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

turning lights into flights estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for uk households energy efficiency improvements by households lead to rebound effects that offset the potential energy and emissions savings direct rebound effects result from increased demand for cheaper energy services while indirect rebound effects result from increased demand for other goods and services that also require energy to provide research to date has focused upon the former but both are important for climate change this study estimates the combined direct and indirect rebound effects from seven measures that improve the energy efficiency of uk dwellings the methodology is based upon estimates of the income elasticity and greenhouse gas ghg intensity of 16 categories of household goods and services and allows for the embodied emissions of the energy efficiency measures themselves as well as the capital cost of the measures rebound effects are measured in ghg terms and relate to the adoption of these measures by an average uk household the study finds that the rebound effects from these measures are typically in the range 5 15 and arise mostly from indirect effects this is largely because expenditure on gas and electricity is more ghg intensive than expenditure on other goods and services however the anticipated shift towards a low carbon electricity system in the uk may lead to much larger rebound effects

economic growth and pollutant emissions in tunisia an empirical analysis of the environmental kuznets curve abstract this paper investigates the relationship between economic growth and pollutant emissions for a small and open developing country tunisia during the period 1961 2004 the investigation is made on the basis of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis using time series data and cointegration analysis carbon dioxide co 2 and sulfur dioxide so 2 are used as the environmental indicators and gdp as the economic indicator our results show that there is a long run cointegrating relationship between the per capita emissions of two pollutants and the per capita gdp an inverted u relationship between so 2 emissions and gdp has been found with income turning point approximately equals to 1200 constant 2000 prices or to 3700 in ppp constant 2000 prices however a monotonically increasing relationship with gdp is found more appropriate for co 2 emissions furthermore the causality results show that the relationship between income and pollution in tunisia is one of unidirectional causality with income causing environmental changes and not vice versa both in the short run and long run this implies that an emission reduction policies and more investment in pollution abatement expense will not hurt economic growth it could be a feasible policy tool for tunisia to achieve its sustainable growth in the long run

energy conservation more effective with rebound policy this article sketches the problem of indirect energy use effects also known as rebound of energy conservation there is widespread support for energy conservation especially when it is voluntary as this seems a cheap way to realize environmental and energy climate goals however this overlooks the phenomenon of rebound the topic of energy rebound has mainly attracted attention from energy analysts but has been surprisingly neglected in environmental economics even though economists generally are concerned with indirect or economy wide impacts of technical change and policies this paper presents definitions and interpretations of energy and environmental rebound as well as four fundamental reasons for the existence of the rebound phenomenon it further offers the most complete list of rebound pathways or mechanisms available in the literature in addition it discusses empirical estimates of rebound and addresses the implications of uncertainties and difficulties in assessing rebound suggestions are offered for strategies and public policies to contain rebound it is advised that rebound evaluation is an essential part of environmental policy and project assessments as opposed to earlier studies this paper stresses the relevance of the distinction between energy conservation resulting from autonomous demand changes and from efficiency improvements in technology equipment in addition it argues that rebound is especially relevant for developing countries

investigating meso economic rebound effects production side effects and feedback loops between the micro and macro level abstract research on the rebound effect has so far mainly considered micro economic rebound effects at the level of consumers and households as well as macro economic rebound effects in the sense of energy efficiency induced economic growth effects this article focuses on an area of rebound research that has not yet received sufficient attention namely on meso economic rebound effects as production side and sector level rebounds the article summarizes and systematizes reasons why companies generate rebounds distinguishes market and sector level rebounds from macro economic growth effects identifies a number of feedback loops by which production side and sector level rebounds multiply or nullify consumer side rebound effects and finally discusses some conclusions on the potential quantitative dimension of production side rebound effects

perceptual and structural barriers to investing in natural capital economics from an ecological footprint perspective this paper argues that perceptual distortions and prevailing economic rationality far from encouraging investment in natural capital actually accelerate the depletion of natural capital stocks moreover conventional monetary analyses cannot detect the problem this paper therefore makes the case for direct biophysical measurement of relevant stocks and flows and uses for this purpose the ecological footprint concept to develop the argument the paper elaborates the natural capital concept and asserts the need of investing in natural capital to compensate for net losses it shows how the ecological footprint can be used as a biophysical measure for such capital and applies this concept as an analytical tool for examining the barriers to investing in natural capital it picks four issues from a rough taxonomy of barriers and discusses them from an ecological footprint perspective it shows why marginal prices cannot reflect ecological necessities how interregional risk pooling encourages resource liquidation how present terms of trade undermine both local and global ecological stability and how efficiency strategies may actually accelerate resource throughput affirming the necessity of biophysical approaches for exploring the sustainability implications of basic ecological and thermodynamic principles it draws lessons for current development

a biophysical analysis of the energy real gdp ratio implications for substitution and technical change abstract this paper quantifies the factors that caused the energy real gdp ratio to change during the post war period in france the federal republic of germany japan and the united kingdom econometric results indicate that changes in the types of fuel used changes in the energy consumed by the household sector changes in the types of goods and services produced and changes in energy prices account for most of the variation in this ratio price elasticities estimated from these results are lower than those estimated by neoclassical economists and indicate that the system boundaries used by neoclassical economists overestimate the amount of energy saved by substitution analysis of the error term from the regression results indicates that energy saving technical change has had little effect on the amount of energy used to support economic activity

does predicted rebound depend on distinguishing between energy and energy services pour analyser le role des services energetiques et des combustibles dans l effet de relance de la consommation d energie liee a des actions d amelioration de l efficacite energetique plusieurs approches sont utilisees et comparees celle de cobb douglas celle de leontief et celle de la croissance equilibree

the rebound effect on road freight transport empirical evidence from portugal abstract because a large proportion of total operating costs for transportation companies goes towards energy a reduction in energy operating costs brought about by an increase in fleet fuel efficiency or an increase in operational efficiency results in a change in the relative cost of road freight transportation this fact could result in an increase in the demand for such services if this is true the result would be an increase in total fuel consumption consequently that part of the energy savings obtained through the increased energy efficiency would be lost the existence of a rebound effect is especially important in the road freight transportation sector and is crucial for the definition of a national energy policy in this study data from the road freight transportation sector in portugal for the years of 1987 through 2006 was analyzed it was determined that an increase in energy efficiency did not cause a backfire but did cause a total direct rebound effect of 24 1 in addition fleet operators were more inclined to adopt operational efficiencies than technological fuel efficiencies as a means of increasing the total operational efficiency

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 2 simulation abstract this is the second part of a two part paper that integrates economic and industrial ecology methods to estimate the indirect rebound effect from residential energy efficiency investments we apply the model developed in part one to simulate the indirect rebound given an estimate of the direct rebound using a 2002 environmentally extended input output model and the 2004 consumer expenditure survey in 2002 for the u s we find an indirect rebound of 5 15 in primary energy and co 2 e emissions assuming a 10 direct rebound depending on the fuel saved with efficiency and household income the indirect rebound can be as high as 30 40 in no x or so 2 emissions for efficiency in natural gas services the substitution effect modeled in part one is small in most cases and we discuss appropriate applications for proportional or income elasticity spending assumptions large indirect rebound effects occur as the u s electric grid becomes less carbon intensive in households with large transportation demands or as energy prices increase even in extreme cases there is limited evidence for backfire or a rebound effect greater than 100 enacting pollution taxes or auctioned permits that internalize the externalities of energy use would ensure that rebound effects unambiguously increase consumers welfare

estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for u s households with input output analysis part 1 theoretical framework abstract this is the first part of a two part paper providing an analytical model of the indirect rebound effect given a direct rebound estimate that integrates consumer demand theory with the embodied energy of household spending from environmentally extended input output analysis the second part applies the model developed in part one to simulate the direct and indirect rebound for the average u s household in terms of primary energy co2e nox and so2 emissions and for energy efficiency investments in electricity natural gas or gasoline services part one provides a critical review of the largely independent economic and industrial ecology literatures on the indirect rebound by studying the two goods case and the n goods case we demonstrate that the indirect rebound is bounded by the consumer budget constraint and inversely related to the direct rebound we also compare the common proportional spending and income elasticity spending assumptions with our model of cross price elasticities including both substitution and income effects for the indirect rebound by assuming zero incremental capital costs and the same embodied energy as conventional technologies for efficient appliances we model an upper bound of the indirect rebound future work should also consider the increase in consumer welfare possible through the rebound effect

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

environmental kuznets curve among brics countries spot lightening finance transport energy and growth factors abstract the environmental sustainability reforms considered the highly successful factor for the countries that devoted for green investment in transportation financial activities energy demand and growth factors this challenging task is monetized by fair environmental policies that integrated with the countries action plans brics countries is no exception that wider accepted this environmental task and provoked the need of healthy investment for sustainable growth this study reviewed finance transport energy and growth factors under environmental kuznets curve ekc framework in a panel of brics countries by utilizing a consistent time series data from 1990 to 2015 the study employed panel fixed effect regression to observe unmodeled heterogeneity among the cross section identifiers that vary over a period of time the results show that transport services and industry value added indvad both escalate fossil fuel ffuel energy consumption while financial factors environmental prices and renewable energy consumption rec decreases fossil energy in a region bank capital broad money supply domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad considerably increases nitrous oxide emissions n 2 o whereas rec significantly decreases n 2 o emissions in a panel of countries greenhouse gas ghg emissions affected by domestic credit railways goods transported travel services and indvad there is a monotonic decreasing relationships between i per capita income and ffuel energy ii railways passenger carried and n 2 o emissions iii rec and ghg emissions and iv income and n 2 o emissions whereas there is an inverted u shaped relationship between broad money supply and n 2 o emissions and u shaped relationships between per capita income and ghg emissions the panel causality tests confirmed the bidirectional relationship between financial indicators and railways transportation while bank capital granger cause ffuel energy per capita income indvad and rec but not other way around in a panel of brics countries the inter temporal relationships show that bank capital indvad and price level will largely affect ffuel energy n 2 o emissions and ghg emissions respectively for the next 10 years period the results of the study emphasized the need of green policy instruments that should be connected with the country s policies and program for sustained growth

jevons paradox revisited the evidence for backfire from improved energy efficiency beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed

empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect a review beginning with william stanley jevons in 1865 a number of authors have claimed that economically justified energy efficiency improvements will increase rather than reduce energy consumption jevons paradox is extremely difficult to test empirically but could have profound implications for energy and climate policy this paper summarises and critiques the arguments and evidence that have been cited in support of jevons paradox focusing in particular on the work of len brookes and harry saunders it identifies some empirical and theoretical weaknesses in these arguments highlights the questions they raise for economic orthodoxy and points to some interesting parallels between these arguments and those used by the biophysical school of ecological economics while the evidence in favour of jevons paradox is far from conclusive it does suggest that economy wide rebound effects are larger than is conventionally assumed and that energy plays a more important role in driving productivity improvements and economic growth than is conventionally assumed 2008 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

the impact of growth energy and financial development on the environment in china a cointegration analysis this article aims to investigate the impact of financial development economic growth and energy consumption on environmental pollution in china from 1953 to 2006 using the autoregressive distributed lag ardl bounds testing procedure the main objective is to examine the long run equilibrium relationship between financial development and environmental pollution the results of the analysis reveal a negative sign for the coefficient of financial development suggesting that financial development in china has not taken place at the expense of environmental pollution on the contrary it is found that financial development has led to a decrease in environmental pollution it is concluded that carbon emissions are mainly determined by income energy consumption and trade openness in the long run moreover the findings confirm the existence of an environmental kuznets curve in the case of china

energy intensity co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve the spanish case this article analyses the role of energy intensity and the relationship between co2 emissions and primary energy in order to explain the evolution of co2 emissions by unit of real gdp it also distinguishes two different meanings of co2 emissions kuznets curve hypothesis the weak and the strong sense it considers the case of spain in the period 1972 1997 as an example in which there is not any evidence supporting this hypothesis in either sense

communication energy efficiency and economic fallacies abstract the sharpening energy efficiency debate has revived claims that the apparent savings from using more efficient technologies would be largely offset by the macroeconomic response the tendency to use more energy services because they are made cheaper when energy price or availability constrains demand this is correct in more normal circumstances it may be true for efficiency changes which occur as part of general economic trends but not for policy driven measures aimed at bringing more efficient technologies into imperfect markets in such cases there will usually be real net energy savings only slightly smaller than those suggested by a simple engineering analysis and clear economic benefits

estimating the rebound effect in us manufacturing energy consumption abstract the energy price shocks of the 1970s are usually assumed to have increased the search for new energy saving technologies where eventual gains in energy efficiencies will reduce the real per unit price of energy services and hence the consumption of energy will rise and partially offset the initial reduction in the usage of energy sources this is the rebound effect which is estimated for the us manufacturing sector using time series data applying the dynamic ols method dols when allowing for asymmetric price effects the rebound effect is found to be approximately 24 for the us manufacturing sector

negative rebound and disinvestment effects in response to an improvement in energy efficiency in the uk economy this paper uses a computable general equilibrium cge framework to investigate the conditions under which rebound effects may occur in response to increases in energy efficiency in the uk national economy previous work for the uk has suggested that rebound effects will occur even where key elasticities of substitution in production are set close to zero the research reported in this paper involves carrying out a systematic sensitivity analysis where relative price sensitivity is gradually introduced into the system focusing specifically on elasticities of substitution in production and trade parameters in order to determine conditions under which rebound effects become a likely outcome the main result is that while there is positive pressure for rebound effects even where direct and indirect demands for energy are very price inelastic this may be partially or wholly offset by negative income competitiveness and disinvestment effects which also occur in response to falling energy prices the occurrence of disinvestment effects is of particular interest these occur where falling energy prices reduce profitability in domestic energy supply sectors leading to a contraction in capital stock in these sectors which may in turn lead to rebound effects that are smaller in the long run than in the short run a result that runs contrary to the predictions of previous theoretical work in this area

missing carbon reductions exploring rebound and backfire effects in uk households households are expected to play a pivotal role in reducing the uk s greenhouse gas ghg emissions and the uk government is encouraging specific household actions to help meet its targets however due to the rebound effect only a portion of the ghg emission reductions estimated by simple engineering calculations are generally achieved in practice for example replacing short car journeys by walking or cycling reduces consumption of motor fuels but this frees up money that may be spent on for example purchasing extra clothes or flying on vacation alternatively the money may be put into savings since all of these options lead to ghg emissions total ghg savings may be less than anticipated indeed in some instances emissions may increase a phenomenon known as backfire we estimate that the rebound effect for a combination of three abatement actions by uk households is approximately 34 targeting re spending on goods and services with a low ghg intensity reduces this to a minimum of around 12 while re spending on goods and services with a high ghg intensity leads to backfire our study highlights the importance of shifting consumption to lower ghg intensive categories and investing in low carbon investments

a view from the macro side rebound backfire and khazzoom brookes abstract this paper attempts to delineate a few key insights extracted from theoretical macroeconomic considerations of the rebound issue the goal has been to reduce these thoughts to a clear set of assertions that if true would be useful points of reference in the ongoing discussion despite their non empirical nature

energy crisis greenhouse gas emissions and sectoral growth reforms repairing the fabricated mosaic abstract the study examined energy crisis and sought solutions for reforms in the largest regions of the world i e east asia pacific europe and central asia latin america the caribbean south asia and sub saharan africa the study used number of growth related factors over the period of 1975 2012 the results indicate significant relationship between electric power shortage and growth related specific factors however the intensity for each factor varies from region to region the results of granger causality verify multiple cause effect channels in the different regions i e feedback hypothesis economic factors driven electric shortage electric shortage driven economic factors and no causal relationship between the variables the results of variance decomposition analysis indicate that greenhouse gas emissions exhibit the largest contribution due to shortages in the electric power transmission the study opens the debate for environmentalists government and non government officials to formulate the sustainable policies related to energy reforms

economic growth energy consumption financial development international trade and co2 emissions in indonesia this study examines the linkages among economic growth energy consumption financial development trade openness and co2 emissions over the period of 1975q1 2011q4 in the case of indonesia the stationary analysis is performed by using zivot andrews structural break unit root test and the ardl bounds testing approach for a long run relationship between the series in the presence of structural breaks the causal relation between the concerned variable is examined by the vecm granger causality technique and robustness of causal analysis is tested by innovative accounting approach iaa our results confirm that the variables are cointegrated it means that the long run relationship exists in the presence of structural break stemming in the series the empirical findings indicate that economic growth and energy consumption increases co2 emissions while financial development and trade openness compact it the vecm causality analysis has shown the feedback hypothesis between energy consumption and co2 emissions economic growth and co2 emissions are also interrelated i e bidirectional causality financial development granger causes co2 emissions the study opens up a new policy insights to control the environment from degradation by using energy efficient technologies financial development and trade openness can also play their role in improving the environmental quality

on the rebound feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in iea countries abstract the interaction or feedback between energy efficiencies or energy intensities and energy use has long been the topic of debate some have argued that energy efficiency improvements by reducing energy intensities and therefore lowering the cost of energy services would lead to rebound effects offsetting much or all of any initial savings in energy in this paper we analyse historical data on energy use efficiency and pricing in different sectors to try and identify rebounds for the period of our data since about 1970 we show that key measures of activity car use manufacturing output and structure house area etc have changed little in response to changes in energy prices or efficiency instead continuing their long term evolution relative to gdp or other driving factors while our analysis cannot disentangle more macro level economic feedbacks in a detailed way we show indirectly that such effects also appear to have been small over the 1970s and 1980s overall our analysis of disaggregated sectoral and subsectoral energy use and activity trends in a variety of iea economies suggests that any feedback effect is small compared to both the effects on energy use of changes in energy intensities and overall economic growth we conclude that most of the improvements in energy efficiencies led to reductions in energy intensities observed in the 1970s and 1980s weighted by 1990 activity levels intensities were roughly 15 20 lower in 1994 5 than in 1973 which in turn meant real savings of energy energy demand in iea countries is roughly this much below what it would have been for the same gdp had these savings not occurred rebounds may have taken back some of the overall savings but most remain even after the fall of oil prices in 1986 any boost to gdp as a result of these savings could not have been sufficient to increase energy demand enough to significantly alter these conclusions that the savings remained after the fall in oil prices supports the notion that net savings restrained energy growth relative to gdp in some formulations arise from technological progress even if energy prices do not increase how far this effect can reach however is a matter of considerable debate

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

energy efficiency fallacies revisited abstract a number of governments including that of the uk subscribe to the belief that a national program devoted to raising energy efficiency throughout the economy provides a costless indeed profitable route to meeting international environmental obligations this is a seductive policy it constitutes the proverbial free lunch not only avoiding politically unpopular measures like outlawing taxing or rationing offending fuels or expanding non carboniferous sources of energy like nuclear power but doing so with economic benefit the author of this contribution came to doubt the validity of this solution when it was offered as a way of mitigating the effect of the opec price hikes of the 1970 maintaining that economically justified improvement in energy efficiency led to higher levels of energy consumption at the economy wide level than in the absence of any efficiency response more fundamentally he argues that there is no case for preferentially singling out energy from among all the resources available to us for efficiency maximization the least damaging policy is to determine targets enact the restrictive measures needed to curb consumption and then leave it to consumers intermediate and final to reallocate all the resources available to them to best effect subject to the new enacted constraints and any others they might be experiencing there is no reason to suppose that it is right for all the economic adjustment following a new resource constraint to take the form of improvements in the productivity of that resource alone as many others have argued any action to impose resource constraint entails an inevitable economic cost in the shape of a reduction in production and consumption possibilities there would be no free lunch in the last few years debate about the validity of these contentions has blossomed especially under the influence of writers on the western side of the atlantic in this contribution the author outlines the original arguments for questioning whether raised efficiency leads to lower consumption reports more recent developments and offers some insights as food for further thought

fuel conserving and using production functions abstract this article compares eight production cost functions used or potentially useful for exploring how energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption we show the practitioner s choice of function can inadvertently pre determine results and make recommendations as to which functions are flexible enough to prevent this we also show pre selected factor substitution elasticities can similarly pre determine results to aid the comparison we decompose the energy consumption rebound effect into intensity and output income effects which also delivers insight into the mechanisms of rebound we conclude by recommending practitioners restrict themselves to either the gallant fourier or the generalized leontief symmetric generalized barnett cost functions as being sufficiently rebound flexible the translog cost function may be suitable given certain conditions and a particular form of the ces solow function is a possible but problematic candidate along the way the article provides a general methodology for similarly examining any arbitrarily defined constant returns to scale production or cost function

environment kuznets curve for co2 emissions a cointegration analysis for china abstract this study examines the long run relationship between carbon emissions and energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of china by employing time series data of 1975 2005 in particular the study aims at testing whether environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship between co 2 emissions and per capita real gdp holds in the long run or not auto regressive distributed lag ardl methodology is employed for empirical analysis a quadratic relationship between income and co 2 emission has been found for the sample period supporting ekc relationship the results of granger causality tests indicate one way causality runs through economic growth to co 2 emissions the results of this study also indicate that the carbon emissions are mainly determined by income and energy consumption in the long run trade has a positive but statistically insignificant impact on co 2 emissions

prices technology development and the rebound effect abstract energy efficiency is the critical parameter for policies that aim at reducing energy consumption while maintaining or even boosting economic growth the two main options to influence energy efficiency are changes in relative prices i e raising the price of energy through economic instruments or to introduce new technologies which increase the productivity of each unit of energy this paper is based on the notion that in an equilibrium economy the marginal economic productivity is identical for all factors i e energy labour knowledge and capital from this premise two main conclusions can be drawn first any change in price or technology will have an impact on the whole economy by creating feedbacks through the substitution of factors of production and goods as well as increased wealth second the two policy approaches changing relative prices and technology development are not opposite to each other they are the two faces of the same reality and should be developed and promoted simultaneously and consistently

short and long run electricity demand elasticities at the subsectoral level a cointegration analysis for german manufacturing industries in this paper we use multivariate cointegration analysis to estimate electricity demand elasticities at the subsectoral industry level this enables us to reap the benefits of lower heterogeneity within the electricity consuming sectors investigated and of retaining additional information otherwise blurred by aggregation the annual data set used covers eight subsectors of the german economy for the period 1970 2007 by employing a cointegrated var model specification and accounting for structural breaks we find cointegration relationships for five of the eight subsectors studied the long run elasticities range between 0 70 and 1 90 for economic activity and between 0 52 and zero for the price of electricity the short run elasticities are estimated by single equation error correction modeling and found to be between 0 17 to 1 02 for economic activity and 0 57 to zero for electricity price granger causality tests indicate that in the long term causality runs from both economic activity and electricity price to electricity consumption while granger causality from electricity price and electricity consumption to economic activity is detected in only two subsectors electricity price is found to be granger caused neither in the long nor the short run finally an impulse response analysis yields plausible results confirming the usefulness of the approach adopted

the entry deterring effects of inflexible regulation this paper investigates the signalling role of tax policy in promoting or hindering the ability of a monopolist to practise entry deterrence we show that environmental policy can facilitate the incumbent firm s concealment of information from potential entrants thus deterring entry and yet entail welfare improvements furthermore we demonstrate that entry deterrence is more likely to arise when environmental regulation cannot be rapidly revised across time if market conditions change inflexible regimes than when regulatory agencies can adjust environmental policy over time les effets de dissuasion de l entree d une reglementation inflexible ce texte examine le role de signalisation d une politique fiscale qui promeut ou reduit l habilete d un monopole a pratiquer la dissuasion de l entree de concurrents on montre qu une politique environnementale peut faciliter la dissimulation d information par la firme en place vis a vis les concurrents potentiels et donc les dissuader d entrer et pourtant engendrer des ameliorations de bien etre de plus on montre que la dissuasion de l entree est davantage susceptible d emerger quand la reglementation environnementale ne peut pas etre revisee rapidement dans le temps si les conditions de marche se modifient regimes inflexibles que quand les agences de reglementation environnementales peuvent ajuster la politiques dans le temps

empirical analysis on energy rebound effect from the perspective of technological progress a case study of china s transport sector abstract energy rebound effect is a major issue in energy economics global energy and environmental problems have compelled the need for simultaneous attainment of economic development and energy conservation technological progress increases energy efficiency and saves energy but it also causes energy rebound effect which discounts the expected energy conservation china s transport sector is energy intensive therefore investigating rebound effect in china s transport sector has a very important significance for energy conservation and the formulation of related policies taking china s transport sector as a case study we used translog production function to measure the contribution rate of technological progress to output growth and estimated the rebound effect the results show that the average rebound effect was about 68 3 during 1981 2015 finally we provided relevant policy recommendations on the rebound effect based on the characteristics of energy use in china s transport sector

does higher economic and financial development lead to environmental degradation evidence from bric countries abstract a vast number of studies addressed the environmental degradation and economic development but not financial development moreover as argued by stern 2004 the rise and fall of the environmental kuznets curve world development 32 1419 1439 they present important econometric weaknesses using standard reduced form modeling approach and controlling for country specific unobserved heterogeneity we investigate the linkage between not only economic development and environmental quality but also the financial development panel data over period 1992 2004 is used we find that both economic and financial development are determinants of the environmental quality in bric economies we show that higher degree of economic and financial development decreases the environmental degradation our analysis suggests that financial liberalization and openness are essential factors for the co 2 reduction the adoption of policies directed to financial openness and liberalization to attract higher levels of r d related foreign direct investment might reduce the environmental degradation in countries under consideration in addition the robustness check trough the inclusion of us and japan does not alter our main findings

the long run and causal analysis of energy growth openness and financial development on carbon emissions in turkey abstract the aim of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between financial development trade economic growth energy consumption and carbon emissions in turkey for the 1960 2007 period the bounds f test for cointegration test yields evidence of a long run relationship between per capita carbon emissions per capita energy consumption per capita real income the square of per capita real income openness and financial development the results show that an increase in foreign trade to gdp ratio results an increase in per capita carbon emissions and financial development variable has no significant effect on per capita carbon emissions in the long run these results also support the validity of ekc hypothesis in the turkish economy it means that the level of co 2 emissions initially increases with income until it reaches its stabilization point then it declines in turkey in addition the paper explores causal relationship between the variables by using error correction based granger causality models

supply elasticity matters for the rebound effect and its impact on policy comparisons abstract we develop a model of the rebound effect which explicitly accounts for both the demand and supply sides of the energy sources we consider a transportation sector originally using a dirty fossil fuel and examine the relative effectiveness of alternative policies efficiency improvements in the dirty fuel technology sector e g cafe standards and technology shifts by partial adoption of a new clean technology e g low carbon fuel standards the model generates endogenous equilibrium quantities and prices for the dirty and clean fuels we characterize the magnitude of the rebound effect as a function of demand and supply elasticities and use the equilibrium values to compare policy options when the supply of the dirty fuel is inelastic we find that introducing a new technology with non zero emissions may actually increase the total level of emissions similar to the leakage effect a technology shift policy can perform better than an efficiency improvement policy in the dirty fuel sector only when the dirty fuel supply is sufficiently elastic the emission intensity of the new technology very low and the technology shift is greater than a threshold value using data for gasoline as a proxy for the dirty technology and several other cleaner technologies we show that these conditions are satisfied by a hypothetical zero emission technology but not by electric vehicles using the average us generation mix or the current us corn based e85 our results demonstrate the importance of accounting for the supply side in estimating the magnitude of the rebound effect and its impact on fuel consumption in a large scale policy implementation

reassessing the environmental kuznets curve for co2 emissions a robustness exercise the number of studies seeking to empirically characterize the reduced form relationship between a country economic growth and the quantity of pollutants produced in the process has recently increased significantly in several cases researchers have found evidence pointing to an inverted u benvironmental kuznetsq curve in the case of co2 however the evidence is at best mixed in this paper we reconsider that evidence by assessing how robust it is when the analysis is conducted in a different parametric setup and when using alternative emissions data from the international energy agency relative to the literature our contribution can be viewed as a robustness exercise in these two respects the econometric results lead to two conclusions firstly published evidence on the ekc does not appear to depend upon the source of the data at least as far as carbon dioxide is concerned secondly when an alternative functional form is employed there is evidence of an inverted u pattern for the group of oecd countries with reasonable turning point regardless of the data set employed not so for non oecd countries as the ekc is basically increasing slowly concave according to the iea data and more bellshaped in the case of cdiac data d 2005 elsevier b v all rights reserved

energy consumption carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth the case of saudi arabia abstract this paper investigates the dynamic causal relationships between energy consumption energy price and economic activity in saudi arabia based on a demand side approach we use a johansen multivariate cointegration approach and incorporate co 2 emissions as a control variable the results indicate that there exists at least a long run relationship between energy consumption energy price carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth furthermore a long run unidirectional causality stands from energy consumption to economic growth and co 2 emissions bidirectional causality between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth and a long run unidirectional causality runs from energy price to economic growth and co 2 emissions in the short run there is unidirectional causality running from co 2 emissions to energy consumption and economic output and from energy price to co 2 emissions even though the energy led growth hypothesis is valid the share of energy consumption in explaining economic growth is minimal energy price is the most important factor in explaining economic growth hence policies aimed at reducing energy consumption and controlling for co 2 emissions may not reduce significantly saudi s economic growth investing in the use of renewable energy sources like solar and wind power is an urgent necessity to control for fossil fuel consumption and co 2 emissions

the greenhouse effect the fallacies in the energy efficiency solution abstract the view that widespread improvements in energy efficiency can by themselves do anything to halt the build up of greenhouse gases around the globe is fundamentally unsound it is based on the same fallacies that underlie the claim that energy savings from improving efficiency can substitute for new energy supply the paper by keepin and kats1 claiming that per tonne of coal not burned improvements in energy efficiency are more cost effective than substituting nuclear for coal fired power is therefore an irrelevancy as far as this debate is concerned reductions is energy intensity of output that are not damaging to the economy are associated with increases not decreases in energy demand at the macroeconomic level even within the boundaries of their own flawed approach their attempt2 to refute the critique of their thesis made by jones3 was little more than misdirected grape shot with no discernable connected thread of argument

transitions to sustainable consumption and production in cities this special volume focuses on sustainable production and consumption and especially on transformation processes in the built environment more than 50 and rising of the world population is now living in cities that are both centers of technological and social innovations in sustainable life styles and carriers of unsustainable lifestyles in this special volume contributions can be found on grassroots innovations sharing food energy and waste systems associated with cities the role of corporations in realizing transitions towards sustainable living consumer activism behavioral change and consumer values in driving change and on governance and indicators for measuring all such transformations many of the papers were presented at the second conference of the global research forum on sustainable production and consumption grf spac in shanghai in june 2014 and thus a substantial number of them report on research on sustainable production and consumption in cities in china the authorship also reflects growing collaboration between researchers from developing and industrialized countries the great diversity of contributions on the topic reflects the wealth of insights generated on the topic in recent years but also the need for a better understanding of change processes at the intersection of social and physical systems and at multiple levels of action

the impact of financial development on carbon emissions an empirical analysis in china given the complexity between china s financial development and carbon emissions this paper uses some econometric techniques including cointegration theory granger causality test variance decomposition etc to explore the influence of financial development on carbon emissions results indicate that first china s financial development acts as an important driver for carbon emissions increase which should be taken into account when carbon emissions demand is projected second the influence of financial intermediation scale on carbon emissions outweighs that of other financial development indicators but its efficiency s influence appears by far weaker although it may cause the change of carbon emissions statistically third china s stock market scale has relatively larger influence on carbon emissions but the influence of its efficiency is very limited this to some extent reflects the relatively lower liquidity in china s stock markets finally among financial development indicators china s fdi exerts the least influence on the change of carbon emissions due to its relatively smaller volume compared with gdp but it is mainly utilized in carbon intensive sectors now therefore with the increase of china s fdi in the future many efforts should be made to adapt its utilizing directions and play its positive role in promoting low carbon development