assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

a dynamic approach to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis states that pollution levels increase as a country develops but begin to decrease as rising incomes pass beyond a turning point in ekc analyses the relationship between environmental degradation and income is usually expressed as a quadratic function with the turning point occurring at a maximum pollution level other explanatory variables have been included in these models but income regularly has had the most significant effect on indicators of environmental quality one variable consistently omitted in these relationships is the price of energy this paper analyzes previous models to illustrate the importance of prices in these models and then includes prices in an econometric ekc framework testing energy income and co2 income relationships these long run price income models find that income is no longer the most relevant indicator of environmental quality or energy demand indeed we find no significant evidence for the existence of an ekc within the range of current incomes for energy in the presence of price and trade variables

impacts of renewables obligation with recycling of the buy out fund tradable green certificate tgc or renewables obligation ro programs typically include a buy out option but only in the uk the buy out fund is redistributed back to the suppliers who have submitted the certificates we show that when the buy out fund is redistributed the supply of renewable energy responds positively to the market conditions and renewables target without it the buy out rate is equivalent to a maximum price however redistribution of the buy out fund may induce strategic behavior from producers who have market power we analyze the impacts of market power and integration on the supply of conventional and renewable energy under the ro program with the buy out fund recycled and devise some empirical tests to predict these impacts policy implications of this study are discussed with special reference to the new fit cfd system

can poor consumers pay for energy and water an affordability analysis for transition countries low income households spend a substantial share of their income on utility services such as electricity heating and water the difficulty of these socially vulnerable consumers to absorb further price increases is often used as an argument against tariff reform however detailed quantitative information on the affordability of tariff adjustments for low income consumers is actually quite scarce much of the available information is based on households this paper takes a more detailed look at the affordability of electricity district heating and water for low income consumers in transition countries while the available data are incomplete the paper finds that affordability is a problem for low income consumers in most countries in particular in the water sector and in the commonwealth of independent states cis the affordability consequences of tariff reform ultimately depend on the speed of tariff adjustments relative to the growth in household income the level of tariffs needed for cost recovery the level of effective tariffs at the outset tariffs adjusted for non payment and the demand response to the tariff increase the paper finds that delaying tariff reform by a few years makes little difference to affordability constraints and may therefore not be an effective way to mitigate the social impact of utility reform

modelling household energy expenditures using micro data this paper is concerned with the empirical modeling of domestic demand for energy in the united kingdom at the level of the individual household a two stage budgeting model of household demand for energy conditional on durable ownership is developed at the first stage income is allocated between energy and nonenergy consumption while at the second stage energy expenditure is disaggregated the second stage allocation is assumed to be between gas electricity and a composite good other fuels estimation takes place using a sample of some 50 000 households drawn from the annual u k family expenditure survey for the years 1972 83 a source that has not been fully exploited in the analysis of energy demand to date copyright 1989 by royal economic society

feed in tariff and tradable green certificate in oligopoly abstract feed in tariff fit and tradable green certificate tgc schemes are studied in a formal model and numerical example using the uk data we find that if the markets were perfectly competitive then feed in tariff and the certificate price would be the same however when the markets are imperfect they are generally different while both the tariff and certificate price fluctuate around the difference between the costs of green and black energy the tariff deviates more from the cost difference than the certificate price the supplies of both black and green energy under fit are higher than tgc obviously as a result of subsidies a troubling outcome is that the total energy supply increases under fit as the renewables quota increases which can negate other measures to mitigate climate changes such as demand management finally using the data from the uk market we find that social welfare under tgc is consistently higher than fit for a wide range of values of the parameters

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

the demand for electricity in the gcc countries abstract cointegration techniques are used to study the effects of economic variables on electricity demand in the gcc countries a dynamic model is estimated using aggregate data for the six states spanning the period 1970 97 statistical investigations confirm the existence of unit root in all time series employed in the study which called for the use of cointegration and error correction methodologies empirical results indicate that both income and price have an impact on electricity consumption and income and price policies could be effectively facilitated in electricity demand management

smallholder wood production and population pressure in east africa evidence of an environmental kuznets curve the incentives for growing fuelwood on small farms are examined using survey data from kenya the analysis finds that tree planting is a competitive activity and that farmers are responsive to incentives to plant trees these incentives vary across households facing different factor availabilities and market opportunities the existence of a persistent fuelwood gap and the notion that population pressure will lead to declining tree cover are not supported by the analysis a simulation model indicates that as land continues to be subdivided tree cover may actually rise a result consistent with other evidence of an environmental kuznets curve

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the real time price elasticity of electricity the real time price elasticity of electricity contains important information on the demand response of consumers to the volatility of peak prices despite the importance empirical estimates of the real time elasticity are hardly available this paper provides a quantification of the real time relationship between total peak demand and spot market prices we find a low value for the real time price elasticity which may partly be explained from the fact that not all users observe the spot market price if we correct for this phenomenon we find the elasticity to be fairly low for consumers currently active in the spot market if this conclusion applies to all users this would imply a limited scope for government intervention in supply security issues

causality between income and emission a country group specific econometric analysis abstract empirical studies of the environmental kuznets curve ekc examine the presence or otherwise of an inverted u shaped relationship between the level of pollution and the level of income customarily in the diagram of ekc the level of income is shown on the horizontal axis and that of pollution on the vertical axis thus it is presumed that the relationship between income and pollution is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa the validity of this presumption is now being questioned it is being asserted that the nature and direction of causality may vary from one country to the other in this paper we present the results of a study of income co 2 emission causality based on a granger causality test to cross country panel data on per capita income and the corresponding per capita co 2 emission data briefly our results indicate three different types of causality relationship holding for different country groups for the developed country groups of north america and western europe and also for eastern europe the causality is found to run from emission to income for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan causality from income to emission is obtained finally for the country groups of asia and africa the causality is found to be bi directional the regression equations estimated as part of the granger causality test further suggest that for the country groups of north america and western europe the growth rate of emission has become stationary around a zero mean and a shock in the growth rate of emission tends to generate a corresponding shock in the growth rate of income in contrast for the country groups of central and south america oceania and japan a shock in the income growth rate is likely to result in a corresponding shock in the growth rate of emission finally causality being bi directional for the country groups of asia and africa the income and the emission growth rates seemed to reinforce each other

does the private sector help or hurt the environment evidence from carbon dioxide pollution in developing countries abstract how does the nature of enterprise ownership affect the environment in an economy conventional wisdom and theoretical conjectures are split on this important question in this paper we estimate a reduced form random effects model using data from 44 developing countries over nine years 1987 95 to study for any systematic empirical relationship between the relative level of private sector involvement in an economy and the environmental performance of the economy in terms of its emission of industrial carbon dioxide we control for both observed and unobserved crosscountry heterogeneity along various institutional and structural dimensions such as the scope of financial market industrial sector composition and level of foreign direct investment the regression results indicate that the higher the degree of private sector involvement in a developing economy the lower is its environmental degradation in addition its environmental degradation is likely to be further reduced in presence of a well functioning domestic capital market and through increased participation by developed economies in its private sector development

carbon dioxide emissions and global gdp abstract a positive relationship between carbon dioxide emissions the most important greenhouse gas ghg implicated in global warming and gdp is shown in this paper examining per capita income and co2 emissions of 137 countries across 21 years it also appears that as per capita incomes accelerate across countries emissions increases for the most part tend to decelerate it could be that higher income levels lead to increased demand for environmental protection only emissions reduction proposals that assure incomes will not be adversely affected particularly those of less developed countries ldcs will have any possibility of successful implementation

pros and cons of exposing renewables to electricity market risks a comparison of the market integration approaches in germany spain and the uk abstract the article examines how renewable electricity res e producers are integrated into the electricity market under the support legislations and regulatory frameworks of germany spain and the uk focus is on wind power which faces the highest market integration challenge of all res e the analysis shows that the three countries follow contrasting approaches of exposing res e producers to the market risks of forward electricity markets balancing markets and system planning requirements risk exposure is highest in the uk and lowest in germany from a policy maker s perspective there is a trade off between a high risk and a low risk approach when res e face high market risks a higher level of financial support is required to stimulate res e development than in a low risk environment but the exposure to market risks may also give an incentive to make efficient use of the respective market thus limiting the indirect costs to society the special characteristics of wind energy however put natural limits to the response of wind power plants to market prices and locational price signals and will increasingly influence electricity markets and grid infrastructure these interdependencies should be recognised in the design of res e policies and market regulations

everybody merges with somebody the wave of m as in the energy industry and the eu merger policy abstract almost all the main european energy companies have recently shown an unprecedented activism on financial markets and the wave of m as seems far from being over a sound understanding of the wave can provide hints on the future developments of the market and the effects on merger policy these operations are explained by several reasons ranging from the pan european players strategy to the creation of national champions from the objective to merge gas and electricity businesses convergence mergers to the aim of re building a vertical dimension of the industry after liberalization in face of such a broad range of motivations merger policy has to be applied consistently to each case and case law is developing to better address energy specific issues still the characteristics of the energy industry may allow for more economic insight and a longer term perspective in merger cases in order to guarantee that energy and merger policy are leading to the same objectives through different tools

currency hedging for international portfolios this paper examines the benefits from currency hedging both for speculative and risk minimization motives in international bond and equity portfolios the riskreturn performances of globally diversified portfolios are compared with and without forward contracts over the period 1974 to 1990 inclusion of forward contracts results in statistically significant improvements in the performance of unconditional portfolios containing bonds conditional strategies are also implemented both in sample and out of sample and are shown to both significantly improve the risk return tradeoff of global portfolios and to outperform unconditional hedging strategies whether international portfolios should be hedged against currency risks is the subject of an active debate the theoretical side of the debate has been closely associated with two strands in the academic literature international asset pricing and optimal hedging in the futures markets in the international asset pricing model iapm of solnik 1974 optimal portfolios contain positions in forward contracts or equivalently foreign currency denominated bills these positions which can differ from the positions in foreign stocks have since been termed hedges black 1990 shows that under additional assumptions the hedge ratios should be identical for all investors regardless of their nationality universality and that investors should never fully hedge their foreign currency exposures similarly theoretical models from the futures literature produce demands for hedging instruments that contain both speculative and hedging components the empirical issue unanswered so far is whether adding forward contracts to international portfolios significantly improves the risk return profile of global investments empirical research has barely begun to respond to the challenges of theoretical models there exists little empirical evidence on either the relevance of black s universal hedge ratios or the optimality of hedge ratios less than one instead researchers have concentrated on the benefits of fully hedging exchange risk for example eun and resnick 1988 indicate that stock portfolios perform better when fully hedged but offer no statistical tests

learning from experience the development of the renewables obligation in england and wales 2002 2010 abstract the uk has enviable renewable resources both onshore wind and offshore wind wave and tidal the offshore valuation group 2010 the government has had policy mechanisms in place since 1990 to encourage these resources to be developed the current mechanism the renewables obligation ro was specifically designed to emphasise competition and therefore to fit in with the uk s overall strategic approach to energy policy however as yet it has not delivered the capacity that it was designed to do and as a result the uk faces a difficult challenge in attempting to meet european wide renewable energy targets for 2020 as well as longer term decarbonisation targets this paper explores some of the major reasons why the ro has performed so poorly to date and considers the prospects for improvement up to 2020 it concludes that the strategic emphasis on competition in the support mechanisms has played a key role in limiting renewables development but that the mechanism has changed significantly since it was introduced however these changes together with proposals for electricity market reform still do not address important elements of risk in comparison with a standard feed in tariff

an ekc pattern in historical perspective carbon dioxide emissions technology fuel prices and growth in sweden 1870 1997 the environmental kuznets curve ekc has been subject to research and debate since the early 1990s this articleexamines the inverted u trajectory of swedish co2 emissions during an extended time

factors behind the environmental kuznets curve a decomposition of the changes in air pollution the environmental kuznets curve theory suggeststhat economic growth in the long run may reduceenvironmental problems in this article we usea decomposition analysis to isolate eightdifferent factors in order to investigate theorigins of changes in emissions to air over theperiod from 1980 to 1996 among these factorsare economic growth changes in the relativesize of production sectors and changes in theuse of energy given constant emissions perproduced unit economic growth alone would havecontributed to a significant increase in theemissions this potential degradation of theenvironment has been counteracted by first ofall more efficient use of energy and abatementtechnologies in addition the substitution ofcleaner for polluting energy types and othertechnological progressions and politicalactions have reduced the growth in emissions consequently the growth in all emissions hasbeen significantly lower than economic growth and negative for some pollutants the results indicate that policymakers mayreduce emissions considerably through creatingincentives for lower energy use andsubstitutions of environmental friendly forenvironmental damaging energy types inaddition to support environmental friendlyresearch or to conduct direct emission reducingactions such as abatement requirements orbanning of environmental damaging products this is particularly relevant to countries andsectors with relatively high energy intensitiesand low pollution abatement