energy efficiency in the transport sector in the eu 27 a dynamic dematerialization analysis abstract energy use in the european union s eu transport sector amounted to 340 mtoe 1 in 1999 with the following increasing trend up to 379 mtoe in 2007 and a decrease from 2008 on down to 365 mtoe in 2010 this changing pattern posed several fundamental questions and uncertainties regarding the broader picture of energy efficiency and environmental protection one of them refers to absolute changes in energy use efficiency in the transport sector over time and the ways of measuring efficiency traditional scientific approaches conceptualized to measure efficiency of energy use do not address annual dynamics of changes in the energy use in a given sector per capita thus they are not precise enough for political and methodological purposes as they do not reflect the exact amount of energy consumed in the respective countries and societies this paper shows a possible solution to this problem and a new perspective on measuring energy efficiency by using the product generational dematerialization pgd indicator the pgd indicator allows for measuring energy efficiency as a dynamic change of consumption and population occurring simultaneously thus it provides an extension to the traditional methodology commonly used for measuring efficiency to visualize a practical application of this approach the paper provides an example of evaluating energy efficiency in the transport sector in the eu 27 in 2000 2010 the results of the analysis show a clear materialization tendency in the transport sector the energy consumption change exceeded the population growth until 2007 and a reverse tendency dematerialization between 2008 and 2010 as energy consumption has a direct impact on environmental quality and exhaustion of natural resources the paper points out the necessity of extending sustainable resource management policies by new methodologies and providing more efficient solutions for energy consumption in the transport sector

the econometrics of the environmental kuznets curve an illustration using australian co2 emissions four econometric issues associated with the estimation and testing of the environmental kuznets curve ekc are considered i model specification with respect to the order of the polynomial ii

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the impacts of changes in output industry structure and energy intensity this paper examines trends in manufacturing energy use in eight oecd countries decomposing the changes that occured between 1973 and 1987 into the effects of changes in aggregate manufacturing activity industry structure and energy intensities measured at the industry group level while manufacturing production grew in every country except the uk the rate of growth was variable from nation to nation structural change led to modest reductions in energy use in most countries although in norway structural change led to substantial growth in energy use the reduction in energy intensities was strikingly uniform across all nations ranging from 20 norway to 36 japan over the period of the analysis while other studies have used divisia decomposition techniques we use an alternative method based on laspeyres indices a comparison of the two techniques shows that they yield closely similar empirical results although the laspeyres approach is more easily interpreted while the interactions between changes in structure and intensity are arbitrarily assigned to the two factors by the divisia approach the lapeyres method yields interaction terms that explicitly account for such effects

natural gas consumption and economic growth nexus panel data analysis for gcc countries abstract this study investigates the relationship between natural gas energy consumption and economic growth by including trade openness total labor force and gross fixed capital formation as a major determinants of gdp growth within the multivariate framework model in gulf cooperation council gcc countries a panel gdp model is constructed taking the period of 1980 2012 the result revealed that natural gas energy consumption is cointegrated with gdp growth in the investigated countries in addition based on the panel dynamic ordinary least square dols and the fully modified ordinary least square fmols this study concluded that the natural gas energy consumption affects the gcc s countries gdp growth positively in the long run furthermore the results from the granger causality test revealed bidirectional causality between natural gas energy consumption and gdp growth which confirms the feedback hypothesis from the outcome of this research a number of policy implications were provided for the gcc countries

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

the impact of energy consumption and economic development on ecological footprint and co2 emissions evidence from a markov switching equilibrium correction model abstract reducing the impact of air pollution and global environmental degradation on human health and quality of life for qatari citizens represents the most important objective of the qatar national vision 2030 with respect to this vision this study investigates the effects of economic growth energy consumption trade openness urbanization and financial development on environmental degradation by using the markov switching equilibrium correction model with shifts in both the intercept and income per capita slope for the period 1970 2015 unlike existing studies and in addition to the co 2 emissions pollutant this paper uses the total ecological footprint and ecological carbon footprint as new proxies of environmental degradation empirical results show strong evidence for cointegration with markov shifts in particular our results show that the non control for breaks can hide the true relationship among variables the results show also that when controlling for breaks the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis holds for the co 2 emissions and ecological carbon footprint pollutants and the u shaped behavior holds for the total ecological footprint moreover the results show that these two behaviors ekc and u shaped are regime dependent regarding the other explanatory variables the results show that trade openness and urbanization worsen ecological footprint however the electricity consumption and financial development are positively related to the ecological footprint and negatively related to ecological carbon footprint and co 2 emissions finally we found evidence for the growth hypothesis for both pollutants based on these results a detailed economic energy and environmental policy is proposed and discussed for the case of qatar

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

international comparison of resource use and its relation to economic growth the development of total material requirement direct material inputs and hidden flows and the structure of tmr abstract resource flows constitute the materials basis of the economy at the same time they carry and induce an environmental burden associated with resource extraction and the subsequent material flows and stocks which finally end up as waste and emissions a reduction of this material throughput and the related impacts would require a reduction of resource inputs and breaking the link between resource consumption and economic growth would require an increase in resource productivity material flow analysis mfa can be used to quantify resource flows and indicate resource productivity in this article we study the available empirical evidence on the actual de linkage of material resource use and economic growth we compare resource use with respect to total material requirement tmr and direct material input dmi for 11 and 26 countries respectively and the european union eu 15 the dynamics of tmr as well as of the main components are analysed in relation to economic growth in order to show whether there is a decoupling relative or absolute from gdp and a change of the metabolic structure in the course of economic development dmi cap so far only decoupled from gdp cap in relative terms that is in most countries it reached a rather constant level but with the exception of czech republic showed no absolute decline yet tmr cap was reduced in two high income countries and one low income country due to political influence changes in tmr were more influenced by hidden flows hf than by dmi we analyse the dynamics of the structure and composition of tmr in the course of economic development in general the economic development of industrial countries was accompanied by a shift from domestic to foreign resource extraction different relations can be discovered for the share of biomass fossil fuel resources construction resources and metals and industrial minerals

trade openness and the changing water polluting intensity patterns of dirty and clean industrial sectors abstract this study analyzes the economic activity bod biochemical oxygen demand relationships of the so called dirty and clean water polluting industries during the period of 1995 2005 the results indicate that the economic activity environment trade off of dirty and clean industrial sectors has been altered during the period of study on average pollution intensive dirty industries in the poorer nations were found to benefit in terms of bod emissions from extra exports and openness to trade the opposite was true for clean sectors where increased trade openness seems to have contributed to a wider gap between poorer and richer nations pollution intensities with openness to trade skewing innovations away from the clean industries industrial sectors in which the poorer countries specialize the classical model of opening the economy and lifting barriers to technology adoption will not be enough to improve the poorer nations water quality policies that induce innovation by reducing the cost and increasing the return on innovation particularly on r d activities in which the poorer countries have a comparative advantage will be necessary in order to improve their economic activity environment relationship

looking backward to look forward water use and economic growth from a long term perspective recent research has examined the relationship between natural resources and economic growth considered vitally important not only for humanity s well being but also for the integrity of the ecosystem the relationship between water use and economic growth has nevertheless traditionally attracted little attention by analysts this article studies water use trends from 1900 to 2000 throughout the world and their relationship to the main determinants of economic growth to do this we first analyse water use trajectories second to proceed with the determinants of water use we reformulate the ehrlich and holdren s impact population affluence technology ipat equation 1971 decomposing water use trends into changes in economic demands and in water use intensity on the basis of a decomposition analysis finally a simple scenario analysis is conducted to project future water use trends under different economic demographic and technological assumptions the empirical evidence shows that economic and

the world trade network and the environment this papers analyses the role of the world trade network on the environment we rely on methods developed for social network analysis to identify the most important countries in connecting trade between all the other countries in the world trade network we then estimate how the network or indirect effects from trade affect the environmental quality of a country as the trade networks are endogenously determined by trade and environmental conditions we use as instrumental variables the growth in the population of trade partners and the growth in the population of trade partners partners to exploit exogenous variation in the world trade network once we simultaneously estimate the environmental trade income and network equations using a three stage least square procedure we find that network effects harm the environmental quality of developed countries but improve the environment of developing countries

transboundary effects of environmental policy markets and emission leakages abstract one of many explanations for environmental kuznets curves for rich countries can be that dirty production is relocated to economies with laxer abatement regimes if this is caused by national abatement policies environmental stresses are transferred to other countries further the economic costs of national abatement policies can be shared with foreigners to some extent both through a lower demand for imports and losses of market shares for foreign competitors that produce cleaner products we quantify effects internally and abroad of a growth induced unilateral carbon tax policy in a rich open economy we find that the environmental benefits fall and the economic costs rise when a global rather than a national perspective is employed

what is the role of openness for china s aggregate industrial so2 emission a structural analysis based on the divisia decomposition method abstract having observed the weaknesses in previous structural analyses on the role of environmental kuznets curve ekc the author proposes a detailed analysis using a rich data set of provincial level production and so2 emission intensity of 13 industrial sectors the latter represent more than 98 of the total industrial production in each chinese province for the period 1991 2001 through the use of the log mean divisia index decomposition method the variations in province level industrial so2 emissions with regard to the 1990 baseline level are decomposed into the contribution from three components scale composition and technical effects the following analysis seeks to explain how trade openness affects aggregate industrial so2 emission through its impact on the structural determinants for these three components of region specific environmental variations

trade the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve examining the linkages abstract this paper examines the extent to which the ekc inverted u relationship can be explained by trade and specifically the migration or displacement of dirty industries from the developed regions to the developing regions the pollution haven hypothesis phh using detailed data on north south trade flows for pollution intensive products the evidence for the phh is assessed emissions of 10 air and water pollutants are then estimated controlling for trade openness structural change and dirty north south trade flows evidence of pollution haven effects is found although such effects do not appear to be widespread and appear to be relatively small compared to the roles played other explanatory variables

ecological modernisation new perspectives abstract ecological modernisation understood as systematic eco innovation and its diffusion has by far the largest potential to achieve environmental improvements in general the market logic of modernisation and competition for innovation combined with the market potential of global environmental needs serve as important driving forces behind ecological modernisation in recent times however additional factors like rising energy prices or fears from climate change have favoured the rise of this innovation based approach to environmental policy the article deals with two special driving forces first there is growing evidence for the importance of smart environmental regulation secondly the increasingly complex actor constellation of global environmental governance leads to mounting business risks for polluters and thereby exerts pressure for eco innovation despite these favourable framework conditions the strategy of ecological modernisation nonetheless faces a number of inherent limitations these include the unavailability of marketable technological solutions for relevant environmental problems like the loss of species the rebound effect neutralising the incremental environmental improvements through economic growth the dilemma of the n curve as well as resistance by modernisation losers against this background structural solutions seem indispensable here eco innovations should be supported by transition management or ecological structural policy

estimating country specific environmental kuznets curves from panel data a bayesian shrinkage approach designing an efficient global climate policy turns out to be a difficult yet crucial task since there are noteworthy cross country differences in energy and carbon intensities in this article the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis is tested for carbon dioxide co2 emissions and as a modelling technique the iterative bayesian shrinkage procedure is employed to handle the cross country differences the results suggest that first the ekc hypothesis is rejected for 47 out of the 51 countries considered when the heterogeneity in countries energy efficiencies and cross country differences in the co2 emissions trajectories are accounted for second a classification of the results with respect to the development levels of the countries concerned reveals that the emergence of an overall inverted u shaped curve is due to the fact that in high income countries increase in gross domestic product gdp decreases emissions while in low income countries emissions and gdp are positively correlated

dirty industries patterns of change in industrial countries this article concerns itself with the environmental role of heavily polluting industries since 1970 analysing its development in 11 basic industries as well as electricity production and road transport in 32 industrial countries it argues for a green industrial policy demonstrating that other mitigations of environmental pressure in industrial countries end of pipe treatment relocation to the third world structural change in the industrial sector and even environmentally oriented modernization have so far been unable to solve the problems of dirty industries although some approaches have shown some promise

global warming agreements international trade and energy carbon embodiments an input output approach to the italian case abstract in the kyoto protocol the absence of green house gases ghgs commitments of developing countries non annex i and the more flexible terms of implementation which are allowed to countries shifting toward a market economy transition economies naturally lead to the absence or to less constraining national measures and policies of reduction of the ghgs emissions which in turn may determine a comparative advantage in the production of the highest energy carbon intensive commodities for these countries these arguments are valid also considering the future implementation of the european emission allowance trading scheme eats thus developing countries may become a haven for the production of not environmental friendly commodities in this case the so called pollution haven hypothesis stating that due to freer international trade the comparative advantage may change the economic structure and consequently the trade patterns of the countries linked by trade relationships could occur this would lead to the increase of the transfers of energy and carbon embodied in traded commodities from developing countries and transition economies toward kyoto or eats constrained countries the aim of this paper is to verify if for italy as a kyoto and eats complying country evidence of a change in the trade patterns occurred on the basis of the pollution haven hypothesis does exist and to estimate the magnitude of the under estimation of the carbon actually emitted the carbon leakage the input output model has been used to calculate the intensities of energy consumption and the related green house gases emission for each italian economic sector

is india specialising in polluting industries evidence from us india bilateral trade recently the apex environmental agency of india observed that domestic industrial pollution has been increasing at an alarming rate over the last two decades and the need to rein in traditional polluting industries this raises the pertinent question of whether the poor domestic pollution regime has affected the pattern of india s trade in dirty manufactured products in the post liberalisation era since 1991 we find that on the whole india has remained a net importer of pollution intensive manufactured goods however there is a distinct trend of increasing specialisation in specific dirty industries especially in the bilateral trade with high income countries and to a lesser degree with low income countries the usa being india s single largest country trading partner in the post liberalisation era we test for pollution offshoring at the finer industry level in us india bilateral trade while we find that the pollution haven effect is not significant india s specialisation in certain dirty manufacturing industries through the last decade remains a disturbing trend india needs to integrate environmental sustainability within industrial growth urgently and it is pertinent to implement policies which would reflect the true pollution costs in an industry that is increasingly competing in the international market

environmental regulation and mnes location does csr matter abstract we investigate whether firms with relatively low environmental standards are more often located in countries that are poor corrupt or have weak environmental regulations we find new empirical evidence in favor of the pollution haven hypothesis which states that mnes are transferring their dirty operations to countries with weak environmental regulation our findings suggest that these are not necessarily the poorest or most corrupt countries we establish that mnes with strong social responsibility avoid locating their operations in countries with weak environmental regulation

a further inquiry into the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve abstract empirical research on the relationship between economic growth and its impact on the environment often tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc a hypothesis that rising national output leads to increases in pollution emissions until an economy reaches a certain size and decreases thereafter this paper addresses a branch of ekc literature focused on the role international trade plays in shaping this relationship in particular we test the pollution haven hypothesis which posits that emission reductions observed in developed nations are partly the result of shifting dirty production to developing nations with lax environmental standards we estimate ekcs for seven oft studied pollutants and find little evidence that pollution havens play a significant role in shaping the ekc we also find that confidence intervals around ekc turning points are very wide often including values well above the range of the data this leads us to be skeptical of the optimistic view that economic growth naturally leads to improvements in environmental quality

air pollution and dirty industries how and why does the composition of manufacturing output change with economic development this paper examines the impact on air pollution ofchanges in the composition of manufacturing output indeveloped and developing countries pollutionemissions from manufacturing output are estimated ina manner which holds constant the effect of technologyand regulations allowing the impact of compositional changes alone on pollution to beestimated the paper has three main findings 1 theinverted u estimated between per capita income and thepollution intensity of gdp arises due to both thecomposition of manufacturing becoming cleaner and theshare of manufacturing output in gdp falling compositional changes alone are not responsible forthe inverted u between per capita income and percapita emissions 2 changes to the composition ofmanufacturing output are consistent with the pollutionhaven hypothesis however there is clear evidence thatrising per capita incomes are associated with afalling income elasticity of demand for dirty products this fact may explain the compositionalchanges that occur with development 3 in additionto the income elasticity effect the analysis suggeststhat land prices and to a lesser extent the prices oflabour and capital determine the proportion of dirtyindustry within a country s manufacturing sector

impact of inter sectoral trade on national and global co2 emissions an empirical analysis of china and us abstract this paper attempts to discuss the co2 emissions embodied in sino us international trade using a sector approach based on an input output model established in this study we quantify the impact of sino us international trade on national and global co2 emissions our initial findings reveal that in 2005 the us reduced 190 13 mt co2 emissions through the consumption of imported goods from china while increasing global co2 emissions by about 515 25 mt similarly china reduced 178 62 mt co2 emissions through the consumption of us goods while reducing global co2 emissions by 129 93 mt sino us international trade increased global co2 emissions by 385 32 mt as a whole of which the chemical fabricated metal products non metallic mineral products and transportation equipment sectors contributed an 86 71 share therefore we suggest that accelerating the adjustment of china s trade structure and export of us advanced technologies and experience related to clean production and energy efficiency to china as the way to reduce the negative impact of sino us trade on national and global co2 emissions this behavior should take into account the processing and manufacturing industries as a priority especially the chemical fabricated metal products non metallic mineral products and transportation equipment sectors

are asean countries havens for japanese pollution intensive industry in an era of closer worldwide economic integration the role that environmental regulations play in shaping a country s comparative advantage is greater than ever this has led to fears that dirty firms will relocate from developed to developing countries where environmental regulations may be less stringent the so called pollution haven hypothesis to date however there is little support for the existence of pollution havens despite anecdotal evidence and the theoretical predictions in this paper we employ a unique industry level dataset for japan and examine whether japanese industries have relocated production to their asean neighbours in response to the relative stringency of japanese environmental regulations not only do we find no evidence for pollution haven consistent behaviour but also some indication that the complex relationship between the characteristics of japanese dirty industries and environmental regulations may actually have reduced japanese outward fdi to the philippines

us environmental load displacement examining consumption regulations and the role of nafta abstract in light of concerns that structural changes to us production may not be accompanied by similar changes to us consumption this paper provides a detailed examination of us environmental load displacement over the period 1974 2001 the forces that drive such displacement are also examined with particular attention paid to the scale and composition of us consumption the share of imports in consumption the role of environmental regulations and the potential impact of nafta it is found that the usa as a whole has experienced environmental load displacement over the period under consideration with the extent of this displacement seeming to increase over the last decade it would appear to be the increasing scale of us trade that is increasing environmental load displacement indeed the composition of us imports and exports have become significantly cleaner over the period considered however although imports from mexico have grown more rapidly than exports to mexico no evidence is found to suggest that nafta is increasing displacement to mexico with regard to us domestic consumption patterns although they have become cleaner a greater share than ever is now met via imports sectoral pollution abatement costs are found to be a determinant of this increasing share of imports in domestic consumption

economic growth and the diffusion of clean technologies explaining environmental kuznets curves the paper provides a theoretical explanation for the inverted u shaped relation between pollution and income often found in empirical research environmental kuznets curve we model the transition in the pollution pattern as a change in general purpose technologies and investigate how it interferes with economic growth driven by quality improvements we provide an analytical foundation for the claim that the rise and decline of pollution can be explained by endogenous innovations policy induced technology shifts and intrasectoral changes once environmental degradation becomes too severe regulation is introduced by which society forces the economy to make a transition to cleaner production

the effects of public policy on strike duration hazard function estimates are utilized to analyze the effect of numerous public policy variables on strike duration based on 7 546 strikes in canada between 1967 and 1985 we find that only the mandatory strike vote substantially reduced conditional duration however the policy variables generally had a more favorable effect on reducing strike incidence so that on net they tended to reduce unconditional duration incidence times conditional duration specifically reduced unconditional duration was associated with the existence of conciliation and the requirement of a mandatory strike vote but the prohibition on replacement workers had a perverse effect