusive use, while controlling for socioeconomic differences between households.
C. Most Indian households now have access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), with over 80 million having acquired an LPG connection through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), under a capital cost subsidy.
D. And yet, three-quarters of rural households still use solid fuels to meet some of their cooking needs.
E. While the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana has been instrumental in increasing India's liquefied petroleum gas adoption, sustained use depends on factors such as regularity of income and ease of access to free-of-cost biomass.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Coal-fired power plants provide a large amount of electricity worldwide. In 2015, they produced 6 trillion MWh, representing 25% of the global supply. ...

    Options:
    A. Simultaneously, coal-fired power plants emit air pollution, including SO2 , nitrogen oxides (NOx ), particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10 ), mercury, acid gases, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds.
B. Such pollutants have been associated with increased asthma symptoms, emergency room (ER) visits, hospitalizations and mortality.
C. Studies have shown that exposure to SO2 drives higher levels of uncontrolled asthma, asthma symptoms and asthma-related hospitalizations among people living near coal-fired power plants and fossil fuel refineries.
D. Between 2000 and 2015 in the US, many coal-fired power plants transitioned to natural gas or installed SO2 emission controls to comply with regulations from the US Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental agencies.
E. Quantifying the health co-benefits of this transition is critical for assessing the holistic impacts of the regulation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our study took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred between 2013 and 2016, when four coal-fired power plants in the Louisville, Kentucky area retired, transitioned to natural gas or installed SO2 emissions controls. We found that these coal-fired power plant changes translated into reduced asthma exacerbations among the local community. ...

    Options:
    A. Among ZIP codes more exposed to coal-fired power plant emissions, there were three fewer hospitalizations or emergency department visits per ZIP code per quarter in the year following a major transition, which translates into nearly 400 avoided hospitalizations and ER visits each year across Jefferson County, where Louisville is located.
B. At the level of individuals, a 2016 emissions control installation was associated with a 17% reduction in overall counts of rescue inhaler use in the following month, and a 32% reduction in the odds of having high rescue inhaler use (defined as 4 puffs per day on average per month).
C. Coal-fired power plants provide a large amount of electricity worldwide.
D. In 2015, they produced 6 trillion MWh, representing 25% of the global supply.
E. Our study used retirements and SO2 emission control installations at four coal-fired power plant facilities near Louisville, Kentucky, between 2013 and 2016 to frame a natural experiment.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our study used retirements and SO2 emission control installations at four coal-fired power plant facilities near Louisville, Kentucky, between 2013 and 2016 to frame a natural experiment. We equipped 207 Louisville residents with digital sensors for their asthma rescue inhalers and studied their inhaler use. ...

    Options:
    A. We also tracked local hospitalization and ER visit data over time.
B. We calculated changes in emissions exposure across the period using a model that tracks air pollution emitted from individual sources.
C. We used that model to calculate the changes in exposure to emissions from each plant across time and space.
D. Changes to plant emissions generated large and abrupt changes in air pollution exposure for local residents.
E. Our study took advantage of a natural experiment that occurred between 2013 and 2016, when four coal-fired power plants in the Louisville, Kentucky area retired, transitioned to natural gas or installed SO2 emissions controls.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Energy use in buildings accounts for a significant proportion of urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly in high-density cities. For example, New York City's most recent carbon inventory estimates that building energy use is responsible for approximately 67% of citywide GHG emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. Given this, city policymakers have made increasing building energy efficiency, particularly of existing buildings, a central component of long-term sustainability goals.
B. Informational energy regulations, which are premised on the idea that an absence of data and transparency can cause sub-optimal investment in energy efficiency, have become popular policy instruments for encouraging market-based — and data-driven — interventions for energy use reduction.
C. Several cities are adopting mandatory audit policies, which require periodic audit reporting of energy use, systems inventories, recommended energy conservation measures, and energy and cost savings estimates.
D. Few, if any, studies have examined the effect of these new mandatory building energy audit policies on energy use in office and multifamily buildings.
E. We find that, for the time period studied between 2011 and 2016, mandatory energy audits had a modest negative impact on energy consumption in office and residential buildings in New York City.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that, for the time period studied between 2011 and 2016, mandatory energy audits had a modest negative impact on energy consumption in office and residential buildings in New York City. The magnitude was consistent with the savings potential of low-cost energy conservation measures and retro-commissioning activities. ...

    Options:
    A. Audited buildings are found to have energy use reductions post-audit of 2.5% for multifamily and 4.9% for office buildings beyond what would otherwise be expected (Fig. 1).
B. The results reinforce the hypothesis that audits, by themselves, provide only limited incentive to invest in energy efficiency upgrades.
C. Ultimately, building owners remain constrained by factors that audit information alone may not overcome, such as limited access to capital, uncertainty in savings projections, opportunity costs and weak pricing signals in energy markets.
D. However, our analysis is constrained by data limitations that prevent us from examining the adoption of specific energy conservation measures over the study period.
E. This study helps to inform urban energy policy decisions by comparing energy use in properties that have performed a mandatory energy audit with those that have not.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    This study helps to inform urban energy policy decisions by comparing energy use in properties that have performed a mandatory energy audit with those that have not. Specifically, we analyze annual energy benchmarking data collected by New York City under Local Law 84 from 2011 to 2016 to investigate whether properties that conducted an audit exhibited greater average reductions in energy use than similar, non-audited properties. ...

    Options:
    A. We collect detailed audit report data from mandatory Local Law 87 audits conducted in 2013 and 2014 through a randomly-assigned allocation process.
B. This results in an integrated sample of 3,981 buildings.
C. The analysis examines two primary building types (office and multifamily housing), while controlling for multiple time invariant and time-varying attributes in order to evaluate whether energy audits have differential impacts across market segments.
D. We also attempt to contextualize the audit effect by disaggregating the potential impacts of retro-commissioning activities from those attributable to energy conservation measures.
E. Energy use in buildings accounts for a significant proportion of urban greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, particularly in high-density cities.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Oil prices are affected by factors other than demand and supply fundamentals. The effects of strategic moves by major players such as the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), panic buying or speculative bubbles are expected by industry analysts to distort markets. ...

    Options:
    A. These non-market forces are often downplayed or ignored by economists because they are hard to measure.
B. Policy makers thus assume that price changes reflect supply and demand and/or that price deviations are short-lived.
C. They fear that interventions may have negative effects that are larger than the benefits and as a result they do not act.
D. Indeed, there is little policy to discourage panic buying and speculative bubbles.
E. Better quantification of effects from phenomena such as panic buying and speculative bubbles is needed so that policy makers can account for their effects and make active decisions about their regulation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Proxies for supply and demand accurately account for oil prices in 138 of 313 quarters from January 1938 to March 2018. In the other 184 quarters, reduced accuracy creates nine regimes when oil prices deviate from the level implied by supply and demand. ...

    Options:
    A. Of these nine regimes, two are associated with policy interventions to suppress price increases.
B. The other seven are associated with non-market forces, such as strategic changes by OPEC, panic buying or speculative bubbles.
C. This historical analysis of the oil market indicates that factors other than supply and demand have a large effect on prices for extended periods (with the shortest regime being a year and the longest being more than two decades).
D. By summing the additional price paid for oil consumed in the US, we show that in recent regimes, speculative bubbles transferred US$42.9 billion from US consumers to US oil producers and transferred US$87.4 billion from the US economy to oil exporting nations.
E. This suggests significant economic losses.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We identify periods when non-market factors move the price of crude oil away from the level implied by supply and demand (that is, market fundamentals) and the size of these price deviations. To do so, we estimate the relation between oil prices and proxies for oil supply and demand, such as production by a dominant producing organization (for example OPEC in recent times), the amount of oil in storage and the rate at which refineries convert crude oil to useful products. ...

    Options:
    A. This analysis is supplemented with a statistical procedure that identifies periods when the proxies for supply and demand imply values for oil prices that differ from observations in a statistically significant manner.
B. We call these periods price regimes and explain their effects using non-market forces — such as changes in who owns oil fields, panic buying or speculative bubbles — that are described by industry analysts.
C. Proxies for supply and demand accurately account for oil prices in 138 of 313 quarters from January 1938 to March 2018.
D. In the other 184 quarters, reduced accuracy creates nine regimes when oil prices deviate from the level implied by supply and demand.
E. Oil prices are affected by factors other than demand and supply fundamentals.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Local energy projects delivered by community groups could play a pivotal role in realizing the transition to a zero-carbon energy future. Community energy schemes offer an alternative to centralized large scale energy provision, with various forms of community energy already found across Europe, North America and elsewhere. ...

    Options:
    A. The sector in the UK has grown due to favourable government policies and the decreasing cost of renewable energy technologies.
B. However, recently the government has withdrawn most support for small-scale renewables, putting community energy business models under strain.
C. Exploring which business models and financing mechanisms have worked for community energy projects across the UK can identify ways forward for the sector.
D. A healthy community energy sector could not only help with the zero-carbon transition but also strengthen and empower communities, providing a broad range of co-benefits.
E. The UK community energy sector is dominated by renewable electricity generation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The UK community energy sector is dominated by renewable electricity generation. Activities addressing demand-side issues, such as energy efficiency or fuel poverty, are mostly cross-subsidized from renewables revenue or grant funded, although a few groups do run financially self-sustaining demand-side projects. ...

    Options:
    A. For renewables, two basic business models exist.
B. First, larger projects supplying the grid, like wind or solar farms, are increasingly professionalized and 'bankable': they raise commercial loans alongside citizen finance (Fig. 1).
C. Second, rooftop solar photovoltaic projects, supplying an on-site customer as well as the grid, are small enough to be funded primarily through community share issues (Fig. 1).
D. In both cases, community shares represent a low-cost source of finance: we find that on average, they offer interest rates two percentage points lower than loans, making them the cheapest form of capital (other than grants).
E. However, these two business models rely on price guarantee schemes, such as the Feed-in Tariff.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Little is known about how community energy projects raise finance, so we conducted a new UK-wide survey of the sector. Our survey structure used the Business Model Canvas to analyse organisations' value propositions (what they offer the customer) and associated activities, customers, resources, costs and revenues. ...

    Options:
    A. We collected data on up to 200 variables per project, paying particular attention to financing mechanisms.
B. We received substantive responses to our survey on 145 projects from 48 organizations.
C. We conducted cluster analysis to identify groups of similar business models.
D. Descriptive statistical analysis allowed us to examine financial performance, the impact of removing price guarantee schemes on project revenues, and the prices different customers pay for community energy.
E. We also used econometric analysis to examine the relationship between the cost of finance and financing mechanisms.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Approximately 2.9 billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America burn solid fuels like firewood to meet their cooking energy needs. This has significant negative implications for public health, the environment and societal development. ...

    Options:
    A. In response, India, through the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), has provided capital cost subsidies to poor women to adopt a clean-burning cooking fuel (liquefied petroleum gas; LPG).
B. Within the first 40 months of the scheme, more than 80 million households obtained LPG stoves.
C. However, the full benefits of LPG adoption are contingent on near complete replacement of polluting fuels with LPG, and this cannot be assumed solely on the basis of LPG presence in the household.
D. We estimate that an average rural family needs to purchase five 14.2 kg cylinders annually to meet half of their cooking needs.
E. We find that just 7% of PMUY beneficiaries in Koppal district in Karnataka, India, purchased five or more cylinders annually, suggesting that the beneficiaries seldom use LPG (Fig. 1).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We estimate that an average rural family needs to purchase five 14.2 kg cylinders annually to meet half of their cooking needs. We find that just 7% of PMUY beneficiaries in Koppal district in Karnataka, India, purchased five or more cylinders annually, suggesting that the beneficiaries seldom use LPG (Fig. 1). ...

    Options:
    A. The general (non PMUY) consumers in this region use on average two times more LPG cylinders than PMUY beneficiaries.
B. Yet, only 45% of general consumers use five or more cylinders per year, even after several years of experience with LPG.
C. We also find that LPG consumers are sensitive to price and seasonality: LPG cylinder refill rates are lower in the summer when agricultural activity is limited and cash is scarce.
D. These findings suggest the need for additional measures to promote regular LPG use for all rural populations.
E. Although the findings come from a single district in Southern India, they may also apply to other areas with similar socio-economic conditions.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We analysed LPG sales data for over 25,000 consumers including PMUY beneficiaries as well as general rural LPG consumers in the Koppal district in Karnataka, India. We employed data covering all LPG purchases of PMUY beneficiaries through their first year in the programme and the general rural population's purchases during their first five years as consumers to assess the effect of experience on use. ...

    Options:
    A. We also assessed price and seasonal factors affecting LPG use among the general population over a three-year period.
B. A more expansive evaluation of PMUY would help inform the design of targeted incentives to transform infrequent users to regular users.
C. Using LPG sales data to analyse consumption overcomes potential recall issues and inherent biases in previous analyses based on self-reported survey data.
D. For instance, respondents may misreport in an attempt to create a “good” impression in front of outsider researchers or may forget past purchase history.
E. Approximately 2.9 billion people across Asia, Africa and Latin America burn solid fuels like firewood to meet their cooking energy needs.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Wastes and biomass residues can be used to derive a number of alternative useful products through different conversion pathways and are widely available and replenishable. The various conversion pathways are currently at different stages of technical and economic maturity. ...

    Options:
    A. Identifying the optimum product to derive or pathway to use based on varying goals from emission reduction to economic efficiency is complex.
B. From a policy perspective, it is important to understand what factors determine the energy and climate benefits of waste conversion, the potential aggregate energy and climate benefits of waste conversion, which pathways simultaneously maximize energy and climate benefits, and how this varies given the differing availability and composition of waste in differing locations (Fig. 1).
C. Such information is needed to design policies that lead to the best use of biomass resources while mitigating unintended negative consequences.
D. We find that the type and quantity of energy consumed during biomass processing and the environmental footprint of the displaced products are key to determining the most environmentally beneficial use of any given biomass resource.
E. We estimate that the utilization of all available wastes and biomass residues in the contiguous US can generate 3.1-3.8 EJ of renewable energy but deliver only 2.4-3.2 EJ of net energy gain if energy generation is maximized, and displace 103-178 million tonne CO2 e of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that the type and quantity of energy consumed during biomass processing and the environmental footprint of the displaced products are key to determining the most environmentally beneficial use of any given biomass resource. We estimate that the utilization of all available wastes and biomass residues in the contiguous US can generate 3.1-3.8 EJ of renewable energy but deliver only 2.4-3.2 EJ of net energy gain if energy generation is maximized, and displace 103-178 million tonne CO2 e of Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. For any given waste feedstock, looking across all US counties where it is available, no single conversion pathway simultaneously maximizes renewable energy production, net energy gain and GHG mitigation except in rare instances.
B. Maximizing the energetic and environmental benefits of waste conversion requires a life cycle assessment based of different technology pathways taking into consideration the spatial distribution of biomass resources and local conditions (such as the electricity mix).
C. This analysis compares the energy and climate benefits of a large set of feasible technology pathways for energy recovery from waste from a systems perspective — using a life cycle assessment with a consistent system boundary and region-varying inputs.
D. This analysis quantifies life cycle GHG emissions and energy production for 15 conversion pathways and 29 waste feedstocks at both the county and national levels in the US.
E. Harnessing this resource can have significant energy and environmental benefits.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    This analysis compares the energy and climate benefits of a large set of feasible technology pathways for energy recovery from waste from a systems perspective — using a life cycle assessment with a consistent system boundary and region-varying inputs. This analysis quantifies life cycle GHG emissions and energy production for 15 conversion pathways and 29 waste feedstocks at both the county and national levels in the US. ...

    Options:
    A. It also identifies the most efficient pathways for utilizing each distinct type of waste and biomass residue with respect to renewable energy production, net energy gain or GHG emissions reduction.
B. In addition, it estimates the aggregate energy and climate benefits when all available wastes and biomass residues across the contiguous United States are dedicated for specific policy objectives.
C. Wastes and biomass residues can be used to derive a number of alternative useful products through different conversion pathways and are widely available and replenishable.
D. The various conversion pathways are currently at different stages of technical and economic maturity.
E. Biomass such as agricultural and forestry residues, animal manure and municipal solid wastes can be a replenishable and widely available source of energy.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Greater shares of renewable power in future electricity grids may introduce challenges for maintaining grid reliability; demand-side response measures offer one tool to maintain reliability while also increasing the share of renewable power. Pricing electricity higher in evenings (such as in 'time-of-use' rates) is a common demand side response measure to encourage households and businesses to shift electricity demand to times when generation from renewable sources is readily available. ...

    Options:
    A. This strategy may introduce disproportionate hardships for households that already live in energy poverty: they struggle to meet the financial demands of both energy costs and other necessities such as food and medicine.
B. These vulnerable groups have often been afterthoughts in energy policy, and may also be less able to change the timing of their electricity use.
C. If demand-side response risks worsening existing inequities, it is essential to develop policy responses before these measures are rolled out widely.
D. Elderly people and those with disabilities had greater bill increases when moved to time-of-use rates (versus staying on existing rates), compared to the equivalent increase seen in their non-vulnerable counterparts assigned to time-of-use rates (Fig. 1).
E. Low-income and Hispanic households had lower bill increases compared to non-vulnerable counterparts.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Elderly people and those with disabilities had greater bill increases when moved to time-of-use rates (versus staying on existing rates), compared to the equivalent increase seen in their non-vulnerable counterparts assigned to time-of-use rates (Fig. 1). Low-income and Hispanic households had lower bill increases compared to non-vulnerable counterparts. ...

    Options:
    A. Hispanic households and those with disabilities experienced worse health outcomes on time-of-use rates, while households with young children experienced better health outcomes.
B. Otherwise, no health and bill differences were observed between vulnerable and non-vulnerable groups.
C. These results suggest that time-of-use rates may increase hardships faced by some groups already more likely to face energy poverty, but impacts vary by sociodemographic group and rate design.
D. This study was conducted during the summer in the south-western United States, and we expect these results to extend to similar contexts — hot climates during summer.
E. Findings may not generalize to different rate designs or climate conditions.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Data are from a south-western United States utility pilot. We examine two time-of-use rates trialled in the pilot: TOU1 on-peak ran 14:00-20:00 on weekdays (0.3451 US dollars per kWh) and TOU2 on-peak ran 17:00-20:00 on weekdays (0.5326 US dollars per kWh). ...

    Options:
    A. Households opted in to the pilot and were randomly assigned to either TOU1, TOU2 or the control group (stayed on existing rate).
B. All participants completed a survey after time-of-use rates had been active for several months.
C. We tested for differences in bills during the pilot versus the two years before it, whether this difference was greater for participants on time-of-use versus control, and whether vulnerable households on time-of-use compared to control experienced greater increases in bills than the increase experienced by non-vulnerable households on time-of-use versus control.
D. The survey only occurred once, so we cannot compare before-after differences in reported health.
E. We tested whether assignment of each group to time-of-use correlated with higher likelihood of needing medical attention for heat-related illness.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Coal-fired power generation is the single most important source of carbon dioxide emissions in many countries, including Germany. According to many modelling scenarios, achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is incompatible with operating coal-fired power plants globally after 2030. ...

    Options:
    A. Several governments have started to design public policies for phasing out coal.
B. In Germany, where 35.3% of electricity generation came from coal in 2018, a government commission has recently proposed a phase-out by 2038.
C. While some observers consider the proposed timeline a reasonable compromise between public acceptance and climate change mitigation, others have criticized the plan as not ambitious enough to deliver on Germany's climate policy targets.
D. Citizen groups were underrepresented in the German government commission, and, until recently, little was known about voters' views on a coal phase-out.
E. We find that German voters prefer a coal phase-out by 2025, whereas policies aiming at a later date find less support.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that German voters prefer a coal phase-out by 2025, whereas policies aiming at a later date find less support. Voters would uphold their support for a phase-out by 2025 even in light of additional household costs, although every €10 increase in annual household cost decreases voter support by about seven percentage points. ...

    Options:
    A. Voters in the two coal-producing regions affected by the phase-out (Rhineland and Lusatia) also prefer an earlier phase out.
B. Individuals who are aware of the broad scientific consensus that climate change is caused by humans have particularly strong preferences for an earlier phase-out.
C. In contrast to the government commission's proposal, the more ambitious timeline preferred by voters would increase the chances of achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement in Germany.
D. While our study suggests that policymakers may underestimate public willingness to support an expedited coal phase-out, we did not explicitly investigate the role of other stakeholders in the policy process.
E. The study focused on Germany and as such does not allow generalization to other countries.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our study is based on a choice experiment with a representative sample of 2,161 Germans who are eligible to vote. In addition, 1,034 individuals living in the country's main coal regions, Rhineland and Lusatia, were surveyed. ...

    Options:
    A. As part of the experiment, study participants had to evaluate a number of policy scenarios for a coal phase-out.
B. These scenarios differed in terms of the timeline of the phase out, costs, employment effects and supporting measures for the transformation of the coal regions.
C. Voters would uphold their support for a phase-out by 2025 even in light of additional household costs, although every €10 increase in annual household cost decreases voter support by about seven percentage points.
D. Coal-fired power generation is the single most important source of carbon dioxide emissions in many countries, including Germany.
E. According to many modelling scenarios, achieving the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement is incompatible with operating coal-fired power plants globally after 2030.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    A key challenge in liberalized electricity markets is ensuring that investors build enough generation capacity to maintain reliability of the system. Instead of relying purely on energy market revenues to attract investment, many regions have put in place resource adequacy mechanisms that enable generators to receive supplementary payments for capacity. ...

    Options:
    A. The addition of wind and solar power tends to depress energy market prices, so many project that these capacity payments will become increasingly important to guarantee reliability as markets evolve.
B. As revenue from these resource adequacy mechanisms grows, however, flaws in their design are magnified, potentially hindering a transition to cleaner, more flexible and more efficient resources.
C. We find that from the perspective of investors, the financial impact of resource adequacy mechanisms is to replace highly volatile energy market revenues with relatively stable payments for capacity.
D. This hedging property reduces the risk of investing in new generation, enabling developers to secure financing at lower cost.
E. To examine the effect of risk and resource adequacy mechanisms on generation investment, we developed an equilibrium model describing a competitive market with limited outlets for risk trading.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that from the perspective of investors, the financial impact of resource adequacy mechanisms is to replace highly volatile energy market revenues with relatively stable payments for capacity. This hedging property reduces the risk of investing in new generation, enabling developers to secure financing at lower cost. ...

    Options:
    A. However, the quality of the hedge for each generation technology depends on how well the design of the mechanism aligns with its particular risk profile.
B. Our findings suggest that the structure of current capacity mechanisms inadvertently favours generation resources with low capital costs and high operating costs, such as gas- and oil-fired peaking plants, over technologies with the opposite cost structure, like solar, wind and nuclear.
C. Accordingly, current mechanisms may work against efforts to decarbonize.
D. Unlike traditional analyses, in which the risk premium required by investors is assumed to be constant, our equilibrium framework allows the risk premium to change in accordance with the stabilizing effect that financial trades can have on generator revenues.
E. Many electricity markets authorize capacity payments to generators to secure sufficient supply, unintentionally favouring peaking technologies like oil and gas.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    To examine the effect of risk and resource adequacy mechanisms on generation investment, we developed an equilibrium model describing a competitive market with limited outlets for risk trading. Unlike traditional analyses, in which the risk premium required by investors is assumed to be constant, our equilibrium framework allows the risk premium to change in accordance with the stabilizing effect that financial trades can have on generator revenues. ...

    Options:
    A. Importantly, the study was theoretical rather than experimental.
B. Due to the proprietary nature of most commodity trading, estimating the real-world magnitude of the effect described in the study remains a challenge.
C. A key challenge in liberalized electricity markets is ensuring that investors build enough generation capacity to maintain reliability of the system.
D. Instead of relying purely on energy market revenues to attract investment, many regions have put in place resource adequacy mechanisms that enable generators to receive supplementary payments for capacity.
E. New approaches are needed to ensure reliability without discouraging investment in low-carbon resources such as solar, wind and nuclear.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires significant continued reduction in the cost of renewable energy. Ambitious policies have already led to large reductions in renewable energy cost. ...

    Options:
    A. These reductions are often attributed to a reduction in hardware cost but the role of financing conditions and trends has remained largely unexamined.
B. As renewable energy costs approach grid parity, it is increasingly important to understand how and why financing conditions changed over time.
C. While individual investors know their cost of capital, typically this information remains unavailable to policymakers.
D. Such information can inform decisions about when and how to phase out remuneration schemes such as feed-in tariffs or auctions.
E. We find that financing conditions improved greatly for solar photovoltaics (PV) and onshore wind energy in Germany between the introduction of the feed-in tariff in 2000 and 2017.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that financing conditions improved greatly for solar photovoltaics (PV) and onshore wind energy in Germany between the introduction of the feed-in tariff in 2000 and 2017. During this period, the cost of capital decreased from 5.1% to 1.6% for solar PV and from 4.5% to 1.9% for onshore wind. ...

    Options:
    A. These reductions stem from two effects.
B. Second, a reduction of debt margins, due to increased investment experience with renewable energy technologies.
C. We compiled a novel dataset on the financing conditions of 133 representative German utility-scale renewable energy projects undertaken between 2000 and 2017.
D. We combined this with qualitative interviews with 41 investment professionals to understand the underlying drivers of change in financing conditions.
E. Financing costs for renewable energy technologies have decreased substantially over the past 18 years, helping make renewables more cost competitive.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We compiled a novel dataset on the financing conditions of 133 representative German utility-scale renewable energy projects undertaken between 2000 and 2017. We combined this with qualitative interviews with 41 investment professionals to understand the underlying drivers of change in financing conditions. ...

    Options:
    A. This allowed us to disentangle the cost-reducing effect of lower interest rates from the cost-reducing effect of experience in the renewable energy financing industry (Fig. 1).
B. Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement requires significant continued reduction in the cost of renewable energy.
C. Ambitious policies have already led to large reductions in renewable energy cost. These reductions are often attributed to a reduction in hardware cost but the role of financing conditions and trends has remained largely unexamined.
D. Leveraging the effect of financial learning and continuing the policies that facilitated favourable financing conditions are key for greater renewable energy adoption in the future.
E. We find that financing conditions improved greatly for solar photovoltaics (PV) and onshore wind energy in Germany between the introduction of the feed-in tariff in 2000 and 2017.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    It is difficult for consumers to establish a link between a specific activity and its impact on energy consumption. Feedback interventions are viewed as promising behaviour change strategies to establish this link and ultimately to foster energy conservation. ...

    Options:
    A. The anticipated savings effects have been a driver for the rollout of smart electricity meters to millions of households.
B. However, while early studies based on small samples of volunteer participants reported encouraging savings effects, large programmes providing aggregate feedback on household energy use to a broader population have delivered only modest savings.
C. This raises the question whether the small effects are an inherent problem of feedback interventions in rollouts without self-selection effects, or if the small savings effects result from the unspecific, aggregated feedback provided by today's installations.
D. Hotel guests who received real-time feedback on the energy consumed while showering used 11.4% (0.21 kWh) less energy per shower than hotel guests in a control group.
E. The results are important for two reasons.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Hotel guests who received real-time feedback on the energy consumed while showering used 11.4% (0.21 kWh) less energy per shower than hotel guests in a control group. The results are important for two reasons. ...

    Options:
    A. First, they indicate that real-time feedback on a specific activity can induce large behaviour change and resource savings among the broader population and not only among the kind of people who volunteer to participate in energy conservation studies.
B. Second, participants had no financial motives for behaviour change (hotel guests pay a fixed room rate).
C. Even in this setting, the digital behavioural intervention created large conservation effects.
D. Two potential caveats remain.
E. First, we do not know how representative the behaviour of hotel guests is for the tested behaviour compared to the general population.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We conducted a 'natural field experiment' — a study in a real world setting with ordinary people who do not know that they are participating in an experiment and who thus are not pre-selected by actively opting in. We installed smart shower meters (Fig. 1) that measured the energy and water consumption of every shower taken in 265 rooms at six Swiss hotels. ...

    Options:
    A. We assigned the rooms randomly to two groups: while guests in most rooms received real-time feedback on their resource consumption and saw an image of a polar bear on a shrinking ice floe while using the shower ('treatment group'), 40% of the smart shower meters displayed only water temperature to guests who served as a control group.
B. We then compared the energy (and water) use per shower of the two groups.
C. The hotel setting also allowed us to study how individuals respond to real-time feedback on their resource consumption in a setting where they have zero financial incentives for conserving resources.
D. Second, we cannot measure long-term behaviour in a hotel setting.
E. However, in other experiments that we conducted with households over several months, conservation effects from real-time feedback were stable.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Growing self-generation and storage are expected to cause significant changes in residential electricity usage patterns and hence household bills. However, the costs of operating the electricity grid must still be recovered from ratepayers. ...

    Options:
    A. Commonly applied volumetric network tariffs may result in an imbalance between different socioeconomic groups of households and their respective contributions to recovering these operating costs.
B. The introduction of smart meters offers new tariff models to finance electricity grids, such as a change from volumetric grid tariffs to charging customers for the load peaks they induce.
C. However, it is important to know whether certain tariffs ultimately shift the burden of grid maintenance towards lower-income households.
D. A better understanding of the impact of new tariffs on households across a range of socioeconomic backgrounds can help to design tariffs that recover the costs needed for the sustainable operation of the grid in a socially equitable manner.
E. We modelled the effects of 11 network tariff scenarios on household budgets using real load profiles from 765 households collected between April 2010 and March 2011 in Austria.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We modelled the effects of 11 network tariff scenarios on household budgets using real load profiles from 765 households collected between April 2010 and March 2011 in Austria. We found that, for tariffs emphasizing peak charges, the predictability of annual network costs for households is potentially low, because the costs are driven by only a small number of peak consumption values. ...

    Options:
    A. Moreover, the impact of peak charges on household budgets can be disruptive.
B. More specifically, we found up to a 500% increase in network charges for some households under the extreme tariff scheme tested.
C. Although the potential size of the effects is dramatic, one might expect that households would adapt to the new tariff schemes after a while.
D. We were unable to test such a response as we only used historic data where no alternative tariffs with price signals were applied.
E. Our study explored the impact of applying peak-load-based tariffs on the budgets of households that had mainly been charged based on consumed volumes before.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our study explored the impact of applying peak-load-based tariffs on the budgets of households that had mainly been charged based on consumed volumes before. We recruited households from Upper Austria, who gave us permission to collect their 15-minute electricity load profiles from their smart meter between April 2010 and March 2011. ...

    Options:
    A. They also provided socioeconomic information and details of their electric appliances.
B. We used this data to estimate the change in household network expenditures for 11 different combinations of energy, peak and fixed charges that try to recover network charges in different ways.
C. Under each scenario, the household was sent specific signals about prices.
D. Growing self-generation and storage are expected to cause significant changes in residential electricity usage patterns and hence household bills.
E. However, the costs of operating the electricity grid must still be recovered from ratepayers.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Many countries have adopted incentive policies to encourage solar energy development. Examples include solar feed-in tariffs common in Europe and the 30% income tax credit for solar installations in the US. ...

    Options:
    A. In recent years, however, Middle Eastern countries with no official solar incentive programmes have become world leaders in developing low-priced photovoltaic power plants.
B. For example, the United Arab Emirates became the first country to realize unsubsidized solar electricity for less than 3¢ kWh-1.
C. The sudden appearance of ultra-cheap solar energy in these countries led to speculation whether these prices are real, resulting from sustainable market developments, or the result of hidden subsidies or a speculative bubble.
D. Resolving this speculation is critical for developing future utility solar power policy.
E. We performed a detailed cost breakdown of large-scale solar energy projects in the United Arab Emirates.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We performed a detailed cost breakdown of large-scale solar energy projects in the United Arab Emirates. Many factors contributed to the low price, but two stand out as having the most impact: the plummeting cost of solar panels and the reduced costs of financing. ...

    Options:
    A. Solar panel prices have fallen by a factor of 6 since the beginning of this decade.
B. The cost of building a solar power plant is now similar to the cost of other technologies.
C. The cost of solar panels represents only one-third of the total construction costs.
D. We found that solar power projects were financed by large loans covering 70-80% of the project costs, with low interest rates.
E. The project developers were often large, state-connected companies, meaning that the projects were implicitly underwritten by the national government.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We developed a model to break down the levelized cost of electricity (that is, the total cost to the plant operator of producing one kilowatt hour of electricity) into many different contributions related to hardware costs, installation labour, financing, site preparation and maintenance. This allowed us to estimate costs from the bottom up and evaluate the impact of different assumptions about cost components. ...

    Options:
    A. We considered specific trends independently, such as recent reductions in the price of solar panels, or regional variations in labour costs and debt interest rates.
B. We compiled data from various public sources, including annual analyses by the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other national laboratories, industry reports, local studies of installation, operation and maintenance costs and practices in the region, and press releases describing the financial packages offered to several low-priced photovoltaic projects in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
C. It is important to note that our work attempts to reconstruct these projects based on publicly available information, and does not utilize proprietary information from the project developers themselves; the study should not be considered the authoritative opinion on exactly how any particular project achieved its results, but rather a general and transparent analysis on how a project could achieve a particular electricity price, given a set of local conditions that are more or less known.
D. However, we showed that these projects are still profitable when all of the costs are accounted for.
E. Many countries have adopted incentive policies to encourage solar energy development.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Many governments subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels, a practice that drains government funds, boosts road traffic and air pollution, and damages public health. Most importantly, it slows the transition to renewable energy and increases carbon emissions. ...

    Options:
    A. International organizations have long encouraged governments to eliminate these subsidies, leading to the incorporation of subsidy reform in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and proposed commitments in the Paris Agreement of 2015.
B. Many governments have heeded the call and adopted reforms since the mid-2010s.
C. While questions have been raised about the effectiveness of these reforms, they have not been comprehensively evaluated.
D. We find that since 2016, and in comparison to the 2000-2015 period, there has been a rise in the frequency and ambition of subsidy reforms but a drop in their durability: 70% of all reforms failed in the first year, and 91% failed within 3 years.
E. The size of subsidies rose for 12 countries in our sample and were virtually unchanged for the other 9.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that since 2016, and in comparison to the 2000-2015 period, there has been a rise in the frequency and ambition of subsidy reforms but a drop in their durability: 70% of all reforms failed in the first year, and 91% failed within 3 years. The size of subsidies rose for 12 countries in our sample and were virtually unchanged for the other 9. ...

    Options:
    A. One-third of all failures were caused by explicit policy reversals, often in response to popular protests; for the other two-thirds, the reforms were erased by inflation, currency depreciation and rising oil prices.
B. The most ambitious reforms were the most likely to fail.
C. We do not know if other types of climate policy are also failing, but note that fuel subsidies are highly visible to citizens and their removal is often unpopular.
D. Our findings imply that efforts to trim gasoline subsidies have largely been unsuccessful.
E. Our sample consists of monthly gasoline prices from 2000 to 2023 of the 21 countries that maintained substantial gasoline subsidies dur ing the pre-2015 period.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our sample consists of monthly gasoline prices from 2000 to 2023 of the 21 countries that maintained substantial gasoline subsidies dur ing the pre-2015 period. Together, they accounted for 97% of all gaso line subsidies between 2003 and 2015. ...

    Options:
    A. All were oil and gas producers. We collected new data on their gasoline prices by using government documents, industry records and media reports.
B. We then applied the price-gap method to calculate monthly subsidies from January 2016 to December 2023.
C. This enabled us to identify both price reforms, mean ing one-time increases in the local gasoline price, and fixity reforms, meaning a shift from fixed prices set by the government to floating, market-based prices.
D. We tabulated both the incidence of reforms in each country and how long each reform lasted (Fig. 1). If it failed, we recorded the reasons why.
E. Many governments subsidize the consumption of fossil fuels, a practice that drains government funds, boosts road traffic and air pollution, and damages public health.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Rapidly changing climatic and oceanic conditions form a clear and urgent mandate for novel interventions to sustain marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. Scientific and not-for-profit organizations are already trialling a wide array of new marine-climate interventions. ...

    Options:
    A. However, the planned upscaling of many of these interventions has highlighted a 'pacing problem', whereby the rate of innovation and deployment is outpacing governance preparedness to anticipate and responsibly manage actions and their impacts.
B. Over coming these pacing and upscaling challenges is of global importance because new marine-climate interventions pose multiple and cumula tive risks and high opportunity costs for marine ecosystems, as well as communities and rights holders at local, regional, global and climate policy scales.
C. However, systematic understanding of the development and deployment of marine-climate interventions remains low.
D. There has been limited empirical investigation into how to understand and resolve the pacing problem between marine governance and climate intervention technology.
E. Our study identifies a wide diversity of marine-climate interventions proposed or already deployed in 37 marine systems.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Our study identifies a wide diversity of marine-climate interventions proposed or already deployed in 37 marine systems. Multiple types of intervention co-occur in all major ocean basins. ...

    Options:
    A. Most practition ers (71%) report interventions aimed at supporting marine species and ecosystem adaptation, while 29% report interventions aimed at climate mitigation and societal adaptation.
B. Perceptions of climate outcomes vary widely, with low consensus on intended and realized climate benefits of interventions.
C. The practitioner community is science-dominated with limited involvement of public institutions and communities.
D. Arrangements for responsibly governing interven tion risks are seldom observed, indicating the pacing problem is indeed present.
E. Intervention assessment and approval are narrowly focused on technical feasibility to meet minimum permitting requirements, with limited assessment of cumulative impacts, public deliberation and management of broader ecological, cultural and social risks and benefits.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We used an online questionnaire to survey the emerging global com munity of marine-climate intervention practitioners, bringing together critical information on this rapidly emerging field. We gathered data from 332 participants, including the types of novel interventions being developed or deployed, how these interventions are being designed, their geographic distribution and stage of development, types of cli mate goals and benefits pursued, and the arrangements (if any) for responsible governance. ...

    Options:
    A. Using these results, we developed a typology of major types and sub-types of novel marine-climate interventions.
B. To track the extent to which governance arrangements are keeping pace with novel marine-climate interventions, we extended existing frameworks for responsible research and innovation to incorporate the governance phase.
C. We examined the arrangements currently used to assess, plan for and manage interventions in marine systems against our responsible governance framework (Fig. 1).
D. Our approach allowed us to assess the extent of governance preparedness in this global arena of emerging technologies.
E. Rapidly changing climatic and oceanic conditions form a clear and urgent mandate for novel interventions to sustain marine ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    As the largest CO2 emitter and the second largest economy in the world, the achievement of China's carbon neutrality is crucial for the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement. China has proposed a range of mitiga tion policies to meet its dual carbon targets (peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and attaining carbon neutrality by 2060), including the deployment of non-fossil energy, the electrification of end-use sectors, the improvement of energy efficiency and market-based measures such as carbon pricing. ...

    Options:
    A. However, the effectiveness of these policies is heavily influenced by their trade-offs and synergies.
B. It remains unclear how these interactions will affect the overall achievement of China's carbon neutrality.
C. Understanding the potential impacts and mecha nisms of policy interactions is critical for policymakers to formulate cost-efficient policy portfolios.
D. We find that interactions between mitigation policies in China would reduce the percentage of scenarios achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 by 84%, and delay the years in which these scenarios are achieved by 5-6 years.
E. This decline is driven by how different policies influence each other's implementation space: complementary policies expand it, while competitive policies constrain it.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that interactions between mitigation policies in China would reduce the percentage of scenarios achieving carbon neutrality by 2060 by 84%, and delay the years in which these scenarios are achieved by 5-6 years. This decline is driven by how different policies influence each other's implementation space: complementary policies expand it, while competitive policies constrain it. ...

    Options:
    A. Among all mitigation polices, the combination of carbon pricing and renewable energy exhibits trade-off effects on both mitigation and economic outcomes.
B. Conversely, the combination of renewable energy and the electrification of end uses demonstrates synergistic effects, benefiting both economic and mitigation impacts.
C. These findings imply that rather than merely increasing policy intensity to achieve carbon neutrality, policymakers should prudently design mitigation portfolios to maximize synergies and minimize trade-offs.
D. Promoting the joint implementation of renewable energy and electrification polices is an effective measure to reduce carbon emissions in China.
E. We established a comprehensive policy portfolio area toward 2060, consisting of 1,295 scenarios based on 4 different types of aggregated mitigation strategy (carbon pricing, energy efficiency, renewable energy and electrification of end uses).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We established a comprehensive policy portfolio area toward 2060, consisting of 1,295 scenarios based on 4 different types of aggregated mitigation strategy (carbon pricing, energy efficiency, renewable energy and electrification of end uses). Meanwhile, we developed a dynamic computable general equilibrium model of China (CEEGE model) to assess the impacts on emissions reductions, economic costs of mitigation and mitigation efficiency under different policy combinations. ...

    Options:
    A. All scenarios were simulated and compared under two different assumptions: an actual simultaneous-implementation assumption (ASIA), in which the simulation results are obtained by implementing mitigation policies simultaneously; and an idealized simple-superposition assumption (ISSA), in which the simulation results are obtained by aggregating the results of separately imple mented mitigation policies.
B. By comparing the emissions reduction effects of all scenarios under the two assumptions, we specifically dem onstrate the importance of policy interactions for achieving carbon neutrality (Fig. 1).
C. As the largest CO2 emitter and the second largest economy in the world, the achievement of China's carbon neutrality is crucial for the 1.5 °C target of the Paris Agreement.
D. China has proposed a range of mitiga tion policies to meet its dual carbon targets (peaking CO2 emissions before 2030 and attaining carbon neutrality by 2060), including the deployment of non-fossil energy, the electrification of end-use sectors, the improvement of energy efficiency and market-based measures such as carbon pricing.
E. The interactions between mitigation policies could hinder China's progress toward carbon neutrality by limiting the space for effective policy implementation.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The world is witnessing a demographic shift towards ageing societies, posing a serious challenge to sustainable development and climate actions. In response, China has progressively relaxed its fertility policy (that is, shifting from the one-child policy to the two-child policy, and now to the three-child policy) and has proposed a gradual increase in the statutory retirement age (currently 60 for men and 55 for women, compared with 65 for both men and women in developed countries). ...

    Options:
    A. These policy changes are expected to impact population size, age structure and the labour market, potentially influencing household consumption and carbon footprint.
B. However, such impacts lack quanti tative assessment.
C. Capturing the potential impacts of relaxing fertility policies and delaying retirement age on household carbon footprints is critical for policymakers to coordinate demographic policies with those for climate change mitigation.
D. We find that younger people in China tend to have higher household carbon footprints due to greater income and consumption, a pattern that contrasts with developed countries where older people typically have higher carbon footprints.
E. Relaxing fertility policies and delaying retirement age are projected to increase household carbon footprints in China, primarily through boosting the population and labour.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We find that younger people in China tend to have higher household carbon footprints due to greater income and consumption, a pattern that contrasts with developed countries where older people typically have higher carbon footprints. Relaxing fertility policies and delaying retirement age are projected to increase household carbon footprints in China, primarily through boosting the population and labour. ...

    Options:
    A. These impacts of the policy changes seem to be greater in regions where dis parities in income and consumption among different age groups are larger.
B. These findings do not imply that such policies targeting popu lation ageing should be avoided to alleviate environmental pressure.
C. Instead, they provide evidence of the interactions between policies targeting population ageing and climate change, and highlight the importance of synergizing policies with different targets.
D. We developed an integrated framework of climate, population and economy models to assess the impacts of fertility and retirement poli cies on household carbon footprints.
E. We estimate household carbon footprints in different age groups by combining the environmentally extended multiregional input-output model with detailed household survey data.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We developed an integrated framework of climate, population and economy models to assess the impacts of fertility and retirement poli cies on household carbon footprints. We estimate household carbon footprints in different age groups by combining the environmentally extended multiregional input-output model with detailed household survey data. ...

    Options:
    A. Fertility and retirement policies affect household carbon footprints via two channels.
B. First, they affect the population in terms of size and structure, which is assessed by using the cohort-component method.
C. Second, they also affect the supply of the labour force and subsequently the economy, which is estimated by analysing changes in labour force participation rates and household consumption pat terns across age groups.
D. The world is witnessing a demographic shift towards ageing societies, posing a serious challenge to sustainable development and climate actions.
E. In response, China has progressively relaxed its fertility policy (that is, shifting from the one-child policy to the two-child policy, and now to the three-child policy) and has proposed a gradual increase in the statutory retirement age (currently 60 for men and 55 for women, compared with 65 for both men and women in developed countries).

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The costs of weather disasters in the USA now exceed US$120 billion annually. Costs are rising due to both increasing exposure (that is, more assets at risk) and more frequent and severe weather extremes under climate change. ...

    Options:
    A. One important aspect of adaptation is limiting the number of people and properties in harm's way.
B. However, governments around the world are implicitly subsidizing development in high-risk areas by continuing to invest in infrastructure such as roads and utili ties that lay the groundwork for population growth.
C. Public disaster insurance and financial aid provided after disasters strike also reduce the disincentives to develop in risky areas.
D. Withdrawing these implicit subsidies for development has long been suggested as one option for reducing exposure to climate and disaster risks, but empirical evidence on whether the approach will work is lacking and policymakers often worry that it could harm the local economy or tax base.
E. We evaluate the impact of a policy that eliminated federal infrastructure investments, flood insurance and disaster assistance in high-risk coastal zones in the USA.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We evaluate the impact of a policy that eliminated federal infrastructure investments, flood insurance and disaster assistance in high-risk coastal zones in the USA. We find that the policy lowered development densities (buildings per acre) by 83% in designated areas but raised them by 37% in neighbouring communities, suggesting that the approach can reallo cate growth away from the most at-risk areas. ...

    Options:
    A. The policy also generated co-benefits in neighbouring areas, increasing property values and provid ing flood protection services by conserving natural lands.
B. Our results sug gest that withdrawing development incentives in risky areas can reduce disaster exposure and damages, lower government expenditures and increase the property tax base.
C. A similar approach could be effective in other high-risk areas such as inland floodplains or wildfire zones and could be replicated in other countries, with the caveat that our findings are based on a US federal policy focused on reducing coastal flood risk.
D. We compare outcomes in 'treatment' areas designated in a 1982 law as part of the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), where federal development incentives have been removed to 'control' areas that have similar characteristics but are not part of the CBRS (Fig. 1).
E. The control group is constructed using machine learning and matching techniques.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We compare outcomes in 'treatment' areas designated in a 1982 law as part of the Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS), where federal development incentives have been removed to 'control' areas that have similar characteristics but are not part of the CBRS (Fig. 1). The control group is constructed using machine learning and matching techniques. ...

    Options:
    A. Intuitively, the procedure mimics the process by which natural resource planners designated CBRS lands based on geomorphic and develop ment features.
B. This creates a set of control areas that are statistically indistinguishable from treatment areas in terms of land use, flood risk, development patterns and other factors in the years leading up to policy implementation.
C. We analysed the long-term impacts of the policy on the amount of development and property values in the CBRS and on neighbouring lands up to 2 km from a CBRS boundary.
D. We also estimated the policy's effect on flood damages and property tax revenues.
E. The costs of weather disasters in the USA now exceed US$120 billion annually.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) delivered the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Belém framework for assessing the global goal on adaptation (GGA), which includes key elements, targets and mandates to guide national assessments and build adaptation-tracking capacities. Much of the emphasis has focused on developing globally relevant indicators, starkly overlooking the role of existing national policy processes for tracking adaptation progress. ...

    Options:
    A. National adaptation plans (NAPs) and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) outline national adapta tion commitments and can therefore provide the basis for tracking progress under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
B. However, it remains unclear if and how existing NAPs and NDCs can provide a basis for adaptation tracking and reporting under the GGA.
C. Such insights are necessary as governments are preparing their next NDCs and are working towards delivering on the GGA target of developing NAPs by 2030.
D. Despite variation among countries and documents, most African NAPs and NDCs provide only a fraction of the information fundamental for adaptation tracking.
E. Only eight NAPs and four NDCs covered infor mation on all key elements of the adaptation cycle: climate hazards, systems at risk, goals, objectives, actions and indicators.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Despite variation among countries and documents, most African NAPs and NDCs provide only a fraction of the information fundamental for adaptation tracking. Only eight NAPs and four NDCs covered infor mation on all key elements of the adaptation cycle: climate hazards, systems at risk, goals, objectives, actions and indicators. ...

    Options:
    A. Six NAPs and five NDCs presented fully consistent narratives, articulating linkages between risk assessments, adaptation planning, implementation and tracking.
B. Ten NAPs and five NDCs included adaptation indicators, yet no indicator set was fully robust.
C. This calls into question the utility of existing indicators in tracking adaptation progress.
D. NAPs provide a more adequate basis for tracking compared with NDCs, underscoring the importance of accelerating NAP development and implementation as a pathway towards improving tracking infrastructure.
E. Examining the coverage, consistency and robustness of these documents provides a benchmark for policy adequacy and reveals opportunities for advancing adaptation tracking.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    We reviewed 53 African NDCs and 15 NAPs available as of 30 September 2022 to determine their adequacy for providing a basis for national-level adaptation tracking. The dataset of more than 7,000 observations provides the most comprehensive overview available describing adaptation planning, implementation and tracking intentions across African countries. ...

    Options:
    A. We evaluated the documents against three criteria: (1) coverage, referring to the inclusion of information on four adaptation- cycle components, namely, climate risk and impact assessments, planning, implementation, and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL); (2) consistency, referring to the intentional linkages between adaptation-cycle components, to ensure meaningful insights on pro gress; and (3) robustness, describing the quality of indicator sets, as entry points for operational tracking.
B. Scores for each criterion were aggregated into an adequacy index, to allow comparisons across countries and document types (Fig. 1).
C. The 28th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP28) delivered the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Belém framework for assessing the global goal on adaptation (GGA), which includes key elements, targets and mandates to guide national assessments and build adaptation-tracking capacities.
D. Much of the emphasis has focused on developing globally relevant indicators, starkly overlooking the role of existing national policy processes for tracking adaptation progress.
E. Inadequate information in national adaptation policies limits the ability to track national adaptation progress in Africa.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A


Question:
You are given the start of a paragraph from a policy brief, ending in "...". Choose the most coherent continuation from the options below.

    Query:
    Many countries have declared net-zero targets as part of their commit ments under the Paris Agreement. In addition to emissions reductions, these national targets imply proposals to sustain or increase carbon dioxide removal (CDR). ...

    Options:
    A. Countries have communicated these propos als in their reporting to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), so far describing contributions from conventional CDR methods in the land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) sector, such as afforestation, as well as novel methods such as direct air carbon capture and storage.
B. Much attention has been given to overall mitigation targets.
C. However, so far, there has been a lack of evaluation and critical reflection on the specific role of CDR in these targets (Fig. 1).
D. In our study we found that compared with 2020, the most ambitious national proposals for CDR imply an additional 0.5 GtCO2 yr-1 of remov als by 2030, and 1.9 GtCO2 yr-1 by 2050.
E. Compared with CDR scaling in Paris Agreement-consistent scenarios, we found that these national CDR proposals tend to fall short by hundreds of megatonnes of car bon dioxide in 2030 to several gigatonnes of carbon dioxide in 2050, highlighting a 'CDR gap'.

Answer with the letter (A-E) corresponding to the best continuation. **Strictly follow this format—do not include any explanations or additional text.**

Answer: A