the relationship between energy consumption structure economic structure and energy intensity in china this paper investigates the long run equilibrium relationships temporal dynamic relationships and causal relationships between energy consumption structure economic structure and energy intensity in china time series variables over the periods from 1980 to 2006 are employed in empirical tests cointegration tests suggest that these three variables tend to move together in the long run in addition granger causality tests indicate that there is a unidirectional causality running from energy intensity to economic structure but not vice versa impulse response analysis provides reasonable evidences that one shock of the three variables will cause the periods of destabilized that followed however the impact of the energy consumption structure shock on energy intensity and the impact of the economic structure shock on energy consumption structure seem to be rather marginal the findings have significant implications from the point of view of energy conservation and economic development in order to decrease energy intensity chinese government must continue to reduce the proportion of coal in energy consumption increase the utilization efficiency of coal and promote the upgrade of economic structure furthermore a full analysis of factors that may relate to energy intensity e g energy consumption structure economic structure should be conducted before making energy policies

financial factors and investment in belgium france germany and the united kingdom a comparison using company panel data we construct company panel data sets for manufacturing firms in belgium france germany and the united kingdom covering the period 1978 1989 these data sets are used to estimate empirical investment equations and to investigate the role played by financial factors in each country a robust finding is that cash flow and profits terms appear to be both statistically and quantitatively more significant in the united kingdom than in the three continental european countries this is consistent with the suggestion that financial constraints on investment may be relatively severe in the more market oriented u k financial system

international evidence on investment and fundamentals abstract if a firm s costs of installing capital are not quadratic then its optimal investment is not a linear function of fundamentals such as the returns and costs of capital this study specifies a model in which a firm may face fixed linear and convex costs of investing and estimates the resulting investment function using firm level data from 11 countries the evidence suggests important nonlinearities consistent with the presence of fixed or other non quadratic costs in the relationship between investment and fundamentals for most countries these findings are statistically signficant at the level of the firm and economically significant when aggregated by country

technological change and the rebound effect in the stirpat model a critical view abstract technological change is key to understand the explanatory variables behind environmental impacts in the context of the stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model an adequate representation and analysis of the significance of the technology variable t in the stirpat model becomes crucial even more if one aims to better understand underlying processes such as the environmental rebound effect e re a critical review of the application of the stirpat model has been conducted to understand the diversity and value of the variables scopes assumptions statistical approaches and the environmental impacts commonly studied the findings highlight that despite the multiple applications and the high potential of the stirpat model inconclusive results and or knowledge gaps remain notably 1 a geographical imbalance in the scope of studies 2 the almost exclusive focus on carbon emissions 3 a lack of agreement on the choice of data additional explanatory variables and regression models 4 a lack of consensus on how to approximate t and 5 a lack of explicit analyses of the e re our findings are useful to both policymakers and academics for method design further research and policy evaluation

fixed capital adjustment is latin america different we examine capital adjustment patterns using two large and largely novel plant level data sets from the manufacturing sectors of colombia and mexico the data suggest that irreversibilities play a more important role than in more advanced economies however we do not find support for the presence of increasing returns in the adjustment cost technology such as arising from fixed costs firms go through periods of inaction and rarely sell capital but they do not invest at discrete times only an examination of the dynamic patterns of adjustment of factors differing in their flexibility supports this interpretation

account for sector heterogeneity in china s energy consumption sector price indices vs gdp deflator abstract a common practice in decomposition analyses is to deflate output indicators to purge the impact of inflation by using a general deflator this practice fails to account for sector heterogeneity and can be hazardous although the general identified patterns are largely correct the calculated magnitudes can be misleading or even wrongly signed instead it is strongly recommended that sector heterogeneity is accounted for by using individual sector price indices for all relevant sectors instead of one general gdp deflator this paper analyzes this advanced decomposition using chinese data and compares to the usual method of using only one deflator it is found that while most differences are only of quantitative quality some show even a qualitative difference furthermore the rising energy intensity in the early 2000s which has been discussed by previous studies vanishes completely

financing constraints irreversibility and investment dynamics abstract we develop a model of an industry with many heterogeneous firms that face both financing constraints and irreversibility constraints we use this model to examine the cyclical behavior of aggregate fixed investment variable capital investment and output in the presence of persistent idiosyncratic and aggregate shocks our model yields three main results first the effect of the irreversibility constraint on fixed capital investment is reinforced by the financing constraint second the effect of the financing constraint on variable capital investment is reinforced by the irreversibility constraint finally the interaction between the two constraints is key for explaining why input inventories and material deliveries of us manufacturing firms are so volatile and procyclical and also why they are highly asymmetrical over the business cycle

product market competition and the impact of price uncertainty on investment some evidence from us manufacturing industries the authors estimate the impact of price uncertainty on investment using a panel of u s manufacturing industries pooling the data for all industries uncertainty has no impact on current investment however for industries that have low levels of seller concentration and thus are likely to be highly competitive the estimated impact is negative and statistically significant while for industries with high levels of seller concentration the impact is always small and not significantly different from zero the finding of a negative relationship between investment and price uncertainty in competitive industries is broadly consistent with models that incorporate irreversibility of capital investment copyright 1996 by blackwell publishing ltd

how much climate policy has cost for oecd countries abstract high economic cost of climate policy has attracted critical debate since the kyoto protocol however reliable empirical evidence of the abatement cost of green house gases across countries remains scant in this study we estimate the average yearly green house gas abatement costs per capita for a panel of 28 oecd countries in years 1990 2015 the marginal abatement costs are estimated using a novel data driven approach based on convex quantile regression compared to traditional frontier estimation methods the quantile approach takes into account a broader set of abatement options and is more robust to inefficiency noise and heteroscedasticity in empirical data the comparison of oecd countries shows that the actual abatement cost per capita has been very modest much lower than predicted in the late 1990s this result has profound policy implications calling for more ambitious climate change mitigation strategy in the future

energy embodied in the international trade of china an energy input output analysis abstract growing international trade has not only positively affected the people s republic of china s china s economic development but also expanded the exportation of energy embodied in goods during their production this energy flow out will pose risks to china s rational utilization of natural resources as well as environmental protection in this paper we evaluate the energy embodied in goods produced in china during 1992 2005 and use input output structural decomposition analysis to identify five key factors causing the changes of energy embodied in exports direct primary energy efficiency primary energy consumption structure structure of intermediate inputs structure of exports and scale of exports for the three sub periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2002 2005 results show that china is a net exporter of energy and the energy embodied in exports tends to increase over time the expanding total volume of exports and increasing exports of energy intensive goods tend to enlarge the energy embodied in exports within all three sub periods but these driving forces were offset by a considerable improvement of energy efficiency and changes in primary energy consumption structure from 1992 to 2002 and the effects of structure of intermediate input only in the sub period from 1992 to 1997 from 2002 to 2005 the sharp augmentation of energy embodied in exports was driven by all the five factors our research has practical implications for the chinese economy results of this study suggest that the energy embodied in trade should receive special attentions in energy policies design to limit the energy resource out flow and pollution generation

interaction between output efficiency and environmental efficiency evidence from the textile industry in jiangsu province china environmental efficiency improvement has played a crucial role in the theory and practice of stimulating clean production this paper analyzes the interaction between environmental efficiency and output efficiency particularly whether they reinforce each other or compete with each other on the basis of a data set of 137 firms in the textile industry in china s jiangsu province in the first stage generalized data envelopment analysis is applied to calculate efficiency measures of energy waste water waste gas soot and output efficiency taking capital labor water and energy as inputs industrial output value as desirable output and waste water discharges waste gas and soot emissions as undesirable outputs in the second stage analysis a structural equation model with latent variables is applied to analyze the interaction between the latent variable environmental efficiency measured by the four observed environmental indicators and output efficiency taking also into account the endogenous variable profit the main outcomes of the structural equation model are the following firstly environmental efficiency negatively impacts on profit while profit positively impacts on environmental efficiency in a similar vein output efficiency is found to depress profit while profit increases output efficiency thirdly environmental efficiency has a positive impact on output efficiency while there is no effect of output efficiency on environmental efficiency fourthly taxes impair a firm s output efficiency from the findings it follows that a swap of general taxes for an energy tax is likely to improve both output efficiency and energy efficiency the latter outcome implies a win win situation which will facilitate the further implementation and adoption of environmental policy finally the paper illustrates the applicability of structural equation modeling in efficiency analysis

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

cost of energy and environmental policy in portuguese co2 abatement scenario analysis to 2020 abstract this paper quantifies the contribution of portuguese energy policies for total and marginal abatement costs mac for co2 emissions for 2020 the times pt optimisation model was used to derive mac curves from a set of policy scenarios including one or more of the following policies ban on nuclear power ban on new coal power plants without carbon sequestration and storage incentives to natural gas power plants and a cap on biomass use the different mac shows the policies effects in the potential for co2 abatement in 2020 in the most encompassing policy scenario with all current and planned policies is possible to abate only up to 35 of 1990 emissions at a cost below 23 t co2 in the more flexible policy scenarios it is possible to abate up to 10 of 1990 emissions below the same cost the total energy system costs are 10 13 higher if all policies are implemented 76 to 101 b roughly the equivalent to 2 01 2 65 of the 2005 gdp thus from a co2 emission mitigation perspective the existing policies introduce significant inefficiencies possibly related to other policy goals the ban on nuclear power is the instrument that has the most significant effect in mac

carbon value dynamics for france a key driver to support mitigation pledges at country scale the climate agenda in france and several other countries is a complex combination of unilateral commitments with regional and international objectives when analyzing national policies the findings of worldwide analyses are of limited accuracy and the large aggregates on which they are built level out most local specificities and inertia specific assessments are hence needed this paper quantifies the dynamic evolution of carbon values for french climate and energy policy its time dependency over successive periods and the effects of setting intermediate targets are evaluated using a long term optimization model addressing critical issues for france we produce consistent energy emissions and carbon value estimates with a 5 year time step our results are situated above the upper range of carbon value estimates of world models with an overlapping zone we show that the official policy guideline value is only consistent with an optimistic combination of assumptions the central estimates are 4 times greater than the guideline carbon value for 2050 and up to 14 times greater in 2020 because of short term inertia that are costly to move we also find that with intermediate objectives the carbon value s dynamic is more than a simple upward curve and that its variability is itself time dependent

eco efficiency guiding micro level actions towards sustainability ten basic steps for analysis abstract this paper looks at the compatibility between technological improvements at the micro level and sustainability at the macro level the two main approaches to prevent environmental degradation are technological improvement and economic degrowth how do we establish the sustainability of technological options lca type analysis of the technology system combined with economic cost analysis offers a first integrated eco efficiency score however such a technology analysis focuses on micro level technology relations only is usually too optimistic and ignores other constraints implied in a choice fitting more comprehensive knowledge into the sustainability evaluation of options requires a unifying systematic framework which is worked out in the present paper as a ten step procedure the integrative framework for empirical analysis is ultimately a comparative static systems analysis at macro level not in a deterministic dynamic mode which is impossible but as a knowledge fed scenario analysis the analysis shows the change in society s overall eco efficiency combining total value creation with total environmental impacts possible domains of application include not only technology choices like those in eco innovation including changed consumption styles and volumes but also changes in policies regarding technologies and markets whether direct policy shifts or indirect changes through institutional adaptations ultimately such a framework also allows culturally framed questions about the type of society we would like to live in to be analysed in terms of their economic and environmental consequences

modeling hourly electricity dynamics for policy making in long term scenarios abstract energy policies are often related to the global effort in reducing greenhouse gas emissions through increased use of renewable energies in electricity production the impact of these policies is usually calculated by energy planning tools however the modeling methodologies most currently used are not adequate to simulate long term scenarios while considering the hourly dynamics of supply and demand this paper presents an extension of the times energy planning tool for investment decisions in electricity production that considers seasonal daily and hourly supply and demand dynamics the inclusion of these dynamics enables the model to produce more accurate results in what concerns the impact of introducing energy efficiency policies and the increased use of renewable energies the model was validated in sao miguel azores portugal for the years 2006 2009 where a comparison with real data showed that the model can simulate the supply and demand dynamics further the long term analysis shows that the inclusion of these dynamics contributes to a better assessment of the renewable energy potential suggests the postponement of investments in new generation capacity and demonstrates that using fine time resolution modeling is very valuable for the design of effective policy measures under high renewable penetration energy systems

can market oriented economic reforms contribute to energy efficiency improvement evidence from china since china accelerated its market oriented economic reforms at the end of 1992 its energy intensity has declined 3 6 annually over 1993 2005 however its energy intensity declined 4 2 annually during its first reform period 1979 1992 therefore can we conclude that the accelerated marketization since the end of 1992 has made no contribution to its energy efficiency improvement in order to answer this challenging question we examine the changes of energy own price elasticity as well as the elasticities of substitution between energy and non energy capital and labor in china during the periods of 1979 1992 and 1993 2003 generally in transition or developing economies holding the technology and output level fixed if the energy own price elasticity algebraic value declines or the substitution elasticity between factors rises they will contribute to energy efficiency improvement our empirical study finds that 1 during 1979 1992 the energy own price elasticity is positive 0 285 and capital energy labor energy are both morishima complementary which indicates a distorted energy price and inefficient allocation and 2 during 1993 2003 the own price elasticity for energy is negative 1 236 and capital energy and labor energy are both morishima substitute all factor demands become more elastic and all elasticities of substitution increase the implication is that the accelerated marketization contributes substantially to energy efficiency improvement since 1993 c 2006 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

government expenditure and energy intensity in china the recent economic stimulus package of china has raised growing concern about its potential impact on energy demand and efficiency to what extent does such expansion of government expenditure influence energy intensity this question has not been well answered by the previous research using provincial panel data this paper provides some evidence of a link between government expenditure and energy intensity in china the empirical results demonstrate that the expansion of government expenditure since asian financial crisis has exerted a significant influence on energy intensity an increase in government expenditure in china leads to an increase in energy intensity further analysis compares such relationships in different economic situations the comparison shows that such positive effect of government expenditure remains significant after the alteration in economic situation therefore the results suggest introducing some measures to consolidate china s existing gains in energy efficiency the analysis also explains why the downward trend in energy intensity is reversed in china since 2002

energy intensity and its determinants in china s regional economies abstract this paper contributes to the existing literature as well as policy debates by examining energy intensity and its determinants in china s regional economies the analysis is based on a comprehensive database of china s regional energy balance constructed for this project through its focus on regional china this study extends the existing literature which mainly covers nationwide studies it is found in this paper that energy intensity declined substantially in china the main contributing factor is the improvement in energy efficiency changes in the economic structure have so far affected energy intensity modestly thus there is considerable scope to reduce energy intensity through the structural transformation of the chinese economy in the future

marginal co2 abatement costs findings from alternative shadow price estimates for shanghai industrial sectors abstract shanghai one of the most developed cities in china is implementing a pilot regional carbon emission trading scheme estimating the marginal abatement costs of co2 emissions for the industrial sectors covered in shanghai s emission trading scheme provides the government and participating firms useful information for devising compliance policies this paper employs multiple distance function approaches to estimating the shadow prices of co2 emissions for shanghai industrial sectors our empirical results show that the overall weighted average of shadow price estimates by different approaches ranges between 394 5 and 1906 1 yuan ton which indicates that model choice truly has a significant effect on the shadow price estimation we have also identified a negative relationship between the shadow price of co2 emissions and carbon intensity and the heavy industries with higher carbon intensities tend to have lower shadow prices it has been suggested that shanghai municipal government take various measures to improve its carbon market e g using the marginal abatement costs of participating sectors firms as a criterion in the initial allocation of carbon emission allowances

sectoral and regional impacts of the european carbon market in portugal abstract across europe co 2 emission allowances represent one of the main policy instruments to comply with the goals of the kyoto protocol in this paper we use microdata to address two issues regarding the impact of the european carbon market eu ets first we analyze the sectoral effects of the eu ets in portugal the goal is to study the distributive consequences of imbalances with the novelty of taking into account firm financial data to put values into context we show that a large majority of installations in most sectors had surpluses and the opportunity to raise remarkable revenues in some cases we also look at the regional impact since the pre existing specialization of different regions in the production of different goods and services might lead to an uneven economic impact of the allowance market in particular portuguese data indicate a distribution of revenue from low income to high income regions or rather between installations located in those regions we focus on the first phase of the eu ets using data for each one of the 244 portuguese installations in the market as well as financial data for 80 of these installations although we also present data for 2008 and 2009

can foreign direct investment harness energy consumption in china a time series investigation abstract this study assesses the long run relationship and short run dynamics between foreign direct investment fdi and energy consumption in china applying the bounds testing approach to annual data from 1982 to 2012 we find that a stable fdi energy nexus exists in the long run and a 1 increase in fdi reduces energy consumption by 0 21 however this study shows a positive association between fdi and energy consumption in the short run attributing to the dominance of the scale effect our results remain robust to different measurements and estimators it is suggested that the chinese government shall support the inward fdi in the tertiary and energy sectors and strengthen local absorptive capacities to fully internalize fdi related knowledge spillovers in energy conservation

the impact of polycentric development on regional gap of energy efficiency a chinese provincial perspective abstract a reasonable distribution of urban systems is essential for optimizing spatial energy allocation and the quality of economic growth for china this study discusses the impact of the polycentric development on the regional gap of energy efficiency rgee i e difference in energy efficiency levels among cities in the same region in the chinese provincial context by employing a novel method using nighttime lighting data from defense meteorological satellite program s operational linescan system dmsp ols to measure the spatial structure of provinces and stochastic frontier approach sfa to evaluate the total factor energy efficiency our results firstly show that the polycentric development has a narrowing effect on the rgee second they show that the more government intervention can narrow the rgee of a province but being more open having more foreign direct investment fdi and using more coal can widen the rgee of that province meanwhile the level of regional urbanization is shown to have no influence on rgee third they show that the polycentric development has a negative effect on the energy efficiency of large cities but a positive effect on that of small and medium size cities which accordingly narrows the rgee the conclusions of this study not only reveal insights for policies that aim to reduce the rgee but also provide an empirical basis for future urban development strategies in the chinese provincial context

prospects of india s energy and emissions for a long time frame abstract for any nation sector wise forecasts of energy demand and emissions are becoming valuable elements in devising its national and international policies relating to energy security local environment and global climate change it is in this context that this work attempts to forecast india s possible energy demands and emissions adopting a key indicator approach on least cost generation expansion optimization methodology for a long time frame this study developed key indicators for useful energy demand for end use sectors such as industry commerce and residence key indicators for transport sector and non energy use sectors were developed on transport mobility demand and end use fuel demand the main drivers of these key indicators are socio economic parameters this work was conducted in a linear programmed lp times g5 model on times modeling framework for model horizon of 1990 2100 by the end of the 21st century india s energy demands are projected to be about 1825 mtoe of primary energy 1263 mtoe of final energy consumption 4840 twh of electricity generations 723 mtoe of energy import and 4414 mt of co2 emissions

is power generation really the gold measure of the chinese economy a conceptual and empirical assessment abstract amid widespread concern about the quality of the chinese gdp data power generation has become probably the single most cited indicator about the chinese economy other than official statistics for the first time we provide an assessment on the efficacy of power generation as such an indicator using both conceptual and empirical analyses we show that i conceptually it is somewhat misleading to use power generation as coincident indicator to infer the growth rate of gdp due to the change of power intensity ii empirically power generation beats railway cargo and bank loan the two other variables in the li keqiang index as the best predictor in forecasting the chinese gdp over the full sample however this superiority holds mainly during period of sharp change i e the financial crisis period but not when the economy is relatively stable especially the current new normal period these two findings place important caveats on the common trust we have in power generation as an influential variable for measuring the chinese economy

the future natural gas consumption in china based on the lmdi stirpat plsr framework and scenario analysis abstract due to the growing pollution concerns in china there have been major efforts to design interrelated environmental protection policies as the policy of reducing coal consumption is implemented china s natural gas consumption is expected to commensurately rise such a trend may lead to the significant impacts on china s energy security and the global gas market this paper empirically investigates the relationship between the natural gas consumption and influencing factors in a comprehensive lmdi stirpat plsr framework it is found that fossil energy structure and non clean energy structure are the most important factors followed by urbanization per capita gdp industrialization and industrial energy intensity and then these factors from lmdi decomposition are innovatively divided into economic development and cleaning indicators when using scenario analysis to forecast china s natural gas consumption the prediction results suggest that economic development with high clean energy system would make a significant increase in gas consumption a commensurate increase in demand even the system of economic energy under scenario of low economic development and low clean as china would depend on gas imports to meet this demand there may be a serious supply shortage by 2020 therefore the government should consider the future energy security issue in making economic and environmental policies

the relationship among natural gas energy consumption capital and economic growth bootstrap corrected causality tests from g 7 countries abstract this paper examines the relationship between natural gas consumption economic growth and capital by using g 7 countries data and a bootstrap corrected causality test for the period 1970 2008 it was found eight significant granger causality relationships for italy the granger causality is from natural gas consumption to growth and united kingdom adverse for pattern of france germany and united states there is two sided granger causality between natural gas and growth

the lmdi approach to decomposition analysis a practical guide in a recent study ang energy policy 32 2004 compared various index decomposition analysis methods and concluded that the logarithmic mean divisia index method is the preferred method since the literature on the method tends to be either too technical or specific for most potential users this paper provides a practical guide that includes the general formulation process summary tables for easy reference and examples

energy intensity trend explained for sao paulo state abstract a sectorial analysis and a logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi technique are used in this paper to decompose the energy intensity of the state of sao paulo from 1995 to 2012 into the economic activity effect and the energy efficiency effect this study contributes the following observations 1 the world energy intensity has decreased steadily but the energy intensity of the sao paulo state has been volatile and has declined 2 3 since 1995 2 in the period of study declining energy intensity of the primary and tertiary sectors was observed in contrast the energy intensity of the secondary sector has been gradually increasing 3 the energy efficiency effect was the primary driver of energy intensity change through 2007 and the economic activity effect subsequently had an increasingly more important role in the change 4 the economic structure remained constant until 2004 when the services sector shift became more significant it is hypothesized that the increasing energy intensity from 2005 to 2009 was caused by the growth of inefficient sugarcane bagasse consumption

the differential impact of uncertainty on investment in small and large businesses we study the impact of profit uncertainty on investment and whether or not this response is different in industries that are dominated by small firms versus those that are dominated by relatively larger firms our key findings are that the sign of the investment uncertainty relationship is negative and that the quantitative negative impact is substantially greater in industries dominated by small firms these results are robust to accounting for potential endogeneity of the uncertainty measure alternate procedures for measuring uncertainty and alternate ways of segmenting industries into small and large firm groups

energy consumption and economic growth evidence from the commonwealth of independent states abstract this study examines the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth for eleven countries of the commonwealth of independent states over the period 1991 2005 within a multivariate panel data framework based on pedroni 1999 pedroni 2004 heterogeneous panel cointegration test and corresponding error correction model cointegration is present between real gdp energy consumption real gross fixed capital formation and labor force with the respective coefficients positive and statistically significant the results of the error correction model reveal the presence of unidirectional causality from energy consumption to economic growth in the short run while bidirectional causality between energy consumption and economic growth in the long run thus the results lend support for the feedback hypothesis associated with the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth

low emissions development pathways of the macedonian energy sector abstract in this paper markal integrated energy system model is applied to explore the impacts and opportunities for low emissions energy system development in macedonia identifying co2 emission reduction policies and the cost of taking action two scenarios with different reduction target have been examined higher ambition scenario where emissions are restricted to 10 above 1990 levels in 2021 and 2 5 in 2030 and moderate ambition scenario where emissions are restricted to 25 above 1990 levels in 2021 and 15 in 2030 in order to provide insights into the optimal timing of emission reductions both of these cases have also been run under cumulative constraints that is rather than having the specified annual targets there is a carbon budget set for 2015 2030 44 mt and 26 mt for higher and moderate ambition cases respectively reflecting the same ambition as the above cases but providing flexibility to reduce emissions in the most cost optimal way the results show that most of the co2 reductions are in the power generation sector which is not surprising as this tends to be the most carbon intensive sector the higher ambition case is considerably more expensive than the reference case with costs 1 9 higher while the increase under the moderate ambition case is 1 under a cumulative constraint the additional costs are reduced to 1 5 and 0 6 respectively highlighting the importance of the timing of action

what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate 1997 2006 abstract china is the second largest energy consumer in the world during 1997 2002 china s energy intensity declined by 33 however it rose by 10 7 over 2003 2005 and declined by 1 2 in 2006 what induced china s energy intensity to fluctuate so drastically industry accounts for approximately 70 of the total energy consumption in china in this paper we decompose china s industrial energy intensity changes between 1997 and 2002 into sectoral structural effects and efficiency effects measured by sectoral energy intensities at two digit level and including the shifts of product mix in the sub sector or firm level using tornqvist and sato vartia index methods the results show that in this period efficiency effects possibly contributed to a majority of the decline while the contribution from structural effects was less during 2003 2005 the excessive expansion of high energy consuming sub sectors and the high investment ratio were foremost sources of the increasing energy intensity attributed to the government efforts the energy intensity has started to decline slightly since july 2006 in future to save more energy in addition to technical progress china should attach more importance to optimizing its sectoral structure and lowering its investment ratio

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions and its influencing factors a global perspective abstract reducing co 2 emissions has become a major and urgent environmental goal worldwide in this paper we sample the data of 41 regions including 165 countries from 2000 to 2014 and adopt a gravity model to obtain an overview of the global flows of co 2 emissions energy consumption the global economy and capital stock since the beginning of the 21st century we then investigate global technical efficiency reduction potential shadow prices and factors influencing the marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions based on a quadratic directional output distance function the empirical results show the following 1 the global centres of gravity for co 2 emissions energy consumption and capital stock have accelerated their shift to the asian inland in the 21st century but the global centre of gravity for the economy did not show the same trend 2 global technical inefficiency demonstrates a u shape with a turning point in 2007 average annual total global co 2 emissions could be reduced by 4482 28 mt and the global marginal abatement costs of co 2 emissions are approximately 673 74 697 73 usd t 3 the relationship between economic development and marginal abatement costs is represented by a u shaped curve the world is currently in the climbing phase of this curve implying that controlling co 2 emissions is becoming more costly moreover energy structure industrial structure and co 2 emissions are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs finally the financial crisis has had a significant effect on marginal abatement costs

decomposition analysis of debt s impact on china s energy consumption abstract debt can influence the energy consumption of private sectors and public agencies by changing their fiscal budget constraints from 1996 to 2016 china has had rapid debt growth and become the second largest borrower in the world additionally china has been the largest energy consumer since 2009 the impact of debt growth on its energy consumption however is not much addressed in the literature using an extended lmdi model we investigate the impact of china s debt on its energy consumption from 1996 to 2016 in a new way the results show that 1 among the closed set of debt related factors and other conventional variables studied private debt per capita makes the strongest contribution to china s energy consumption and population has a moderate impact on the growth of energy consumption 2 energy efficiency improvement output efficiency of government debt debt structure adjustment and increased tertiary industry share are mitigating forces of energy consumption these results provide a new holistic perspective for the chinese government to formulate synergistic policies of risk control and pollution control

how to boost energy productivity in china s industrial sector an integrated decomposition framework based on multi dimensional factors abstract the industrial sector is a pillar for china s economy improving the energy productivity is of great significance to mitigate the discrepancy between energy use and energy supply as well as the economic development and environmental friendliness this paper extended the previous decomposition method by introducing six new components energy output oriented regional efficiency energy output oriented scale economy energy output oriented pure technical efficiency these new factors can uncover the impacts of regional balance development scale economy optimization and resource allocation efficiency change on energy productivity the main research results indicate that during the 2000 2016 period 1 industrial energy productivity yield progressively increased and the discrepancies of energy productivity in different regions were obvious eastern region represented the best energy productivity performance followed by the central and western regions 2 technological progress in both energy saving and production were two principal contributors to energy productivity growth overall the pure technical efficiency also promoted energy productivity suggesting that resource allocation efficiencies were performed well in both the energy market and the output market 3 by contrast both the energy and output oriented scale economy effect failed to promote energy productivity growth besides the energy oriented and output oriented regional efficiency had opposite impacts on energy productivity the former one had the inhibiting effects while the last one had the promoting effects finally several relevant suggestions for policymakers were provided

testing uncertainty s effect in real options with multiple capital goods the irreversible investment theory with heterogeneous capital predicts a negative relationship between uncertainty and the investment extensive margin we empirically explore this prediction using plant level data for investment across multiple fixed assets and employ a discrete ordered choice model our results indicate that uncertainty even after controlling for financial constraints induces a negative effect on the extensive margin thereby decreasing the likelihood of investment triggering in more types of capital this effect takes the form of both a higher probability of investment inactivity but also a lower probability of investment triggering in a higher number of capital types

uncertainty and the trade off between scale and flexibility in investment abstract this paper analyzes the behavior of a firm that chooses both the scale and timing of its investment sensitivity analysis shows that greater demand volatility is associated with the firm investing in larger increments less frequently this is in contrast to the conventional wisdom which is that greater volatility leads to investment in smaller increments more frequently overall the reduced frequency dominates the greater scale so that the long run average rate of investment is a decreasing function of demand volatility the timing and scale of investment are most sensitive to volatility when there are substantial investment economies of scale

a stochastic model for risk management in global supply chain networks abstract with the increasing emphasis on supply chain vulnerabilities effective mathematical tools for analyzing and understanding appropriate supply chain risk management are now attracting much attention this paper presents a stochastic model of the multi stage global supply chain network problem incorporating a set of related risks namely supply demand exchange and disruption we provide a new solution methodology using the moreau yosida regularization and design an algorithm for treating the multi stage global supply chain network problem with profit maximization and risk minimization objectives

supply network capacity planning for semiconductor manufacturing with uncertain demand and correlation in demand considerations abstract a semiconductor supply network involves many expensive steps which have to be executed to serve global markets the complexity of global capacity planning combined with the large capital expenditures to increase factory capacity makes it important to incorporate optimization methodologies for cost reduction and long term planning the typical view of a semiconductor supply network consists of layers for wafer fab sort assembly test and demand centers we present a two stage stochastic integer programming formulation to model a semiconductor supply network the model makes strategic capacity decisions i e build factories or outsource while accounting for the uncertainties in demand for multiple products we use the model not only to analyze how variability in demand affects the make buy decisions but also to investigate how the correlation between demands of different products affects these strategic decisions finally we demonstrate the value of incorporating demand uncertainty into a decision making scheme

a multi objective stochastic programming approach for supply chain design considering risk abstract in this paper we develop a multi objective stochastic programming approach for supply chain design under uncertainty demands supplies processing transportation shortage and capacity expansion costs are all considered as the uncertain parameters to develop a robust model two additional objective functions are added into the traditional comprehensive supply chain design problem so our multi objective model includes i the minimization of the sum of current investment costs and the expected future processing transportation shortage and capacity expansion costs ii the minimization of the variance of the total cost and iii the minimization of the financial risk or the probability of not meeting a certain budget the ideas of unreliable suppliers and capacity expansion after the realization of uncertain parameters are also incorporated into the model finally we use the goal attainment technique to obtain the pareto optimal solutions that can be used for decision making

structural decompositions of energy consumption between 1995 and 2009 evidence from wiod abstract energy is key to achieving sustainable development this paper explicitly distinguishes between the supply side of energy consumption and demand side of energy consumption and investigates the factors that affect the energy consumption across economies using data from the world input output database wiod this paper decomposes the relative changes of energy consumption into intensity effect production structure structural change in final demand total final demand effect and household consumption then it further decomposes production structure into inter industry structural effect and trade effect in intermediate inputs overall energy consumption growth is mainly driven by total final demand 55 04 increase at the world level but can be significantly reduced by intensity effect due to technological change 21 02 decrease at the world level there is heterogeneity of structure related effects across economies and within the same economy in both aspects of energy consumption in addition the trade effect and household effect are relatively small this paper provides an empirical framework for analyzing energy consumption in a globalizing world and suggests tailored and integrated energy policies

the driving forces of china s energy use from 1992 to 2010 an empirical study of input output and structural decomposition analysis abstract the energy consumption in china has accelerated since the early 2000s and china became the largest energy consumer in the world by 2010 to examine the driving forces of china s energy use this paper conducts a structural decomposition analysis based on hybrid input output tables in addition we describe the framework of china s energy system by using two energy flow charts the results show that china s current energy use is investment led demand between 1992 and 2007 the three main final demand categories gross fixed capital formation household consumption and exports contributed approximately one third each to the changes of total energy use in china between 2007 and 2010 however three quarters of energy consumption changes came from investment activity only technological improvement saved approximately five percent of the total energy use annually during the periods of 1992 1997 1997 2002 and 2007 2010 in the period of 2002 2007 however its contribution dropped to only three percent p a due to the rise of the indirect energy requirement coefficient in the construction sector these results suggest that adjusting the final demand structure and improving energy efficiency further will meet china s energy challenges in the future

does urbanization drive economic growth decoupled from energy consumption in china s logistics abstract logistics has gradually become a major energy consumer in china along with urbanization and e commerce a better understanding of economic growth decoupled from energy consumption in logistics could relieve the pressure of energy supply and environmental pollution a combined model based on the tapio decoupling model kaya identity and log mean divisia index was proposed to decompose the impact of urbanization into 4 related factors comparative analysis was applied to investigate the similarities of and differences in the urbanization related factors affecting the decoupling state of provinces the main results were as follows 1 weak decoupling was the dominant state of logistics in china during 2007 2016 there were weak decoupling and strong decoupling in most of the observation period in the eastern region while there was no strong decoupling in the central and western regions 2 from the national perspective urbanization related factors had very significant but different impacts population quantity spatial structure and spatial expansion were the key inhibitors while population density was the main contributor 3 from the regional perspective the patterns of urbanization related factors in the three regions were similar population density had a positive but decreasing effect on decoupling in the three regions especially the western region population quantity had an increasing negative effect on decoupling in the three regions especially the central and western regions spatial expansion had an increasing negative effect on decoupling in the eastern and western regions but a decreasing negative effect in the central region and spatial structure had a stable negative effect on the three regions finally some policy implications were proposed

energy consumption and economic activities in iran abstract the causal relationship between overall gdp industrial and agricultural value added and consumption of different kinds of energy are investigated using vector error correction model for the case of iran within 1967 2003 a long run unidirectional relationship from gdp to total energy and bidirectional relationship between gdp and gas as well as gdp and petroleum products consumption for the whole economy was discovered causality is running from value added to total energy electricity gas and petroleum products consumption and from gas consumption to value added in industrial sector the long run bidirectional relations hold between value added and total energy electricity and petroleum products consumption in the agricultural sector the short run causality runs from gdp to total energy and petroleum products consumption and also industrial value added to total energy and petroleum products consumption in this sector

energy productivity and chinese local officials promotions evidence from provincial governors abstract improving energy productivity is one of the most cost effective ways to achieve a sustainable development target the existing literature has shown some factors that have driven the improvement in china s energy productivity however these studies do little to tackle the role of chinese local officials political promotions can be seen as the most important career incentive for chinese local officials hence we intend to study whether energy productivity affects chinese local officials promotions in this paper the data of position changes for the 31 provincial governors during 1978 2012 are utilized we adopted probit models to empirically examine the correlation between provincial governors political promotions and energy productivity the empirical results demonstrate that 1 energy productivity has a significantly positive impact on provincial governors political promotions in china meaning that the provincial governors have the momentum to improve energy productivity and 2 the effect of energy productivity on provincial governors political promotions has evolved dynamically changing along with the transformation of the economic growth mode and the adjustment of the local officials promotion mechanism the results are helpful in understanding the drivers of the improvement in china s energy productivity and provide insightful implications for conducting energy policy in china

total factor energy efficiency in developing countries this paper uses a total factor framework to investigate energy efficiency in 23 developing countries during the period of 1980 2005 we explore the total factor energy efficiency and change trends by applying data envelopment analysis dea window which is capable of measuring efficiency in cross sectional and time varying data the empirical results indicate that botswana mexico and panama perform the best in terms of energy efficiency whereas kenya sri lanka syria and the philippines perform the worst during the entire research period seven countries show little change in energy efficiency over time eleven countries experienced continuous decreases in energy efficiency among five countries witnessing continuous increase in total factor energy efficiency china experienced the most rapid rise practice in china indicates that effective energy policies play a crucial role in improving energy efficiency tobit regression analysis indicates that a u shaped relationship exists between total factor energy efficiency and income per capita

market concentration contestability and sunk costs this paper provides an exploratory assessment of the theory of contestability that is based on a diverse sample of industries and introduces a new important determinant of market concentration the results of the paper indicate that the variables determining the degree of contestability of markets are significant correlates of market concentration sunk costs account for a substantial portion of the sample variance of concentration even after technological factors are controlled for copyright 1990 by mit press

optimal carbon allowance price in china s carbon emission trading system perspective from the multi sectoral marginal abatement cost abstract china s carbon emission trading system ets was officially launched at the end of 2017 to further promote carbon emissions mitigation in the ets the carbon price is the key factor determining whether the emission reduction target can be achieved the optimal carbon price is the smallest marginal abatement cost that can achieve the emission reduction target this study simulates the marginal abatement cost curves of different sectors in china s ets and calculate the optimal carbon price of sector coverage scenarios based on the criteria that involve eight sectors in turn the results show that the marginal abatement cost decreases with increasing sector involvement the optimal carbon price to achieve the two intensity targets at the same time is between 345 yuan ton and 1140 yuan ton from the sectoral perspective the power sector undertakes the largest emission reduction while the transportation sector is responsible for smaller emission reduction china s ets will cause gdp losses from 1 63 to 2 27 compared with the bau scenario but it can achieve co2 reduction from 9 56 to 10 13

zeros and lumps in investment empirical evidence on irreversibilities and nonconvexities the objective of this paper is to investigate if and how capital adjustment departs from the smooth pattern implied by standard model based on convex adjustment costs using norwegian micro data we start by documenting the intermittent and lumpy nature of investment rates we then present two pieces of econometric evidence on these issues first we estimate a discrete hazard model to determine the probability of having an episode of high investment conditional on the length of the interval from the last high investment episode second we estimate a switching regression model that allows for the response of the investment rate to fundamentals to differ across regimes in both cases we investigate the aggregate implications of our results

china s numerical management system for reducing national energy intensity in china the national target for energy intensity reduction when integrated with target disaggregation and information feedback systems constitutes a numerical management system which is a hallmark of modern governance this paper points out the technical weaknesses of china s current numerical management system in the process of target disaggregation the national target cannot be fully disaggregated to local governments sectors and enterprises without omissions at the same time governments at lower levels face pressure for reducing energy intensity that exceeds their respective jurisdictions in the process of information feedback information failure is inevitable due to statistical inaccuracy furthermore the monitoring system is unable to correct all errors and data verification plays a limited role in the examination system to address these problems we recommend that the government use total energy consumption as the primary indicator of energy management reform the accounting and reporting of energy statistics toward greater consistency timeliness and transparency clearly define the responsibility of the higher levels of government

research on the energy saving effect of energy policies in china 1982 2006 this paper summarizes the main energy policies of china from 1980 and divides them into three groups of policies two methods with and without antitheses and linear regression are created to evaluate the energy saving effects of the energy policies and the energy saving effects of these three groups of energy policies of china are evaluated by the two methods respectively it is concluded that with and without antitheses is used to evaluate short term effects and linear regression is used to evaluate long term effects

financial structure and aggregate economic activity an overview this paper surveys literature that explores the possible links between the financial system and aggregate economic behavior the survey is in two parts the first reviews the traditional work and the second discusses new research copyright 1988 by ohio state university press

marginal abatement cost curves for policy recommendation a method for energy system analysis abstract the transport sector is seen as one of the key factors for driving future energy consumption and greenhouse gas ghg emissions in order to rank possible measures marginal abatement cost curves have become a tool to graphically represent the relationship between abatement costs and emission reduction this paper demonstrates how to derive marginal abatement cost curves for well to wheel ghg emissions of the transport sector considering the full energy provision chain and the interlinkages and interdependencies within the energy system presented marginal abatement cost curves visualize substitution effects between measures for different marginal mitigation costs the analysis makes use of an application of the energy system model generator times for south africa times geeco for the example of gauteng province this study exemplary shows that the transport sector is not the first sector to address for cost efficient reduction of ghg emissions however the analysis also demonstrates that several options are available to mitigate transport related ghg emissions at comparable low marginal abatement costs this methodology can be transferred to other economic sectors as well as to other regions in the world to derive cost efficient ghg reduction strategies

investment and conditional uncertainty the role of market power irreversibility and returns to scale abstract market power irreversibility and returns to scale decisively determine how uncertainty affects investment we empirically show that this relationship is positive when deviations from the neoclassical paradigm are absent as frictions are introduced the positive sign gradually dies out and turns negative

the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption in china an analysis based on the input output method in recent decades china s rapid economy development has been coupling with the steadily increasing household consumption which in turn leads to ever growing energy consumption and co2 emission with a focus on the decade of 2000 2010 this study examines the energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption using the input output method as well as the influencing factors of the indirect co2 emission the results show that first the indirect energy consumption and co2 emission appear the main parts of total energy consumption and co2 emission caused by household consumption accounting for 69 77 and 77 84 respectively second the indirect co2 emission indicates an increasing trend mainly driven by per capita household consumption and energy intensity finally the five sectors with relatively higher direct or total co2 emission intensity are the key sectors for reducing co2 emission in china i e 1 production and distribution of electric power and heat power pdeh 2 smelting and pressing of metals spm 3 processing of petroleum coking processing of nuclear fuel ppcpn 4 manufacture of non metallic mineral products mnm and 5 manufacture of chemical materials mcm

carbon dioxide emissions intensity of portuguese industry and energy sectors a convergence analysis and econometric approach abstract given the relevance of energy and pollution issues for industrialised countries and the importance of industry and energy sectors to the achievement of their economic and environmental goals it is important to know if there is a common pattern of emissions intensity fuel intensity and energy intensity between industries to know if it justifies a more specific application of energy policies between sectors which sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use and which are the long term effects of those specific variables on the mitigation of emissions we found that although there is literature on decomposition of effects that affect emissions the study of the convergence and of the relationships between these variables does not include ratios or effects that result from the decomposition analysis thus the above questions are not answered much less for the portuguese reality the purpose of this paper is to study i the existence of convergence of some relevant ratios as carbon dioxide co 2 emissions intensity co 2 emissions by fossil fuel consumption fossil fuel intensity energy intensity and economic structure between industry and energy sectors in portugal and ii the influence that the consumption of fossil fuels the consumption of aggregate energy and gdp have on co 2 emissions and the influence that the ratios in which co 2 emissions intensity decomposes can affect that variable using an econometric approach namely panel corrected standard errors estimator we concluded that there is sigma convergence for all ratios with exception of fossil fuel intensity gamma convergence verifies for all ratios with exception of co 2 emissions by fossil fuel from the econometric approach we concluded that the considered variables have a significant importance in explaining co 2 emissions and co 2 emissions intensity

does urbanization affect energy intensities across provinces in china long run elasticities estimation using dynamic panels with heterogeneous slopes abstract although there has been extensive debate in the literature that addresses the impact of urbanization on total energy use the relative magnitude of each impact channel has not been empirically examined and urbanization s effects on energy transition dynamics in china remains unknown using panel datasets at the provincial level from 1986 to 2011 this paper employs dynamic models to investigate both the long run and short run elasticities of urbanization on energy intensities and the most significant impact channel is identified coal intensity and electricity intensity are also modeled to reveal energy transition dynamics driven by urbanization a set of newly developed regression techniques namely well performed common correlated effects mean group ccemg and augmented mean group amg estimators are used to treat residual cross sectional dependence nonstationary residuals and unlikely to hold homogeneous slope assumptions the results obtained verify that the net effects of urbanization on overall energy intensity and electricity intensity are statistically positive with long run elasticities of 0 14 to 0 37 and 0 23 to 0 29 respectively whereas china s urbanization does not significantly increase coal intensity the fact that short run elasticities account for a majority of corresponding long run values indicates that the short run effect that is indirect energy use induced by urban infrastructures is the most significant impact channel of urbanization on energy use in china an energy transition from high pollution coal to clean electricity is also present in china although the fundamental transition to renewable energy is still in its infancy from a regional perspective urbanization exerts asymmetric impacts on provincial energy use so that energy policies associated with urbanization should be province specific the findings also illustrate that for a panel dataset on regional dimension within large and fast growing economies such as china error cross sectional dependence and residual nonstationarity must be tested and properly treated to avoid size distortion and biased estimators

changes in carbon intensity in china empirical findings from 1980 2003 china experienced sustainable rapid economic growth over the period 1980 2003 but at the same time energy related carbon intensity showed a downward trend it begs the question therefore what factors were driving this decline in carbon intensity and will this decline be maintained in future moreover what measures can be adopted to ensure a continual decline in carbon intensity these questions led to increased research in the factors governing co2 emission in china this paper quantifies the driving force behind china s primary energy related carbon intensity and measures the material production sectors final energy related carbon intensity our results show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline of energy related carbon intensity was the reduction in real energy intensity however policies that focus only on the decline in energy intensity are insufficient to further decrease carbon intensity the change of primary energy mix can improve the decline of carbon intensity this should focus on the material production sectors development strategies and final energy use greater emphasis should be given to secondary industry which needs national and regional governments policy support

revisiting drivers of energy intensity in china during 1997 2007 a structural decomposition analysis the decline of china s energy intensity slowed since 2000 during 2002 2005 it actually increased reversing the long term trend therefore it is important to identify drivers of the fluctuation of energy intensity we use input output structural decomposition analysis to investigate the contributions of changes in energy mix sectoral energy efficiency production structure final demand structure and final demand category composition to china s energy intensity fluctuation during 1997 2007 we include household energy consumption in the study by closing the input output model with respect to households results show that sectoral energy efficiency improvements contribute the most to the energy intensity decline during 1997 2007 the increase in china s energy intensity during 2002 2007 is instead explained by changes in final demand composition and production structure changes in final demand composition are mainly due to increasing share of exports while changes in production structure mainly arise from the shift of chinese economy to more energy intensive industries changes in energy mix and final demand structure contribute little to china s energy intensity fluctuation from the consumption perspective growing exports of energy intensive products and increasing infrastructure demands explain the majority of energy intensity increase during 2002 2007

investment and demand uncertainty this paper investigates the effects of uncertainty on the investment decisions of a sample of italian manufacturing firms using information on the subjective probability distribution of future demand for firms products according to the entrepreneurs the results support the view that uncertainty weakens the response of investment to demand thus slowing down capital accumulation consistent with the predictions of the theory there is considerable heterogeneity in the effect of uncertainty on investment it is stronger for firms that cannot easily reverse investment decisions and for those with substantial market power we show that the negative effect of uncertainty on investment cannot be explained by uncertainty proxying for liquidity constraints

energy intensity and investment ownership across chinese provinces abstract the main objective of this paper is to investigate whether openness and investment ownership are key factors in explaining the diffusion of energy saving technologies in china compared with previous studies the novel aspect of this work is the use of a rich dataset at provincial level which allows the high level of regional heterogeneity to be taken into consideration the unbalanced regional growth has been translated into differences in the need for energy resources across the vast territory of china a detailed analysis of these issues may provide new insights into the energy situation in this country the analysis is also disaggregated by type of energy coal electricity and petroleum we estimate the models by panel corrected standard errors developed by beck and katz 1995 over the period 1985 2008 results obtained confirm the hypothesis that both foreign and non state investments play a leading role in the decline of energy intensity across chinese regions whereas there is no evidence of a positive contribution of state investment the findings also reveal differences in energy intensity across regions thus confirming the importance of accounting for the regional dimension when analyzing energy consumption in china

uncertainty management in a macro life cycle assessment of a 2005 2025 european bioenergy policy this paper examines the uncertainty of a new method the macro life cycle assessment to analyze the environmental impacts of public policies the environmental impacts of two 2005 2025 european energy policies a business as usual policy and a bioenergy policy were comparatively assessed and their uncertainty was computed following the inventory of each source of uncertainty uncertainty management methods were sequentially applied to manage these sources whenever possible results show that the bioenergy policy causes lower environmental impacts in three of the four environmental damage categories human health climate change and natural resources but more significantly in one ecosystems the risk of the business as usual policy causing lower environmental impacts is expected to be low however current knowledge makes it impossible to account for all sources of uncertainty or implement advanced uncertainty methods for all elements in the cause effects chains involved in each european energy policy current uncertainty management methods are not adapted to the uncertainty of large models such as the macro life cycle assessment hence while current results are promising further work is required to improve uncertainty management in macro life cycle assessment

energy decomposition analysis iea model versus other methods abstract in energy decomposition analysis the international energy agency iea model which is based on the laspeyres index method is included in a recent international collaborative initiative on energy indicators for sustainable development for possible adoption iaea 2005 energy indicators for sustainable development guidelines and methodology international atomic energy agency vienna www pub iaea org mtcd publications pdf pub1222 web pdf from an empirical analysis using the data of the united states we found that the residual term given by the iea model could be significant and that the estimates of the impacts of structure and intensity changes given by the model could be quite different from those given by other decomposition methods the residual term tends to be large when changes in structure and or energy intensity variables are significant since changes in these variables over time are generally larger in the developing countries than in the iea countries there is the question about whether the iea model is an appropriate decomposition method for the developing countries

does firm size matter evidence on the impact of liquidity constraints on firm investment behavior in germany abstract this paper examines the link between liquidity constraints and investment behavior for german firms of different sizes from 1970 to 1986 results indicate that medium sized firms appear to be more liquidity constrained in their investment behavior than either the smallest or largest firms in the study suggesting that the unique german infrastructure designed to assist the small firm has indeed succeeded in alleviating to some degree such liquidity constraints findings also support the hypothesis that the emerging competition and internationalism which characterized the german financial markets in the 1980s have been improving access to capital for some groups of firms

understanding energy systems change in canada 1 decomposition of total energy intensity abstract between 1995 and 2010 the total energy intensity e gdp pj gross domestic product in 2002 of the canadian economy declined by 23 or 2 64 mj to understand why the logarithmic mean divisia index lmd i method was used to decompose a large body of government statistical data supporting the observed e gdp decline the analysis shows that a 48 1 27 mj of the decline was associated with an inter sector structural change in the economy i e an increased contribution to the total gdp of the low energy using commercial and institutional sector compared with the high energy using manufacturing and heavy industry sectors b 24 0 62 mj was attributed to the impact of the canadian gdp growing faster than population c 22 0 58 mj of the decline was associated with an overall decrease in business energy intensity a deeper analysis of business sectors shows a positive impact of 0 4 mj from increased energy intensity in the oil and gas sector offset by a 0 98 mj decline due to energy intensity declines in the other business sectors d 6 3 0 17 mj of the decline was associated with an improvement in the energy intensity of households mostly from residential energy use rather than personal transportation energy use these results provide insights for policy makers regarding those aspects of the canadian economy that contribute to or work against efforts to transform energy systems toward sustainability

a stochastic dynamic programming approach for multi site capacity planning in tft lcd manufacturing under demand uncertainty abstract the study focuses on the dynamic multi site capacity planning problem in the thin film transistor liquid crystal display tft lcd industry under stochastic demand capacity planning refers to the process of simultaneously implementing a robust capacity allocation plan and capacity expansion policy across multiple sites against stochastic demand in addition the demand situation in tft lcd manufacturing follows markov properties in which the correlations of the demand variations in the consecutive periods are high and the demand status in the next period is stochastically determined by the present one therefore this study constructs a stochastic dynamic programming sdp model with an embedded linear programming lp to generate a capacity planning policy as the demand in each period is revealed and updated using the backward induction algorithm the sdp model considers several capacity expansion and budget constraints to determine a robust and dynamic capacity expansion policy in response to newly available demand information the lp model then considers numerous tft lcd practical characteristics and constraints to decide a capacity allocation plan and generate a one period immediate reward used by the optimality recursion equation of the sdp model numerical results are also illustrated to prove the feasibility and robustness of the proposed sdp model compared to the traditional deterministic capacity planning model currently applied by the industry

industry energy use and structural change a case study of the people s republic of china abstract this paper examines the effects of structural change and improvements in energy intensities of individual industries in aggregate industry energy intensity changes in china during 1980 88 the divisia index is used to decompose the energy intensity effect and structural effect a major finding of this analysis is that the main contribution to changed aggregate energy intensity was from the changes in energy intensities of individual industries during the period structural effects were found to contribute little to the aggregate energy intensity changes

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale

energy efficiency in india assessing the policy regimes and their impacts in the recent years india has emerged as one of the fast growing economies of the world necessitating equally rapid increase in modern energy consumption with an imminent global climate change threat india will have difficulties in continuing with this rising energy use levels towards achieving high economic growth it will have to follow an energy efficient pathway in attaining this goal in this context an attempt is made to present india s achievements on the energy efficiency front by tracing the evolution of policies and their impacts the results indicate that india has made substantial progress in improving energy efficiency which is evident from the reductions achieved in energy intensities of gdp to the tune of 88 during 1980 2007 similar reductions have been observed both with respect to overall indian economy and the major sectors of the economy in terms of energy intensity of gdp india occupies a relatively high position of nine among the top 30 energy consuming countries of the world c 2009 elsevier ltd all rights reserved