does environmental regulation affect energy efficiency in china s thermal power generation empirical evidence from a slacks based dea model abstract data envelopment analysis dea has gained much popularity in performance measurement of power industry this paper presents a slack based measure approach to investigating the relationship between fossil fuel consumption and the environmental regulation of china s thermal power generation we first calculate the total factor energy efficiency without considering environmental constraints an environmental performance indicator is proposed through decomposing the total factor energy efficiency the proposed approach is then employed to examine whether environmental regulation affects the energy efficiency of china s thermal power generation we find that the environmental efficiency plays a significant role in affecting energy performance of china s thermal generation sector decreasing the discharge of major pollutants can improve both energy performance and environmental efficiency besides we also have three main findings 1 the energy efficiency and environmental efficiency were relatively low 2 the energy and environmental efficiency scores show great variations among provinces 3 both energy efficiency and environmental efficiency are of obvious geographical characteristics according to our findings we suggest some policy implications

carbon weighted economic development performance and driving force analysis evidence from china based on a data envelopment analysis framework this study develops an indicator termed as carbon weighted economic development cwed covering the dimensions of energy environment economy and resources to measure the economic development performance in a carbon emission conscious economy as an empirical application the proposed approach is applied to a case study of 30 provinces in china in addition to identify the driving forces underlying low carbon economic development in china we analyze the endogenous interactions and dynamic behaviors between cwed foreign direct investment foreign trade industrial structure local fiscal expenditure and energy consumption structure using a panel vector auto regression model the main findings show that 1 adjusting industrial structure by vigorously developing the service industry and reducing the coal energy share in the primary energy consumption structure are the two most effective approaches to improve cwed in both the short run and long run in return cwed has positive feedback effects on both approaches in the long run 2 increase of the fiscal expenditure has a short term positive effect on cwed 3 fdi has an indirect negative effect on cwed in the long run and foreign trade has an indirect positive effect on cwed in the short term

hub and spoke free trade areas theory and evidence from israel we study how the sequential formation of free trade areas affects trade flows between member countries in a three country three good model of comparative advantage if two countries have an fta and both sign a similar agreement with the third trade between the two decreases however if only one of them signs an additional fta a hub and spoke pattern arises and trade between the initial members increases israel s experience lends strong support to our model trade between israel and the eu subject to an fta since 1975 increased by an additional 29 after the introduction of the us israel fta in 1985 on etudie comment la formation sequentielle de zones de libre echange affecte les flux commerciaux entre les pays membres dans un modele d avantage comparatif avec trois pays et trois biens si deux pays ont un accord de libre echange et qu ils signent tous deux un accord similaire avec un tiers pays le commerce entre les deux pays originaux decroit cependant si seulement un des deux pays originaux signe un accord avec le troisieme un reseau en etoile emerge et le commerce entre les deux payx d origine s accroit l experience d israel donne un fort support au modele le commerce entre israel et l union europeenne sujet a un accord de libre echange depuis 1975 s est accru de 29 apres l introduction de l accord de libre echange entre israel et les etats unis en 1985

energy based economic development abstract the fields of economic development and energy policy and planning have converged in recent years to form an emerging discipline which we term energy based economic development ebed despite the significant amount of stimulus funds as well as state and local funding that are being allocated to ebed initiatives in the united states the emerging discipline has received scant attention in the energy policy and development literature the link between energy and economic development in the literature is still theoretical mostly focused on the need for and the potential benefits of ebed and rarely applied furthermore funding for ebed has outpaced understanding of the discipline development of rigorous technical approaches and meaningful ways to measure impact such information would not only help practitioners and policymakers more thoroughly understand the confines of the discipline and shape goals and approaches accordingly but also help researchers identify track and evaluate a variety of activities in the field with national and international attention focused on the convergence of these fields researchers and practitioners have a rare opportunity to develop and implement the tools necessary to evaluate and communicate the potentially broader impacts that ebed may hold for society if ways to leverage and sustain the injection of funds in this discipline are not identified the opportunity may end before we can achieve either energy policy or economic development goals in an attempt to respond to this need this analysis explores the connection between energy and economic development beginning with a review of the trends in each field and the goals that each seeks to achieve on the basis of this information we define the discipline of ebed review the existing literature on it and offer insights and perspectives on its emergence

ecological total factor energy efficiency of regions in china most existing energy efficiency indices are computed without taking into account undesirable outputs such as co2 and so2 emissions this paper computes the ecological total factor energy efficiency etfee of 30 regions in china for the period 2005 2009 through the slack based model sbm with undesirable outputs we calculate the etfee index by comparing the target energy input obtained from sbm with undesirable outputs to the actual energy input findings show that china s regional etfee still remains a low level of around 0 600 and regional energy efficiency is overestimated by more than 0 100 when not looking at environmental impacts china s regional energy efficiency is extremely unbalanced the east area ranks first with the highest etfee of above 0 700 the northeast and central areas follow and the west area has the lowest etfee of less than 0 500 a monotone increasing relation exists between the area s etfee and china s per capita gdp the truncated regression model shows that the ratio of r d expenditure to gdp and the degree of foreign dependence have positive impacts whereas the ratio of the secondary industry to gdp and the ratio of government subsidies for industrial pollution treatment to gdp have negative effects on the etfee

regional energy efficiency carbon emission performance and technology gaps in china a meta frontier non radial directional distance function analysis abstract at present china is the largest primary energy consumer and carbon emitter in the world meantime china is a large transitional economy with significant regional gaps against such backgrounds the calculated results of energy and carbon performance indicators may be biased without considering heterogeneity across regions to this end after incorporating region heterogeneity this paper provides detailed information regarding energy efficiency carbon emission performance and the potential of carbon emission reductions from regional perspectives which may be important and useful for policy makers our main findings are as follows firstly there is significant group heterogeneity across regions in china in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance secondly there are no considerable differences between total factor and single factor performance indices since there is limited substitutability between energy inputs and other production inputs finally significant carbon emission reductions can be made by catching up for regions with low energy efficiency and carbon emission performance looking ahead the chinese government should adopt measures to promote improvements in terms of energy efficiency and carbon emission performance in the short term

power industry restructuring and eco efficiency changes a new slacks based model in malmquist luenberger index measurement measuring variations in efficiency and its extension eco efficiency during a restructuring period in different industries has always been a point of interest for regulators and policy makers this paper assesses the impacts of restructuring of procurement in the iranian power industry on the performance of power plants we introduce a new slacks based model for malmquist luenberger ml index measurement and apply it to the power plants to calculate the efficiency eco efficiency and technological changes over the 8 year period 2003 2010 of restructuring in the power industry the results reveal that although the restructuring had different effects on the individual power plants the overall growth in the eco efficiency of the sector was mainly due to advances in pure technology we also assess the correlation between efficiency and eco efficiency of the power plants which indicates a close relationship between these two steps thus lending support to the incorporation of environmental factors in efficiency analysis

modeling undesirable factors in efficiency evaluation abstract data envelopment analysis dea measures the relative efficiency of decision making units dmus with multiple performance factors which are grouped into outputs and inputs once the efficient frontier is determined inefficient dmus can improve their performance to reach the efficient frontier by either increasing their current output levels or decreasing their current input levels however both desirable good and undesirable bad factors may be present for example if inefficiency exists in production processes where final products are manufactured with a production of wastes and pollutants the outputs of wastes and pollutants are undesirable and should be reduced to improve the performance using the classification invariance property we show that the standard dea model can be used to improve the performance via increasing the desirable outputs and decreasing the undesirable outputs the method can also be applied to situations when some inputs need to be increased to improve the performance the linearity and convexity of dea are preserved through our proposal

china s ongoing energy efficiency drive origins progress and prospects abstract in 2004 china s government launched a vigorous programme to reverse the trend of rising national energy intensity and to reduce intensity by 20 over the period 2006 2010 the aim of this paper is to examine this programme in the context of nearly 30 years of measures to enhance energy efficiency in china and thus to evaluate the likelihood that today s policies will yield improvements over a longer period the country achieved a sustained decline of energy intensity in the period 1980 2001 but this trend was reversed in 2002 this reversal arose from a shift in the structure of the economy to more energy intensive industries and from a decline in the rate of technical innovation the measures taken since 2003 have been directed principally at energy intensive industries but have also addressed other sectors of the economy though the energy intensity target for the year 2010 may be achieved greater efforts will be needed to address a number of constraints which include the reluctance to use economic and financial instruments the dependency of energy policy on industrial and social policies the nature of political decision making and of public administration a shortage of skills and social attitudes to energy

energy consumption and economic growth a causality analysis for greece abstract this paper investigates the causal relationship between aggregated and disaggregated levels of energy consumption and economic growth for greece for the period 1960 2006 through the application of a later development in the methodology of time series proposed by toda and yamamoto 1995 at aggregated levels of energy consumption empirical findings suggest the presence of a uni directional causal relationship running from total energy consumption to real gdp at disaggregated levels empirical evidence suggests that there is a bi directional causal relationship between industrial and residential energy consumption to real gdp but this is not the case for the transport energy consumption with causal relationship being identified in neither direction the importance of these findings lies on their policy implications and their adoption on structural policies affecting energy consumption in greece suggesting that in order to address energy import dependence and environmental concerns without hindering economic growth emphasis should be put on the demand side and energy efficiency improvements

multilateral productivity comparisons when some outputs are undesirable a nonparametric approach multilateral productivity comparisons of firms producing multiple outputs some of which are undesirable are obtained by making two modifications to the standard farrell approach to efficiency measurement the restriction that production technology satisfy strong disposability of outputs is relaxed to allow for the fact that undesirable outputs may be freely disposable and the efficiency measures are modified to allow for an asymmetric treatment of desirable and undesirable outputs performance measures that satisfy these requirements are calculated as solutions to programming problems the methodology is applied to a sample of mills producing paper and pollutants

co2 emissions reduction of chinese light manufacturing industries a novel ram based global malmquist luenberger productivity index climate change has become one of the most challenging issues facing the world chinese government has realized the importance of energy conservation and prevention of the climate changes for sustainable development of china s economy and set targets for co2 emissions reduction in china in china industry contributes 84 2 of the total co2 emissions especially manufacturing industries data envelopment analysis dea and malmquist productivity mp index are the widely used mathematical techniques to address the relative efficiency and productivity of a group of homogenous decision making units e g industries or countries however in many real applications especially those related to energy efficiency there are often undesirable outputs e g the pollutions waste and co2 emissions which are produced inevitably with desirable outputs in the production this paper introduces a novel malmquist luenberger productivity mlp index based on directional distance function ddf to address the issue of productivity evolution of dmus in the presence of undesirable outputs the new ram range adjusted measure based global mlp index has been applied to evaluate co2 emissions reduction in chinese light manufacturing industries recommendations for policy makers have been discussed

total factor energy efficiency of regions in china abstract this paper analyzes energy efficiencies of 29 administrative regions in china for the period 1995 2002 with a newly introduced index most existing studies of regional productivity and efficiency neglect energy inputs we use the data envelopment analysis dea to find the target energy input of each region in china at each particular year the index of total factor energy efficiency tfee then divides the target energy input by the actual energy input in our dea model labor capital stock energy consumption and total sown area of farm crops used as a proxy of biomass energy are the four inputs and real gdp is the single output the conventional energy productivity ratio regarded as a partial factor energy efficiency index is computed for comparison in contrast to tfee our index is found fitting better to the real case according to the tfee index rankings the central area of china has the worst energy efficiency and its total adjustmentof energy consumption amount is over half of china s total regional tfee in china generally improved during the research period except for the western area a u shape relation between the area s tfee and per capita income in the areas of china is found confirming the scenario that energy efficiency eventually improves with economic growth

energy consumption and economic growth new evidence from meta analysis abstract the causal relationships between energy consumption and economic growth have given rise to much discussion but remain controversial alternative data sets based on different time spans countries energy policies and econometric approaches result in diverse outcomes a meta analysis using a multinomial logit model with 174 samples governing the relationships between gdp and energy consumption is applied here to investigate the major factors that affect these controversial outcomes the empirical results have demonstrated how the time spans subject selections including gdp and energy consumption econometric models and tools for greenhouse gases emission reduction characteristics significantly affect these controversial outcomes

measuring sustainable development some empirical evidence for france from eight alternative indicators abstract this paper presents results from a time series analysis of eight measures of development and or sustainability for france the measures chosen are green national net product genuine savings ecological footprint indicator of sustainable economic welfare genuine progress indicator pollution sensitive human development indicator sustainable human development indicator and french dashboard on sustainable development a theoretical description of each index highlights their advantages and drawbacks underlining the fact that no indicator is perfect and no one can give an exhaustive view of sustainable development therefore the analysis of various indicators is necessary to evaluate sustainable development with accuracy empirical results of measures of well being show that french development was improving between 1990 and 2000 concerning sustainability indicators support different conclusions it seems that french development was weakly sustainable but unsustainable in the strong sense over the period examined

economic growth trade and energy implications for the environmental kuznets curve abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis asserts that pollution follows an inverted u path with respect to economic growth the ekc has been explained in terms of structural changes in the composition of economic output and increased environmental regulation at higher income levels while some authors have incorporated the impact of trade policy orientation on the ekc the impact of the actual movement between countries of goods that embody pollution has not been considered this paper attempts to econometrically quantify the effect using pooled cross country and time series data the ekc hypothesis is examined with respect to commercial energy consumption the source of many serious environmental problems it was found that while both industrializing and industrialized countries have added to their energy requirements by exporting manufactured goods the growth has been substantially higher in the former at the same time industrialized countries have been able to reduce their energy requirements by importing manufactured goods exports of manufactured goods by industrialized countries has thus been an important factor in generating the upward sloping portion of the ekc and imports by industrialized countries have contributed to the downward slope

non parametric efficiency progress and regress measures for panel data methodological aspects this purely methodological paper deals with the role of time in non parametric efficiency analysis using both fdh and dea technologies it first shows how each observation in a panel can be characterized in efficiency terms vis a vis three different kinds of frontiers i contemporaneous ii sequential and iii intertemporal these are then compared with window analysis next frontier shifts outward and inward interpreted as progress or regress are considered for the two kinds of technologies and computational methods are described in detail for evaluating such shifts in either case these are also contrasted with what is measured by the malmquist productivity index finally an alternative way of identifying progress and regress independent of the frontier notion and referring instead to some benchmark notion is extended here to panel data

pathways to a low carbon economy for the uk with the macro econometric e3mg model this paper examines different carbon pathways for achieving deep co2 reduction targets for the uk using a macro econometric hybrid model e3mg which stands for energy economy environment model at the global level the e3mg with the uk as one of its regions combines a top down approach for modeling the global economy and for estimating the aggregate and disaggregate energy demand and a bottom up approach energy technology submodel etm for simulating the power sector which then provides feedback to the energy demand equations and the whole economy the etm submodel uses a probabilistic approach and historical data for estimating the penetration levels of the different technologies considering their economic technical and environmental characteristics three pathway scenarios cfh clc and cam simulate the co2 reduction by 40 60 and 80 by 2050 compared to 1990 levels respectively and are compared with a reference scenario ref with no reduction target the targets are modeled as the uk contribution to an international mitigation effort such as achieving the g8 reduction targets which is a more realistic political framework for the uk to move towards deep reductions rather than moving alone this paper aims to provide modeling evidence that deep reduction targets can be met through different carbon pathways while also assessing the macroeconomic effects of the pathways on gdp and investment

an evaluation of energy environment economic efficiency for eu apec and asean countries design of a target oriented dfm model with fixed factors in data envelopment analysis abstract this paper aims to offer an advanced assessment methodology for sustainable national energy environment economic efficiency strategies based on an extended data envelopment analysis dea the use of novel efficiency improving approaches based on dea originates from the so called distance friction minimisation dfm method to design a feasible improvement strategy for low efficiency dmus we develop here a target oriented to dfm model however in many real world cases input factors may not be flexibly adjusted in the short run in this study we integrate the to dfm model with a fixed inflexible factor ff approach to cope with such more realistic circumstances super efficiency dea is next used in our comparative study on the efficiency assessment of energy environment economic targets for the eu apec and asean a a countries employing appropriate data sets from the years 2003 to 2012 we consider two inputs primary energy consumption and population and two outputs co 2 and gdp including a fixed input factor viz population on the basis of our dea analysis results eu countries appear to exhibit generally a higher efficiency than a a countries the above mentioned to dfm ff projection model is able to address realistic circumstances and requirements in an operational sustainability strategy for efficiency improvement in inefficient countries in the a a region

do fomc members herd abstract we show that growth and unemployment forecasts submitted by individual fomc members do not exhibit herding behavior while the inflation forecasts show strong evidence of anti herding interestingly anti herding is more important for non voting members than for voters

analysis on china s eco innovations regulation context intertemporal change and regional differences abstract eco innovation is recognized as a determinant of success or failure of environmental protection efforts in the long run this paper attempts to examine china s eco innovation gains in response to the energy saving and emissions reduction eser policy enforced during 2006 2010 we first construct an integrated analysis framework to evaluate the changes of energy and environmental performance used as the proxy of eco innovation and then the intertemporal change of china s eco innovation gains as well as the regional differences is investigated the results indicate that china had accelerated its process of eco innovations during 2006 2010 when a series of eser policies were enforced the developments and wide adoptions of advanced energy saving and environmentally friendly technologies serve as the primary driving forces while upgrading management skills and organizational designs contribute relatively little furthermore the realizing paths of cross region eco innovations in china are obviously discrepant

multi criteria model for sustainable development using goal programming applied to the united arab emirates abstract sustainable development requires implementing suitable policies integrating several competing objectives on economic environmental energy and social criteria multi criteria decision analysis mcda using goal programming is a popular and widely used technique to study decision problems in the face of multiple conflicting objectives mcda assists policy makers by providing clarity in choosing between alternatives for strategic planning and investments in this paper we propose a weighted goal programming model that integrates efficient allocation of resources to simultaneously achieve sustainability related goals on gdp growth electricity consumption and ghg emissions we validate the model with application to key economic sectors of the united arab emirates to achieve sustainable development goals by the year 2030 the model solution provides a quantitative justification and a basis for comparison in planning future energy requirements and an indispensable requirement to include renewable sources to satisfy long term energy requirements

industrial energy efficiency with co2 emissions in china a nonparametric analysis abstract global awareness on energy security and climate change has created much interest in assessing economy wide energy efficiency performance a number of previous studies have contributed to evaluate energy efficiency performance using different analytical techniques among which data envelopment analysis dea has recently received increasing attention most of dea related energy efficiency studies do not consider undesirable outputs such as co 2 emissions in their modeling framework which may lead to biased energy efficiency values within a joint production framework of desirable and undesirable outputs in this paper we construct both static and dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes for measuring industrial energy efficiency performance by using several environmental dea models with co 2 emissions the dynamic energy efficiency performance indexes have further been decomposed into two contributing components we finally apply the indexes proposed to assess the industrial energy efficiency performance of different provinces in china over time our empirical study shows that the energy efficiency improvement in china s industrial sector was mainly driven by technological improvement

study on china s low carbon development in an economy energy electricity environment framework abstract emissions mitigation is a major challenge for china s sustainable development we summarize china s successful experiences on energy efficiency in past 30 years as the contributions of energy usage management and integrated resource strategic planning which are essential for low carbon economy in an economy energy electricity environment e4 framework the paper studies the low carbon development of china and gives an outlook of china s economy growth energy electricity demand renewable power generation and energy conservation and emissions mitigation until 2030 a business as usual scenario is projected as baseline for comparison while low carbon energy and electricity development path is studied it is defined as low carbon energy electricity when an economy body manages to realize its potential economic growth fueled by less energy electricity consumption which can be characterized by indexes of energy electricity intensity and emissions per unit of energy consumption electricity generation results show that with eum china could save energy by 4 38 billion ton oil equivalences toes and reduce co2 emission by 16 55 billion tons with irsp china could save energy by 1 5 btoes and reduce co2 emission by 5 7 btons during 2010 2030 to realize the massive potential china has to reshape its economic structure and rely much on technology innovation in the future

a comprehensive analysis of china s regional energy saving and emission reduction efficiency from production and treatment perspectives abstract energy and environmental issues have recently aroused increasing interest in china and many approaches are used to evaluate energy and environmental performance in this paper a two stage network dea framework is applied to evaluate the efficiency of energy saving and emission reduction in china during the period of the eleventh five year plan from 2006 to 2010 in this study economic activities are divided into production and treatment processes this is different from previous research which generally focused on either environmental efficiency or energy efficiency omitting the integration of energy and environmental measures today energy saving and emission reduction are both parts of the basic state policy of china and are equally important the empirical results in this study show that i eastern china has the best energy saving and emission reduction efficiency performing is better than western and central china ii the efficiency of the production process in central china is better than that in western china while the western area performs better than the central area in term of treatment efficiency iii integrated efficiency of energy saving and emission reduction of china was relatively stable in the five years and the pollution treatment efficiency maintained a rising trend

energy use and output growth in canada a multivariate cointegration analysis using a neo classical one sector aggregate production technology where capital labor and energy are treated as separate inputs this paper develops a vector error correction vec model to test for the existence and direction of causality between output growth and energy use in canada using the johansen cointegration technique the empirical findings indicate that the long run movements of output labor capital and energy use in canada are related by two cointegrating vectors then using a vec specification the short run dynamics of the variables indicate that granger causality is running in both directions between output growth and energy use hence an important policy implication of the analysis is that energy can be considered as a limiting factor to output growth in canada

dynamic analysis of an endogenous growth model with public capital this paper develops an endogenous growth model with productive public capital along with private capital in a spirit similar to that of r j barro 1990 since the authors model includes two stock variables it has transitional dynamics unlike most of the previous studies on endogenous growth including barro s where concerns are restricted to the steady state analysis first they show that the transitional path is unique and stable second the character of the transitional path is explored third the authors show that the optimal tax rate is smaller than the rate that maximizes the national growth rate with a log linear utility function copyright 1993 by the editors of the scandinavian journal of economics