sustainable de growth mapping the context criticisms and future prospects of an emergent paradigm article i nfo sustainable de growth is both a concept and a social grassroots northern movement with its origins in the fieldsofecologicaleconomics socialecology economicanthropologyand environmentalandsocialactivistgroups this paper introduces the concept of sustainable de growth by mapping some of the main intellectual influences fromthese fields with special focus on the francophone and anglophone thinking about this emergent notion we propose hypotheses pertaining to the appeal of sustainable de growth and compare it to the messages enclosed within the dominant sustainable development idea we scrutinize the theses contradictions and consequences of sustainable de growth thinking as it is currently being shaped by a heterogeneous body of literature and as it interacts with an ample and growing corpus of social movements we also discuss possible future paths for the de growth movement compared to the apparent weakening of the sustainable development paradigm

does economic recession reduce material use empirical evidence based on 157 economies worldwide abstract the research on economic recession has been more focused on the interactions between macroeconomic and financial variables however whether material use has been affected during the recession period has remained under explored in order to fill up this gap this study investigates the relationship between material use and economic recession as well as other socio economic drivers by using the material flow analysis and the system generalized method of moments for 157 economies worldwide during 1980 2011 results show that economic recession poses significant and negative impact on domestic material consumption at 1 level illustrating its role as a determinant factor on material mitigation by dividing the research sample into extractive and non extractive economies as well as high mid and low income groups we again confirmed the significant negative correlations as expected no significant sign is found between recession and physical trade balance besides other drivers such as population gross domestic production gdp per capita and technological variables also exert marked effects at different situations this research work provides an empirical study on how recession and other factors affect material use at various scenarios which have essential implications for understanding material flow dynamics in different economic cycles

co benefit of carbon mitigation on resource use in china abstract on one hand natural resources and energy provide the basis for life on earth but waste and emissions are produced during their throughput on the other hand china as the most populous country and an emerging economic powerhouse has taken on the challenge of hitting peak carbon dioxide co2 emissions by 2030 pursuing resource co benefits from carbon mitigation is an effective approach for china on the road to achieving the 2030 goal in this study we combine the computable general equilibrium cge model and the economy wide material flow accounts or analysis ew mfa method to estimate china s future co2 emissions and resource consumption and their co benefit effect three scenarios are analyzed business as usual bau nationally determined contributions ndc and the scenario of achieving the 2 degree target 2deg we find that both the ndc and 2deg targets can be achieved by 2030 without a significant compromise in economic growth with the effect of carbon mitigation china s resource consumption would rise by a factor of 1 7 bau 1 6 ndc and 1 5 2deg during 2012 2030 and the reduction in co benefits of metal ores nonmetallic minerals and fossil fuels would be 0 6 billion tons and 1 4 billion tons 0 8 billion tons and 2 0 billion tons and 2 6 billion tons and 4 6 billion tons for ndc and 2deg respectively sectoral disparity indicates that sectors with high emissions and resource consumption include traditional heavy industrial sectors and energy related sectors for which additional mitigation policies should be employed not only because they offer the most co benefit effects but they also have the least cost

internal and external effects of r d subsidies and fiscal incentives empirical evidence using spatial dynamic panel models abstract most studies evaluating the macroeconomic effects of financial support policies on business funded r d use econometric methods that do not consider the existence of spatial effects and generate biased estimates in this paper we discus and address this problem using spatial dynamic panel data methods this allow us to provide new insights on the internal in country and external out of country effects of both research and development r d subsidies and fiscal incentives we use a database of 25 oecd countries for the period 1990 2009 in relation to internal effects for both instruments we find a non linear relationship between their effect on private r d and their level suggesting the possibility of leveraging and crowding out effects we also find a substitution effect between the r d subsidies and fiscal incentives implemented within a country concerning the spatial component we find evidence of positive spatial spillovers among private r d investments however our results suggest the existence of competition substitution effects between national r d policies

the physical dimension of international trade part 1 direct global flows between 1962 and 2005 abstract the physical dimension of international trade is attaining increased importance this article describes a method to calculate complete physical trade flows for all countries which report their trade to the un the method is based on the un comtrade database and it was used to calculate world wide physical trade flows for all reporting countries in nine selected years between 1962 and 2005 the results show increasing global trade with global direct material trade flows reaching about 10 billion tonnes in 2005 corresponding to a physical trade volume of about 20 billion tonnes adding both total imports and total exports the share from european countries is declining mainly in favour of asian countries the dominant traded commodity in physical units was fossil fuels mainly oil physical trade balances were used to identify the dominant resource suppliers and demanders australia was the principal resource supplier over the period with a diverse material export structure it was followed by mainly oil exporting countries with varying volumes as regards to regions latin america south east asian islands and central asia were big resource exporters mostly with increasing absolute amounts of net exports the largest net importers were japan the united states and single european countries emerging countries like the asian tigers with major industrial productive sectors are growing net importers some of them to an even higher degree than european countries altogether with the major exception of australia and canada industrialized countries are net importers and developing countries and transition countries are net exporters but there are important differences within these groups

pathways to a low carbon economy estimations on macroeconomic costs and potential of carbon emission abatement in beijing abstract developing reliable frameworks to estimate the potential of co2 emission abatement and its associated costs merits urgent attention this study aims to estimate the potential as well as macroeconomic costs of co2 emission abatement in beijing using the industrial economy as the basis multiobjective programming and genetic algorithm are integrated into the input output analysis several important findings have been gathered in the study 1 the abatement cost varies between 259 97 and 535 46 per ton at different rates of economic growth 2 a reinforced emission abatement target can induce higher macroeconomic costs 3 an inverse u shaped relationship between co2 reduction cost and gdp growth rate was found when gdp growth rate is above the threshold value of 7 marginal abatement costs decrease rapidly in parallel with gdp growth when the gdp growth rate is below 7 the marginal abatement cost increases significantly with economic growth 4 industries that have the highest and least potential of abatement have been identified for effectively reducing co2 emissions beijing needs to promote economic restructuring to maximize the potential of emission abatement and also fulfil the emission abatement target in a cost effective way this paper provides a quantitative approach to rationalize the policy design process of enacting emission targets and recommends cost effective abatement strategies

the causal relationship between renewable electricity generation and gdp growth a study of energy sources abstract this paper examines the causal relationship between economic growth and electricity generation from renewable sources biomass geothermal hydroelectric solar waste and wind across 20 oecd countries over 1990 to 2008 the results from a commonly used panel error correction model find a a bidirectional relationship between aggregate renewable generation and real gdp b biomass hydroelectricity waste and wind energy exhibit a positive long run relationship with gdp c hydroelectricity and waste generation exhibit a short run positive bidirectional relationship with gdp growth and d biomass hydroelectric and waste electricity generation have the largest impact on real gdp in the long run we extend the analysis to consider the possibility of structural breaks and cross sectional dependence accounting for cross sectional dependence we find that in the short run increases in biomass and waste generation negatively affect gdp while aggregate renewable and hydroelectricity increase gdp energy conservation policies will positively impact gdp if the policies cause decreases in biomass or waste energy but increase hydroelectricity and wind energy

examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 2 review of input output models for the assessment of environmental impacts embodied in trade this paper offers a detailed review of recently described single and multi region input output models used to assess environmental impacts of internationally traded goods and services it is the second part of a two part contribution in part 1 turner k lenzen m wiedmann t and barrett j in press examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics we describe how to enumerate the resource and pollution content of inter regional and inter national trade flows with the aim to illustrate an ideal accounting and modelling framework for the estimation of ecological footprints a large number of such environment economic models have been described but only in the last few years models have emerged that use a more sophisticated multi region multi sector input output framework this has been made possible through improvements in data availability and quality as well as computability we identify six major models that employ multi sector multi region input output analysis in order to calculate environmental impacts embodied in international trade results from the reviewed studies demonstrate that it is important to explicitly consider the production recipe land and energy use as well as emissions in a multi region multi sector and multi directional trade model with global coverage and detailed sector disaggregation only then reliable figures for indicators of impacts embodied in trade such as the ecological footprint can be derived

environmental governance in federal systems the effects of capital competition and lobby groups noel gaston we argue that centralized and decentralized environmental governance yield equivalent environmental regulations we model worker environmental and capital owner lobby groups that seek influence by offering political contributions worker lobbying in the decentralized case has an effect on environmental regulations identical to that of capital owner lobbying in the centralized case this is because the aggregate effects of environmental regulations on income are equivalent under the two institutional designs whereas workers carry the full burden in the decentralized case when capital competition occurs the burden is shared with the capital owners in the centralized case we present evidence consistent with our theory jel q28 f21 r38 d72 d78 i introduction as the demand for efficient environmental policies increases the ambit of political power in a federation must be determined cumberland 1981 suggests that uniform federal rules avoid the economic competition between jurisdictions in order to attract investment that may result in an excessively low environmental quality as discussed by burtraw and portney 1991 central decision making may be highly inefficient however because federal regulations fail to take into account the heterogeneity of local environments 1 this article develops a theory of decentralized and centralized environmental policy making in federal systems that incorporates the political forces determining the outcomes under the two alternative regulatory designs the empirical evidence on the effects of interjurisdictional capital competition on environmental policies is inconclusive and mainly anecdotal esty 1996 gives an overview of the available evidence and finds that rent seeking behavior undoubtedly affects national as well as state environmental policy making but there is no evidence that public decision making is systematically more distorted at the federal level than at state and local levels 2 in a study of packaging waste regulation in the european union eu paul 1994 95 describes how the move from decentralized to centralized regulation remains controversial some greens bitterly criticize the directive as a sellout to industry it is true that industry aggressively lobbied parliament to stop the efforts of the greens to tighten the directive and that i t is tempting to describe this debate as one more example in which the regulatory authority was captured by industry 3 evidently the move to centralized regulation stimulated industry lobbying the present paper provides an explanation for why industry lobbying may be stronger at the federal level and discusses the implications for environmental policy under decentralized and centralized environmental policy making 4 the current literature lacks a formal comparison of politically determined environmental regulations under the different institutional arrangements that may exist in federal systems 5 while we couch our argument in terms of environmental policy making that could be undertaken either at the national level or at lower levels in a federal structure we believe that the central ideas extend to regulatory policy carried out at both the highest and lowest levels of multi country federations such as the eu 6 extensions of our theory may apply more generally to several forms of regulation for example worker safety standards and product liability legislation as well as to firm taxation a key concern of environmental policy makers in federal systems is interjurisdictional capital mobility we model a decentralized system of regulation with a mobile capital stock consideration of the effects of environmental regulations on capital is important van beers and van den bergh 1997 find no significant negative effect of environmental regulation on export flows in polluting industries except when restricting their data to sectors with high capital mobility

how responsible is a region for its carbon emissions an empirical general equilibrium analysis targets for co2 reduction tend to be set in terms of the amount of pollution generated within the borders of a given region or nation that is under a production accounting principle however in recent years there has been increased public and policy interest in the notion of a carbon footprint or the amount of pollution generated globally to serve final consumption demand within a region or nation that is switching focus to a consumption accounting principle however this paper argues that a potential issue arising from the increasing focus on consumption based carbon footprint type measures is that while regional co2 generation embodied in export production is attributed outside of the region i e to the carbon footprints of other regions nations regional consumers are likely to benefit from such production moreover where there is a geographical and supply chain gap between producers and final consumers it may be difficult to identify precisely whose carbon footprint emissions should be allocated to

equilibrium pollution taxes in open economies with imperfect competition abstract this paper argues that imperfect competition in global markets creates a strategic interaction between governments that can lead to the inefficient distortion of pollution taxes this distortion can be decomposed into a rent capture effect and a pollution shifting effect the rent capture effect lowers equilibrium taxes as each country attempts to gain a competitive advantage over its trading partner and thereby capture foreign rent through net exports the pollution shifting effect raises equilibrium taxes as each country attempts to transfer production and its associated pollution to the other country this effect vanishes if pollution is perfectly transboundary because shifted pollution causes as much damage to the domestic environment as does domestic pollution the net effect on symmetric equilibrium taxes is negative except in the special case of perfect competition with no transboundary pollution in this case the two effects are mutually offsetting and the nash equilibrium is efficient when pollution is at least partially transboundary there also arises the usual transboundary externality and this reinforces the negative net strategic effect giving rise to equilibrium taxes that are lower than what is globally efficient

impacts of climate change on self sufficiency of rice in china a cge model based evidence with alternative regional feedback mechanisms abstract climate change would pose a direct and severe challenge to china s rice production and self sufficiency here we use global trade analysis project gtap model to evaluate the impacts of climate change on the self sufficiency of rice in china due to 2 c rise in temperature and further analyze the impact and transmission mechanisms of climate change through market and trade our simulation method switches different regional mechanisms in the gtap model by employing alternative closures and scenarios our results suggest that the fluctuation in rice price is much larger than that of rice production the active regional feedback mechanism has much larger effects than the passive one in assessing climate change impacts with the passive regional feedback mechanism single regional general equilibrium srge and multi regional general equilibrium with china s shock mrge c china s rice export would decrease by more than 8 and import would increase by over 5 which leads to a decrease in rice self sufficiency by more than 0 06 percentage points with the active regional feedback mechanism multi regional general equilibrium with global shock mrge w climate change will increase china s rice export by 2 7 as rising rice exports to south korea overweight the export decrease to other countries concurrently china s rice import would decrease by 0 04 which leads to a slight increase in rice self sufficiency as a whole climate change will not severely threaten china s rice self sufficiency by the decomposition analysis climate change impacts on china s rice self sufficiency mainly depend on the changes in china s domestic rice production interestingly the source of china s rice import will switch from vietnam to pakistan under mrge w which derives from the input structure of paddy rice and rice sectors in different countries

shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice abstract over the past decade an increasing number of authors have been examining the nexus of producer versus consumer responsibility often dealing with the question of how to assign responsibility for internationally traded greenhouse gas emissions recently a similar problem has appeared in drafting the standards for the ecological footprint while the method traditionally assumes a full life cycle perspective with full consumer responsibility a large number of producers businesses and industry sectors have started to calculate their own footprints see www isa org usyd edu au adding any producer s footprint to other producers footprints or to population footprints which all already cover the full upstream supply chain of their operating inputs leads to double counting the sum of footprints of producers and consumers is larger than the total national footprint the committee in charge of the footprint standardisation process was hence faced with the decades old non additivity problem posing the following dilemma for the accounting of footprints or any other production factor if one disallows double counting but wishes to be able to account for producers and consumers then one cannot impose the requirement of full life cycle coverage the supply chains of actors have to be curtailed somehow in order to avoid double counting this work demonstrates and discusses a non arbitrary method of consistently delineating these supply chains into mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive portions of responsibility to be shared by all actors in an economy

political internalization of economic externalities and environmental policy abstract this paper derives the characteristics of endogenous environmental policy in a common agency model of politics and proceeds to show that competition between lobby groups is an important source of internalization of economic externalities our analysis generalizes bhagwati s principle of targeting to the case of distorted political markets moreover we show that the politically optimal structure of environmental taxes incorporates a pigouvian adjustment however since lobby groups care about the distribution of income as well as about efficiency the equilibrium structure of taxes differs considerably from the pigouvian rule

embodied carbon in china s foreign trade an online sci e and ssci based literature review abstract this paper systematically presents a survey of the empirical literature studying the embodied co2 emissions in china s foreign trade ecct based on the bibliometric method and the online version of science citation index expanded sci e and social sciences citation index ssci this study summarizes the latest publications regarding ecct in peer reviewed journals in terms of quantities most productive countries institutions authors citations and disciplines by using synthetic analysis of keyword frequency this study reveals the most popular methodologies applied in measuring ecct discusses the variation of numerical results in the literature and reasons and countermeasures for the results uncertainties continuous investigation of the literature releases the methodology employed for measuring ecct becoming more reasonable and the results more critical however the numerical results of ecct are of great discrepancies within given year by different considerations on methodology specification accounting principles and data sources and processing for instance the estimates of co2 embodied in china s exports changed from 478 mt to over 3000 mt and those of in china s imports ranged from 140 mt to over 1700 mt in 2007 therefore overcoming data inherent limitations and reducing discrepancies among available databases should be urgently considered the results imply that the prospective research tendencies on ecct are to 1 improve china s regional input output data and energy intensity data to more precise estimates under global perspective 2 estimate china s carbon emission at firm level by different firm ownerships in production and consumption worldwide 3 assess china s carbon emission from processing or non processing trade by compiling more detailed multi regional input output table 4 evaluate city level carbon mitigation capacity in china under global mrio model 5 explore new carbon management experience in china s carbon trading market and new trade expansion policy of one belt and one road in her new growth era

energy and resource allocation a dynamic model of the dutch disease it is well known that a domestic resource discovery gives rise to wealth effects that cause a squeeze of the tradeable good sector of an open economy the decline of the manufacturing sector following an energy discovery has been termed the dutch disease and has been investigated in many recent studies our model extends the principally static analyses to date by allowing for 1 short run capital specificity and long run capital mobility 2 international capital flows and 3 far sighted intertemporal optimizing behaviour by households and firms the model is solved by numerical simulation

competition in regional environmental policies when plant locations are endogenous abstract a two region model is presented in which an imperfectly competitive firm produces a good with increasing returns at the plant level production of the good causes local pollution the firm decides whether to maintain plants in both regions serve both regions from a single plant or shut down if the disutility of pollution is high enough the two regions will compete by increasing their environmental taxes standards until the polluting firm is driven from the market alternatively if the disutility from pollution is not as great the regions will usually compete by undercutting each other s pollution tax rates

on environmental federalism and direct emission control abstract a theoretical exception to the race to the bottom contends that if decentralized environmental policy is comprised of direct controls on each firm emissions standards are set too high when compared to a centralized optimum herein we examine potential distortions in decentralized decision making by reconciling two recent views of direct environmental controls we show that differences in direct control policy can arise from differences in the number of symmetric jurisdictions in an economy our results suggest the race is on once the number of jurisdictions competing for a fixed number of firms increase we see the race is off when few jurisdictions can exploit their form of environmental market power

the voluntary provision of a pure public good the case of reduced cfc emissions and the montreal protocol abstract this paper applies the theory of the voluntary provision of a pure public good to the behavior of nations to curb chlorofluorocarbon cfc emissions during the late 1980s by devising an empirical test we determine that these cutbacks in emissions are consistent with nash behavior when taste parameters are controlled the relationship between emission cutbacks and national income is nearly linear as implied by the theory if the sample is purged of potential outliers then the linear relationship results a significant taste parameter is the extent of political and civil freedoms while a marginally significant parameter is geophysical position in terms of latitude

looking towards policies supporting biofuels and technological change evidence from france abstract the increasing constraints on crude oil resources contribute to the emergence of liquid biofuels as an alternative for road transport fuels the european union eu parliament called for a 7 limit on crop based biofuels by 2030 and proposed increasing the incorporation target for advanced biofuels within the proposals under discussion in relation to the post 2020 eu renewable energy directive red ii by 2021 2030 the main objective of this work is to assess the economic impacts of the eu parliament s decision concerning first generation biofuels we also determine the conditions under which advanced biofuels could become available by examining the evolution of oil prices and public subsidies we employ a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model calibrated on the french economy advanced biofuels are modelled as latent technology and we include biofuel by products our simulations provide guidelines for public decision makers to design alternative fiscal policies to support biofuels in a context of regulatory uncertainty

harmonization and optimal environmental policy in a federal system with asymmetric information abstract should environmental policy be set at the federal level to counter incentives for environmental dumping when states act non cooperatively assuming that environmental damage costs are known only by state governments i ask whether this asymmetry of information could rationalize a federal government harmonizing environmental policies across states i show that asymmetric information narrows the difference in environmental policies across states relative to full information but does not justify harmonization the welfare loss from harmonization rises sharply with the variance in damage costs across states and can erode the benefit of setting policy at the federal level to counter environmental dumping

the macro economic rebound effect and the uk economy abstract this paper examines the macroeconomic rebound effect for the uk economy arising from energy efficiency policies 2000 2010 using the macroeconomic model mdm e3 the literature distinguishes between three types of rebound effect direct indirect and economy wide the macroeconomic rebound effect considered here is the combination of the indirect and economy wide effects policies for the domestic business commercial and public and transport sectors of the economy are analysed for 2000 2010 overall the policies lead to a saving of about 8 of the energy which would otherwise have been used and a reduction in co2 emissions of 10 or 14 mtc by 2010 there are also favourable macroeconomic effects lower inflation and higher growth we find that the macroeconomic rebound effect arising from uk energy efficiency policies for the period 2000 2010 is around 11 by 2010 averaged across sectors of the economy when this is added to the assumed direct rebound effect of around 15 this gives a total rebound effect of around 26 arising from these policies thus the findings of the study support the argument that energy efficiency improvements for both consumers and producers stimulated by policy incentives will lead to significant reductions in energy demand and hence in greenhouse gas emissions

the impacts of china s household consumption expenditure patterns on energy demand and carbon emissions towards 2050 abstract this paper explores how china s household consumption patterns over the period 2005 2050 influence the total energy demand and carbon dioxide co2 emissions in two baseline scenarios and how it influences carbon prices as well as the economic cost in the corresponding carbon mitigation scenarios to this end we first put forward two possible household consumption expenditure patterns up to 2050 using the working leser model taking into account total expenditure increase and urbanization for comparison both expenditure patterns are then incorporated in a hybrid recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model the results reveal that as income level increases in the coming decades the direct and indirect household energy requirements and co2 emissions would rise drastically when household expenditure shifts from material products and transport to service oriented goods around 21 000 mtce 1 of primary energy and 45 billion tons of co2 emissions would be saved over the 45 year period from 2005 to 2050 moreover carbon prices in the dematerialized mitigation scenario would fall by 13 in 2050 thus reducing the economic cost

stoking the fires co2 emissions and economic growth abstract we examine the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide emissions a greenhouse gas central to global warming predictions estimates derived from global panel data suggest a diminishing marginal propensity to emit mpe carbon dioxide as gdp per capita rises despite this global carbon dioxide emissions growth will continue at 1 8 percent per annum for the foreseeable future a result that is not sensitive to average output growth instead emissions growth continues because output and population will grow most rapidly in lower income nations with high mpes this latter feature emphasizes the distributional consequences of policies to reduce emissions

is carbon emission growth decoupled from economic growth in emerging countries new insights from labor and investment effects abstract as emerging countries are both major contributors to global carbon emissions growth and global economic growth the sharp contradiction between economy and carbon emissions has seriously hindered the sustainable development of emerging countries and is not conducive to the realization of global emission reduction targets this work takes brics brazil russia india china and south africa the representatives of emerging countries as an example to investigate the decoupling state between economic growth and carbon emissions and to uncover the driving factors behind these decoupling the results show i russia and south africa have experienced the longest time of strong decoupling indicating that the decoupling in these two countries is better than that in other countries china india and south africa was characterized by expansive coupling weak decoupling and expansive negative decoupling respectively ii the labor effect and investment effect have contributed to the carbon emissions growth in the brics and the reasons for the carbon emissions changes in russia india china and south africa are strongly consistent while brazil has a different performance iii the investment decoupling effect has hindered the decoupling process in russia south africa china and india but has promoted the decoupling process in brazil while the energy intensity effect is the driving force in the decoupling process in most countries finally the policy recommendations for the different decoupling status of each country were put forward

pathways to a resource efficient and low carbon europe abstract various environmental footprint concepts have already been developed and applied in sustainability research however these analyses tend to remain restricted to historical observation samples at least in comparison with related research activities in other environmental policy domains like e g climate policy it seems that applications of integrated assessment tools represent rather seldom exceptions within the resource policy domain our paper is therefore intended to strengthen the related evidence base we present recent projections from the dynamic multi region input output mrio simulation model ginfors global inter industry forecasting system which provide an outlook on global development trends until the year 2050 our detailed material footprint and climate policy assessment indicates that a global agreement on a policy mix will allow a clear turnaround towards climate protection and a sustainable use of natural resources without deteriorating economic performance if the eu decides unilaterally to lead the way then this turnaround could also be achieved for the eu while the eu would also benefit economically from this pioneering role a third pathway towards a resource efficient and low carbon europe quantifies the environmental and economic impacts of a strong transitional change induced by european citizens commitments to far reaching sufficiency objectives

carbon footprint of a university in a multiregional model the case of the university of castilla la mancha abstract the increasing concern about the environmental performance and sustainability of firms and organizations also involves educational institutions if universities aim to become leaders in sustainability aspects they must adopt strategies that involve the entire university system as a useful tool for this purpose the objective of this study was to calculate the carbon footprint for the university of castilla la mancha for the period 2005 2013 the calculation of the university carbon footprint was accomplished through a hybrid environmentally extended input output model in a multiregional framework which constitutes a novelty of the analysis the proposed tool also allows the calculation of the potential for emissions reduction of abatement measures the carbon footprint induced by the consumption of university employees wages is also undertaken as a way to increase awareness and university outreach to society the results show the relevance of both imports and indirect emissions and highlight the significance of energy related emissions enabled by sectors such as renting electrical and optical equipment manufacturing or even services

is public r d a complement or substitute for private r d a review of the econometric evidence is public r d spending complementary and thus additional to private r d spending or does it substitute for and tend to crowd out private r d conflicting answers are given to this question we survey the body of available econometric evidence accumulated over the past 35 years a framework for analysis of the problem is developed to help organize and summarize the findings of econometric studies based on time series and cross section data from various levels of aggregation laboratory firm industry country the findings overall are ambivalent and the existing literature as a whole is subject to the criticism that the nature of the experiment s that the investigators envisage is not adequately specified we conclude by offering suggestions for improving future empirical research on this issue

cross hauling of polluting factors abstract this paper analyzes the investment environment overlap using a two stage model of two jurisdictions capital exports are modeled as choice variables for capital owners who weigh income considerations against the effects of capital exports on the quality of their local environments and on environmental policy this framework reveals that capital owners have an incentive to cross haul polluting factors across jurisdictions when direct controls are used to regulate emissions and that this cross hauling induces policymakers to ratchet up environmental policies in both locations the importance of instrument type and commitment on environmental policy is also analyzed

the sustainable development index measuring the ecological efficiency of human development in the anthropocene abstract when the human development index hdi was introduced in the 1990s it was an important step toward a more sensible measure of progress one defined less by gdp growth and more by social goals but the limitations of hdi have become clear in the 21st century given a growing crisis of climate change and ecological breakdown hdi pays no attention to ecology and retains an emphasis on high levels of income that given strong correlations between income and ecological impact violates sustainability principles the countries that score highest on the hdi also contribute most in per capita terms to climate change and other forms of ecological breakdown in this sense hdi promotes a model of development that is empirically incompatible with ecological stability and impossible to universalize in this paper i propose an alternative index that corrects for these problems the sustainable development index sdi the sdi retains the base formula of the hdi but places a sufficiency threshold on per capita income and divides by two key indicators of ecological impact co2 emissions and material footprint both calculated in per capita consumption based terms and rendered vis a vis planetary boundaries the sdi is an indicator of strong sustainability that measures nations ecological efficiency in delivering human development

energy efficiency rebound effects and the environmental kuznets curve technological change is one factor used to justify the existence of an environmental kuznets curve and technological improvements have been argued to be a key factor in mitigating the impacts of economic growth on environmental quality in this paper we use a cge model of the scottish economy to consider the factors influencing the impacts of one form of technological change improvements in energy efficiency on absolute levels of co2 emissions on the carbon intensity of the economy co2 emissions relative to real gdp and the per capita ekc relationship these factors include the elasticity of substitution between energy and non energy inputs responses in the labour market and the structure of the economy our results demonstrate the key role played by the general equilibrium price elasticity of demand for energy and the relative influence of different factors on this parameter

inter regional competition comparative advantage and environmental federalism in this paper we compare endogenous environmental policy setting with centralized and decentralized governments when regions have comparative advantages in different polluting goods we develop a two region two good model with inter regional environmental damages and perfect competition in product markets where both regions produce both goods despite positive spillovers of pollution across regions the model predicts that decentralization may lead to weaker or stricter environmental standards or taxes depending on the degree of regional comparative advantage and the extent of transboundary pollution this suggests that federalism can lead to either a race to the bottom or a race to the top without relying on inefficient lobbying efforts or capital competition resume concurrence inter regionale avantage comparatif et federalisme environnemental dans ce texte les auteurs comparent l appareil de definition de politique environnementale endogene pour des gouvernements centralises et decentralises quand les regions ont des avantages comparatifs dans la production de divers biens polluants on developpe un modele a deux regions et a deux biens operant dans un cadre ou existent 1 des effets de retombees inter regionales toxiques pour l environnement 2 concurrence parfaite dans les marches des produits et 3 ou les deux regions produisent les deux biens malgre les effets de pollution entre regions le modele predit que la decentralisation peut entrainer des standards et des taxes portant sur l environnement qui sont soit plus faibles ou plus forts selon le degre d avantage comparatif regional et la nature de la pollution transfrontiere on suggere que le federalisme peut conduire a une emulation soit vers le bas soit vers le haut sans avoir a avoir recours a des efforts de lobbying inefficaces ou a la concurrence pour le capital pour expliquer le resultat

international spillover and rebound effects from increased energy efficiency in germany the pollution energy leakage literature raises the concern that policies implemented in one country such as a carbon tax or tight energy restrictions might simply result in the reallocation of energy use to other countries this paper addresses these concerns in the context of policies to increase energy efficiency rather than direct action to reduce energy use using a global cge simulation model we extend the analyses of economy wide rebound from the national focus of previous studies to incorporate international spill over effects from trade in goods and services our focus is to investigate whether these effects have the potential to increase or reduce the overall global rebound of local energy efficiency improvements in the case we consider increased energy efficiency in german production generates changes in comparative advantage that produce negative leakage effects thereby actually rendering global rebound less than national rebound

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

the physical dimension of international trade part 2 indirect global resource flows between 1962 and 2005 global trade is increasingly being challenged by observations of growing burden shifting in particular of environmental problems this paper presents the first worldwide calculations of shifted burden based on material flow indicators in particular direct and indirect physical trade balances this study covers the period between 1962 and 2005 and includes between 82 and 173 countries per year the results show that indirect trade flow volumes have increased to around 41 billion tonnes in 2005 the traded resources with the highest share of associated indirect flows are iron hard coal copper tin and increasingly palm oil regarding the burden balance between regions europe is the biggest shifter whereas australia and latin america are the largest takers of environmental burden due to resource extraction to evaluate the findings from a global perspective the results are analysed in terms of resource flow induced environmental pressure related to a country s land area in terms of total and per capita area resource endowment and population density seem to be more relevant in determining the physical trade balance including indirect flows than income level

the high price of dematerialization a dynamic panel data analysis of material use and economic recession abstract dematerialization at the national level occurs almost exclusively during periods of economic recession or low growth while recession is not a sustainable strategy to curb environmental impact such periods may offer important insights on the possibilities of reducing material use economic recession research has focused on the interactions between macroeconomic and financial variables with little systematic research dedicated to uncovering how resource use develops during periods of recession using a dynamic panel model we investigate whether and to what extent material use in a sample of 150 economies between 1970 and 2010 was affected by recession and low growth recession occurred most frequently and in more than two thirds of all countries during the 1980s and the 1990s in the 2000s more than half of the recessions occurred during the financial crisis of 2008 periods of recession were significantly and negatively correlated with material use they tended to coincide with dematerialization material use decreased in recession years but the significant correlations with growth in material use became weaker as growth rates increased construction minerals and metals used to build stocks of manufactured capital reacted more strongly to economic fluctuations than the throughput dominated flows of biomass and fossil fuels we conclude that the systematic link between recession and dematerialization can become policy relevant if the mechanisms causing reductions in material use during these periods are identified

does ecologically unequal exchange occur the hypothesis of ecologically unequal exchange posits that low and middle income developing nations maintain an ecological deficit with wealthy developed nations exporting natural resources and high impact commodities thereby allowing wealthy economies to avoid operating ecologically impactful industries at home in this survey we assess the footprint of consumption of 187 countries using eight indicators of environmental pressure in order to determine whether or not this phenomenon occurs we use input output analysis with a new high resolution global multi region input output table to calculate each trading pair s balance of trade in biophysical terms of ghg emissions embodied water and scarcity weighted water content air pollution threatened species human appropriated net primary productivity total material flow and ecological footprint we test three hypotheses that should be true if ecologically unequal exchange occurs one the inter regional balance of trade in biophysical terms is disproportional to the balance of trade in financial terms we find this is true though not strongly so two exports from developing nations are more ecologically intensive than those from developed nations we find this is true three high income nations disproportionately exert ecological impacts in lower income nations we find this is false high income nations are mostly exporters not importers of biophysical resources

assessing global resource use and greenhouse emissions to 2050 with ambitious resource efficiency and climate mitigation policies achieving sustainable development requires the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental pressures from economic growth and improvements in living standards g7 leaders and others have called for improved resource efficiency along with inclusive economic growth and deep cuts in global greenhouse emissions however the outlooks for and interactions between global natural resource use resource efficiency economic growth and greenhouse emissions are not well understood we use a novel multi regional modeling framework to develop projections to 2050 under existing trends and three policy scenarios we find that resource efficiency could provide pro growth pro environment policies with global benefits of usd 2 4 trillion in 2050 and ease the politics of shifting towards sustainability under existing trends resource extraction is projected to increase 119 from 2015 to 2050 from 84 to 184 billion tonnes per annum while greenhouse gas emissions increase 41 both driven by the value of global economic activity more than doubling resource efficiency and greenhouse abatement slow the growth of global resource extraction so that in 2050 it is up to 28 lower than in existing trends resource efficiency reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 15 20 in 2050 with global emissions falling to 63 below 2015 levels when combined with a 2 c emissions pathway in contrast to greenhouse abatement resource efficiency boosts near term economic growth these economic gains more than offset the near term costs of shifting to a 2 c emissions pathway resulting in emissions in 2050 well below current levels slower growth in resource extractions and faster economic growth

technological progress and sustainable development what about the rebound effect abstract sustainability concepts that rest on the idea of resource or energy efficiency improvements due to technological progress tend to overestimate the potential saving effects because they frequently ignore the behavioral responses evoked by technological improvements efficiency improvements also affect the demand for resources and energy and often an increase in efficiency by 1 will cause a reduction in resource use that is far below 1 or sometimes it can even cause an increase in resource use this phenomenon is commonly labeled the rebound effect which is well known among energy economists but never attracted much attention in ecological economics the paper starts with the traditional neoclassical analysis of the rebound effect in a partial equilibrium framework that concentrates on the demand of one particular energy service such as mobility or room temperature it also provides an overview of some of the main empirical studies based on this model that mostly confirm the existence of the rebound effect but are controversial about its actual importance however we have to go beyond the neoclassical single service model in order to take care of the variety of possible feedback affecting energy use the paper presents two important expansions of the single service model in order to show the potential relevance of the rebound effect to ecological economics first it is shown that in a multi services model it proves to be difficult to make general statements about the relevance of the rebound effect in this case the overall effect of an increase in energy efficiency on total energy use depends on the on the assumptions about the substitutability between the services considered and the direction of the income effect second the paper also tries to take care of the fact that changes in resource use or energy use are frequently just side effects of other forms of technological progress especially technological change of a time saving nature can have a large influence on energy use as many time saving devices for example faster modes of transport require an increase in energy consumption that is frequently reinforced by a rebound effect with respect to time this effect will be especially strong when wages are high and at the same time energy prices are low as is currently the case in most industrialized countries consequently the paper also provides a strong argument for the introduction of energy taxes

a note on environmental federalism interpreting some contradictory results abstract this paper reconciles some conflicting interpretations of recent literature on interjurisdictional environmental regulatory competition 6 7 present a model in which competition to attract investment by lowering environmental standards leads to a pareto optimal equilibrium 3 and 4 describe a model in which such competition can result in a suboptimal nash equilibrium while it would be possible to draw opposite policy implications from the two models regarding the appropriate degree of environmental federalism such a conclusion would be incorrect this paper reconciles the different results by showing that they depend in large part on monopoly profits and tax exporting not the nature of the pollution externality or environmental federalism

does increasing investment in research and development promote economic growth decoupling from carbon emission growth an empirical analysis of brics countries abstract it is generally recognized that increasing research and development investment is an effective measure to promote economic and social progress an open question is if increasing research and development investment help economic growth decoupling from carbon emission this study investigates research and development investment and carbon emission in brics countries by using the fully modified ordinary least squares for empirical estimation from 1996 to 2014 the results show that every 1 increase in research and development investment carbon emissions will be decreased by 0 8122 for the brics as a whole which indicates increasing research and development investment has a positive impact on decoupling economic growth from environmental pressure for individual this impact is most significant in china weak in russia and india however it also should be noted that only increasing research and development investment cannot achieve the decoupling between economic growth and carbon emission because other factors such as economic activity industrialization and urbanization renewable energy also influences the decoupling economic growth from carbon emission the results also show that economic activity industrialization and urbanization pose negative impact on the decoupling whereas renewable energy consumption promote the decoupling

disaggregating energy use cap among china s provinces the 2015 paris climate change negotiations represents the most ambitious worldwide effort to date to combat climate change as the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter china pledges 60 65 cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2030 to accelerate china s climate efforts china has also committed to cap its primary energy use at 4 8 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2020 this paper proposes an equitable and efficient scheme to disaggregate this national goal among provinces a three step disaggregation procedure is proposed which takes into account the initial allocation national redistribution and inter provincial adjustment first this study allocates the incremental energy quota taking 2010 as the base year second part of the energy quota is set aside by the central government for redistribution purposes while an incremental energy quota index comprising equity and efficiency criteria is used for initial allocation among provinces finally historical efforts and inter provincial energy flows are considered for inter provincial adjustment this disaggregation scheme is flexible and can be easily extended to allocation and management of other resource and environmental targets the empirical findings can assist decision makers in identifying which provinces are likely to over consume the energy quota relative to the proposed allocation and which provinces are likely to perform better in energy conservation moreover the results show that the energy cap set for 2020 is unachievable without further action market based instruments such as an energy allowance trading market are strongly recommended to achieve the energy use target in an equitable and cost effective manner

global patterns of materials use a socioeconomic and geophysical analysis abstract human use of materials is a major driver of global environmental change the links between materials use and economic development are central to the challenge of decoupling of materials use and economic growth dematerialization this article presents a new global material flow dataset compiled for the year 2000 covering 175 countries including both extraction and trade flows and comprising four major material categories biomass construction minerals fossil energy carriers and ores industrial minerals first we quantify the variability and distributional inequality gini coefficients in international material consumption we then measure the influence of the drivers population gdp land area and climate this analysis yields international income elasticities of material use finally we examine the coupling between material flows and between income and material productivity measured in economic production per tonne material consumed material productivity is strongly coupled to income and may thus not be suitable as an international indicator of environmental progress a finding which we relate to the economic inelasticity of material consumption the results demonstrate striking differences between the material groups biomass is the most equitably distributed resource economically the most inelastic and is not correlated to any of the mineral materials the three mineral material groups are closely coupled to each other and economic activity indicating that the challenge of dematerializing industrial economies may require fundamental structural transformation our analysis provides a first systematic investigation of international differences in material use and their drivers and thus serves as the basis for more detailed future work

the impact of household consumption patterns on emissions in spain abstract the aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between household consumption patterns and pollution in the spanish economy the analysis was carried using a social accounting matrix sam for the spanish economy prepared for 1999 taking the final demand of households as the exogenous account in the sam framework and combining this with the information provided by the household budget continuous survey on income and consumption ine 1999 we analyse the pollution produced by both the economy and households in order to satisfy consumption requirements we also consider the effects of income inequality on expenditure levels establishing a link between income level consumption patterns propensity to consume and co2 emissions

hidden linkages between resources and economy a beyond gdp approach using alternative welfare indicators taking gdp as the standard economic indicator for economic welfare recent resources economy studies indicate the dematerialization of the economy the so called decoupling effect this conclusion seems to alleviate concerns over resource scarcity and limits to growth and feeds optimism for green growth and sustainability prospects however the validity of gdp as the sole and unambiguous measure of the ultimate outcome of the economy has been severely disputed there is nowadays increasing interest in broader welfare measurements that capture more aspects of economic output and hence constitute better approximations of well being the present paper provides an overview of the above discussion and sets out to explore the relevance of three alternative welfare indicators the human development index hdi the index of sustainable economic welfare isew and the genuine progress indicator gpi as a basis for evaluating the dependency of welfare and its major engine the economy on natural resources increasing welfare appears to require a disproportionate use of resources strong and increasing dependency on resources at the global level and in giant countries such as china and india may have serious implications for current sustainability policies and the united nations sustainable development goals

locational choices of firms and decentralized environmental policy with various instruments abstract suppose there exists a federation with a given number of mobile firms generating waste emissions in the jurisdiction in which they locate this paper demonstrates that if jurisdictions use emission taxes or marketable emission rights to control pollution within their boundaries and distribute the revenues captured by these instruments in a socially efficient way firms locate efficiently taking their pollution externalities into account decentralized environmental policy relying on direct controls however prevents locational efficiency of mobile firms furthermore if jurisdictions are small decentralized environmental policy with emission taxes and marketable pollution rights also support an efficient environmental quality while a policy using direct controls sets too high emission standards

federal funding and the level of private expenditure on basic research economists have long been interested in questions concerning the role of government in stimulating private sector innovation in the late 1950s blank and stigler 2 asked in particular whether government funded industrial research and development r d activity was likely to stimulate or substitute for private sector expenditure on r d a number of studies have since addressed this issue and most conclude in favor of the existence of a positive relationship between federal r d expenditures and the level of private r d investment leyden and link 8 have provided a theoretical rationale for this observed complementarity they suggest that federallyfunded industrial r d activity may generate knowledge spillovers and other infratechnology that may raise the productivity of inputs into private r d r d is a heterogeneous activity and a question which has received relatively little attention in the literature is the extent to which the apparent complementarity between federal and private industrial r d spending holds for the different components of firms r d budgets cross section evidence on this issue produced by link 13 suggests that

ossified materialism introduction to the special volume on absolute reductions in materials throughput and emissions drawing from papers in this special volume sv this introductory paper on absolute reductions argues that the magnitude scope and urgency of the sustainability challenge require a drastic change in global civilisation including a radical transformation of the institutional arrangements and socio technical systems that facilitate the pursuit of wellbeing the authors of this paper identify four main challenges to absolute reductions including the resource intensive conventional template for development macroeconomic structures and trade policies creating burden shifting and inequality a resourceefficiency improvements fallacy and the dominant consumerist culture and lifestyles the paper demonstrates

the added value from a general equilibrium analysis of increased efficiency in household energy use this paper investigates the economic impact of a 5 improvement in the uk household energy efficiency focussing specifically on total energy rebound effects the impact is measured through simulations using models that have increasing degrees of endogeneity but are calibrated on a common data set moving from a basic partial equilibrium approach to a fully specified general equilibrium treatment the size of the rebound effect is shown to depend on changes in household income aggregate economic activity and relative prices that can only be captured through a general equilibrium model

assessing the effect of public subsidies on firm r d investment a survey this survey examines the empirical literature on the relationship between public r d subsidies and private r d investment over the past five decades the survey reveals a considerable heterogeneity of empirical results that cannot be explained fully by methodological issues we aim to provide further explanations of the possible causes of that heterogeneity in particular we emphasise a set of issues that in our view are critical to understanding the potential effect of public r d subsidies on private r d spending special attention is paid to the dynamic aspects and composition of firm r d the constraints faced by the firm such as financial constraints and the amount and source of public subsidies none of these issues have been investigated in depth we formulate a set of research assumptions to guide future empirical research in this field

trading rules and the environment does equal treatment lead to a cleaner world abstract in this paper we consider a three stage game in the context of a competing exporters model to compare and contrast the effects of discriminatory and uniform most favored nation mfn tariffs on countries choice over environmental standards for varying degrees of pollution spillovers because of the presence of punishment effects and stronger own and cross tariff effects we find that discrimination yields higher standards than mfn and free trade independently of the extent of pollution spillovers when pollution is local and incentives to free ride on other countries abatement efforts are weak we show however that welfare is larger under mfn than under discrimination in a dynamic setting we consider the impact of symmetric and asymmetric treatments on the sustainability of an international environmental agreement iea and obtain that multilateral cooperation is easier to sustain under discrimination than under mfn or free trade

rebound and disinvestment effects in refined oil consumption and supply resulting from an increase in energy efficiency in the scottish commercial transport sector in this paper we use an energy economy environment computable general equilibrium cge model of the scottish economy to examine the impacts of an exogenous increase in energy augmenting technological progress in the domestic commercial transport sector on the supply and use of energy we focus our analysis on scottish refined oil as the main type of energy input used in commercial transport activity we find that a 5 increase in energy efficiency in the commercial transport sector leads to rebound effects in the use of oil based energy commodities in all time periods in the target sector and at the economy wide level however our results also suggest that such an efficiency improvement may cause a contraction in capacity in the scottish refined oil supply sector this disinvestment effect acts as a constraint on the size of rebound effects however the magnitude of rebound effects and presence of the disinvestment effect in the simulations conducted here are sensitive to the specification of key elasticities of substitution in the nested production function for the target sector particularly the substitutability of energy for non energy intermediate inputs to production

the provision of local public goods and factors in the presence of firm and household mobility abstract this paper studies the efficiency properties of allocations when firms and households are mobile and when local governments provide local public goods and local public factors the analysis differentiates between immobile land owners and perfectly mobile workers and concludes that an efficient allocation is obtained if there is no outflow of land rents to absentee owners if rents flow out only local public goods are supplied in accordance with the samuelson rule the provision of local public factors is inefficiently low however and jurisdictions tax mobile firms and mobile households inefficiently high in order to restrict the outflow of rents an optimal intervention scheme is derived in this case we also analyze the distortions that result when the non availability of local head taxes makes it impossible to internalize crowding costs

the effect of government funding on private industrial research and development a re assessment a number of previous studies have attempted to determine the effect of federal support of research and development r d performed in industry on the rate of private investment in r d by estimating regressions of private r d expenditure on federal industrial r d expenditure controlling for total demand sales and in some cases other variables this paper presents arguments and econometric evidence in support of the hypothesis that due to misspecification of the private r d equation i e failure to distinguish government sales from other sales previous estimates of the effect of federal industrial r d on private r d funding are seriously upwardly biased

why are governmental r d and private r d complements it is well known that government r d and private r d have a complementary relationship however no previous study has provided an explanation for why that complementary relationship exists this paper argues that infratechnology is the critical link between governmental and private r d and that the observed complementarity is the result of technical complementarity at the production level between funding infratechnology and knowledge sharing a theoritical framework based on this argument is developed and examined empirically for supporting evidence evidence of technical complementary is found as well as evidence that governmental r d stimulates the sharing of knowledge

on interjurisdictional competition and environmental federalism herein we construct a competitive interjurisdictional model that reconciles two recent exceptions to the race to the bottom j publ econ 35 1988 333 354 j urban econ 37 1995 290 310 our results suggest that since environmental rents from local production are likely not captured 100 percent by local residents devolved command and control environmental regulation is inefficient moreover faced with the reality of fiscal constraints local governments adopt property tax structures that serve to compound inefficiencies within such a second best setting if a jurisdiction underprovides non environmental public goods and jurisdictional capital productivity and emissions are strong complements a race to the bottom equilibrium is supported

optimization analysis of carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice the case of china abstract carbon emission rights allocation affects the effective operation of carbon trading system and then the achievement of energy saving and emissions reduction objectives reasonable allocation scheme should meet the principle of justice carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice is a novel and worth discussing subject this paper explores the optimization of carbon emission rights allocation based on energy justice the justice based model is built with the aid of gini coefficient the way to optimize allocation scheme with constraints of population ecological productive land fossil energy resources and gdp is discussed results show that fossil energy resources and ecological productive land play more important role in the allocation the prime example is inner mongolia its quota percentage change reaches up to 150 01 as the gdp and population growth rate are fixed in a given interval the quota allocation in eastern china shows some interesting results when the gdp growth rate is 6 25 the quotas of eastern china will not change with varying population growth rate the allocation will enter a relative stable stage as the population growth rate is greater than or equal to 6 4 these results can provide china with experience to deal with the new problem appeared in carbon trading system like two children policy and the new normal of economic growth

assessing the decoupling of economic growth from environmental impacts in the european union a consumption based approach abstract pursuing a responsible and sustainable development the united nations urged to decouple economic growth from environmental impacts several european union eu policies have been implemented towards such goal although multiple authors have evaluated the decoupling of the economic growth from the resource use or environmental concerns the environmental assessment mostly focused on pressures rather than impacts and used single indicators assumed to be a proxy of the overall effects on the environment furthermore no studies were found using a process based life cycle approach to quantify the environmental impacts of consumption to solve such research gap this paper assesses the decoupling in the eu focusing on potential environmental impacts complementing a production based approach with two options for accounting for the impacts of consumption the aim of this paper is to evaluate the decoupling of the economic growth in terms of gross domestic product from the environmental impacts due to eu 28 consumption assessed by means of life cycle assessment lca the decoupling is then assessed in impact terms rather than limited to pressures by using the environmental footprint ef2017 indicators which allows assessing 16 different impacts the consumption footprint indicator quantified the environmental impacts of eu apparent consumption including the territorial impacts domestic footprint and the embodied impacts in both imports and exports trade footprint the inventory of pressures for the trade component is compiled either with a bottom up approach process based lca of representative traded goods or a top down approach input output based lca methodological aspects influencing the decoupling assessment and the resulting outputs are presented and discussed according to the results the environmental impacts of eu 28 consumption showed decoupling during the last decades 2005 2014 between relative to absolute decoupling depending on the inventory modeling approach taken some countries showed higher decoupling levels than others displaying a heterogeneous map of eu 28 decoupling which was led by acidification particulate matter land use and eutrophication impacts notwithstanding current limitations the assessment of decoupling using consumption based environmental indicators is very promising for supporting policy making towards addressing the actual impacts driven by the eu production and consumption system

decoupling global environmental pressure and economic growth scenarios for energy use materials use and carbon emissions in recent decades economic growth and increased human wellbeing around the globe have come at the cost of fast growing natural resource use including materials and energy and carbon emissions leading to converging pressures of declining resource security rising and increasingly volatile natural resource prices and climate change we ask whether well designed policies can reduce global material and energy use and carbon emissions with only minimal impacts on improvements in living standards we use a novel approach of combined economic and environmental modelling to assess the potential for decoupling for 13 world regions and globally we apply a production territorial and consumption approach to discuss regional differences in natural resource use and carbon emissions across three stylized policy outlooks a reference case with no significant changes to environment and climate policies a high efficiency outlook involving a global carbon price rising from 50 to 236 constant price per tonne of co2 between 2010 and 2050 and improvements in resource efficiency rising from 1 5 historically to between 3 5 and 4 5 in the scenarios and a medium efficiency outlook midway between the no change and high outlooks we find that global energy use will continue to grow rapidly under all three scenarios from 17 billion tonnes of oil equivalent toe in 2010 to between 30 and 36 billion toe carbon emissions would be considerably lower with a global carbon price less than half the level of the reference case 29 37 billion tonnes of co2 instead of 74 billion tonnes and also material use would grow much more slowly under a carbon price and significant investment to increase resource efficiency 95 instead of 180 billion tonnes of materials we find that oecd economies have significant potential to reduce their material throughput and carbon emissions with little impact on economic growth and that developing economies such as china could expand their economies at much lower environmental cost globally the effects of very strong abatement and resource efficiency policies on economic growth and employment until 2050 are negligible our study suggests that decarbonization and dematerialization are possible with well designed policy settings and would not contradict efforts to raise human wellbeing and standards of living the research demonstrates the usefulness of scenarios for unpacking environmental and economic outcomes of policy alternatives the findings have important implications for future economic opportunities in a highly resource efficient and low carbon global economy to set human development and achieving the sustainable development goals on a more resilient path

consumer side actions in a low carbon economy a dynamic cge analysis for spain abstract in recent decades the need to strengthen efforts to reduce ghg emissions to combat climate change has become a major global concern as reflected in the 2015 paris agreement and the eu climate strategy 2016 in this context eu countries are required to organize their contributions to environmental improvement through national strategies given the potential importance of demand side actions both directly and through their relationship with the productive system as well as the need for a dynamic evolution we assess the dynamic path and medium term environmental impact of certain consumer oriented measures using a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model specifically we generate scenarios that follow spain s strategies and evaluate the dynamic impact of more efficient technologies on electricity consumption and the use of transport services both in terms of environmental ghg and sox and economic effects our results confirm the role of technology improvements in delivering positive results for the environment and the importance of economy wide rebound effects through a detailed study of energy uses as a result of efficiency improvements in household energy consumption our findings show that reductions in emissions per person are consistent with economic growth

estimating the impact of government r d abstract if we do not pay for an input it is important it is suggested that the r d literature by ignoring the fact that government r d is given away has confused zero value of marginal product with zero marginal physical product

a pathway to circular economy developing a conceptual framework for complex value assessment of resources recovered from waste the transition to a circular economy where the value of resources is preserved in the technosphere must be supported by policies and operational decision making based on evidence existing methods used to provide this evidence e g lca lcsa cba are not robust enough to adequately address the creation and dissipation of systemic and multidimensional value that spans the social environmental economic and technical domains this study proposes a novel conceptual approach that seeks to assess how complex value is created destroyed and distributed in resource recovery from waste systems this approach expands beyond conventional methods of estimating value it combines scientific and engineering methods with a socio political narrative grounded in the systems of provision sop approach and provides a comprehensive analytical framework for making the transition to a resource efficient future this framework has the potential to connect bottom up and top down approaches in assessing resource recovery from waste systems and address systemic challenges through transparency and flexibility while accounting for the dynamic and non linear nature of commodities flow and infrastructure provision in the overall system this creates the pathway towards circular economy and lays the foundations for future advances in computational and assessment methodologies in the field of rrfw