distributed energy infrastructure paradigm community microgrids in a new institutional economics context abstract this paper provides a theoretical framework based on new institutional economics nie concepts to guide the development of community microgrids given limited application thus far of such energy systems this paper also draws on empirical studies and experiences from the planning and development of other public community infrastructure and utility services in the development of this framework it links an efficient ownership and governance structure with transactional characteristics such as asset idiosyncrasy frequency and uncertainty defined in section 3 1 the key role of the customers and the microgrid service provider and more specifically their bilateral monopoly relationship and its effects on the choice of institutional structure is highlighted the paper examines the optimum conditions for public private or hybrid financial ownership and for unified or network governance through long term contracting this allows ex ante investment uncertainty and ex post appropriation risks to be efficiently managed the analysis suggests that long term contract completeness future demand for electricity and level of uncertainty are the determining factors in the selection of institutional structure this has significant real world implications for the communities seeking to achieve electricity self sufficiency and environmental benefits through community microgrids service providers and other private or public actors

embodied hanpp mapping the spatial disconnect between global biomass production and consumption abstract biomass trade results in a growing spatial disconnect between environmental impacts due to biomass production and the places where biomass is being consumed the pressure on ecosystems resulting from the production of traded biomass however is highly variable between regions and products we use the concept of embodied human appropriation of net primary production hanpp to map the spatial disconnect between net producing and net consuming regions embodied hanpp comprises total biomass withdrawals and land use induced changes in productivity resulting from the provision of biomass products international net transfers of embodied hanpp are of global significance amounting to 1 7 pgc year sparsely populated regions are mainly net producers densely populated regions net consumers independent of development status biomass consumption and trade are expected to surge over the next decades suggesting a need to sustainably manage supply and demand of products of ecosystems on a global level

endogenous cycles with long lived agents abstract in this paper i present a pure exchange overlapping generations model where a two period deterministic cycle may exist even if agents have possibly arbitrarily long lifespans and perfect foresight the basic model is borrowed from yaari s 1965 uncertain lifetime setup of the individual s consumption decision where agents probability of death is a constant p the conditions under which periodic cycles can be shown to exist with agents having arbitrarily long lifespans are connected with the existence of a high enough degree of relative risk aversion and discounting of agents future utilities moreover the sequence of lifetime individual endowments cannot be monotonically increasing or constant reasons for which the results of this model are at variance with recent contributions by aiyagari 1988 1989 are also discussed

energy transitions in small scale regions what we can learn from a regional innovation systems perspective the prevalent theories in the debate on sustainability transitions have been criticised for not sufficiently addressing energy change processes at the local level this paper aims to enhance our understanding of local energy reorganisation processes drawing on the regional innovation systems ris approach we argue that local development dynamics result from the interaction of various subsystems science politics public administration industry finance intermediaries and civil society the analysis of the involved subsystems and their interaction shows how energy transitions are shaped by different individual and organisational actors as well as institutions on the local level empirical evidence from case studies on the german cities of emden and bottrop illustrates our theoretical conceptualisation of energy transitions we conclude by presenting characteristic interaction patterns for energy transition drawn from the two cases

relating the environmental impact of consumption to household expenditures an input output analysis in this paper we evaluate the relationships between household expenditures and the environmental impact categories climate change acidification eutrophication and smog formation by combining household expenditures with environmentally extended input output analysis expenditure elasticities are examined with regression analysis and are compared and interpreted on the basis of insight at the product level with data from the netherlands in the year 2000 we find that environmental impact increases with increasing household expenditures although the degree to which the environmental impact increases differs per impact category climate change and eutrophication increase less than proportionally with increasing expenditures acidification increases nearly proportionally with increasing expenditures whereas smog formation increases more than proportionally it appears that the mix of necessities and luxuries to which an environmental impact is related is essential in explaining the relationship

a multiplier decomposition method to analyze poverty alleviation abstract the objective of this paper is to present a multiplier decomposition method focusing on poverty alleviation the decomposition captures the various mechanisms and linkages through which a production sector s output contributes to poverty alleviation within a socioeconomic system represented by a social accounting matrix sam it is shown that a multiplier can be broken down into two multiplicative effects the distributional and interdependency effects the decomposition method is applied to the case of indonesia a key policy implication is that the human capital of the poor needs to be enhanced if they are not to be sealed off from the industrialization process

a first empirical comparison of energy footprints embodied in trade mrio versus plum abstract the ecological footprint as an indicator that accounts for human demand on global bioproductivity sets out to quantify the impacts associated with consumption in a given country including the impacts associated with trade the national footprint accounts nfa by global footprint network gfn calculate trade embodied footprints by multiplying yield and embodied energy factors with mass volumes of traded goods in a product land use matrix plum this article compares energy footprints embodied in trade from and to the united kingdom in 2002 as calculated by the nfa plum with the results from a recently developed multi region input output model mrio for the uk although totals for imports and exports are comparable breaking down the results by economic sectors reveals large differences and hardly any correlation between the two methods the omission of trade in services especially transport services and upstream impacts of energy goods fossil fuels and the use of inappropriate embodied energy factors in the nfa plum method are identified as the main reasons for these differences in the light of the results it seems that a comprehensive footprint account of trade can better be achieved with an input output based approach i conclude that mrio models once fully developed will be particularly suitable in the future to estimate the ecological footprints of imports and exports of nations with the possibility to track their origin via inter industry linkages international supply chains and multi national trade flows

the philippine electricity sector reform and the urban question how metro manila s utility is tackling urban poverty in the early 2000s the philippine government reformed its electricity sector following neoliberal principles unbundling of the power industry privatisation of assets and commodification of electricity this paper shows that the reform was primarily driven by the need to secure electricity supply and cut down tariffs these national objectives ousted other issues and notably those that find their expression at the urban level among which the question of access to electricity in metro manila s urban poor communities the central state withdrew its attention from the issue of electrification and local actors had to react as they were confronted to social tensions and practices of pilferage as a consequence city governments and local administrations are getting involved in this issue which opens the way to participation of civil society this paper shows how the rolling back of the central state led to new partnerships and arrangements between the distribution utility local governments and community organisations this movement points to an urbanisation of energy issues which could bring positive results for end users provided that it is accompanied by a clearer regulatory framework

can there be short period deterministic cycles when people are long lived this paper considers whether short period deterministic cycles can exist in a class of stationary overlapping generations models with long but finite lived agents it shows that if agents discount the future positively then as life spans get large nonmonetary cycles will disappear further neither constant monetary steady states nor stationary monetary cycles can exist it also shows that if agents discount the future negatively then there are robust examples in which constant monetary steady states as well as stationary monetary cycles with undiminished amplitude can occur no matter how long agents live

fossil resource trade balances emerging trends for the uk abstract the aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which the uk can be classified as a net importer of fossil resources and a creator of pollution havens abroad between 1968 and 2000 using input output techniques and a derived resource flow classification system both the physical trade balance ptb and pollution trade balance utb associated with fossil resource use are computed the ptb shows that between 1968 and the early 1980 s the uk is presented as a net importer of direct fossil resource flows between 1984 and 2000 the uk is identified as a net exporter of direct fossil resources these trends are primarily explained by the uk s discovery and commercial production of north sea oil and gas fields in the late 1970s on the other hand the utb shows that over the whole period the indirect used flows attributable to the uk s exports are higher than those attributable to its imports these findings suggest that the uk did not create pollution havens abroad from the use of fossil resources between 1968 and 2000 however it is noticeable in both cases that from 1995 the uk s position as a net exporter has been decreasing considerably maturing north sea oil and gas fields set against increasing demands for fossil fuels and imported goods is signalling a return to the uk s pre 1984 dependence on direct imported fossil resources and the possible creation of pollution havens abroad knowledge of these trends contributes to the evidence base for the uk s changing import and export structure and the potential environmental repercussions at home and abroad

organisation and governance of urban energy systems district heating and cooling in the uk a number of uk urban authorities are developing combined heat and power chp with district heating and cooling dhc networks as a means to achieve local sustainable and affordable energy and to contribute to economic regeneration findings from case study research in three uk cities are used to explore the local energy governance and organisation lego models adopted in the context of privatised centralised energy markets local developers are reliant on sources of social capital to make systems work given limited support from public policy and limited access to finance local actors drawing on non local community energy and commercial and technical networks of expertise work to introduce the technology into strategic planning establish its legitimacy and the legitimacy of a form of multi organisation suited to numerous stakeholders secure finance negotiate risks and responsibilities and engage with energy markets designed for large scale centralised provision for dhc to make a fully effective contribution to uk sustainable urban energy a more supportive government policy framework offsetting the difficulties of a centralised energy market will be needed to maximise the benefit of locally knowledgeable action the policy framework must be responsive to the specificity of locally appropriate configurations of actors and material infrastructure

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

governing the transition to natural gas in mediteranean metropolis the case of cairo istanbul and sfax tunisia recent scholarship on urban energy governance has focused on low carbon energy strategies seen as a response to climate change and energy pressure threats but such approaches tend to overlook the situations of cities from the global south and emerging countries concerned with strong energy demand growth the development of urban natural gas networks is an understudied response to such a challenge focusing on three cities istanbul cairo and sfax tunisia the article analyses the factors and the governance of these energy transitions it uses a geographical approach to such processes that highlight the mutual influence of the territory in its material and political dimensions and of the policy goals and tools in the implementation the development of urban gas networks rests upon the proximity of gas deposits it is determined by metropolitan strategies for economic development as well as by programs aiming to cut energy subsidies though urban gas networks have a strong potential for restructuring the physical and social landscapes in cities the dominant commercial approach taken by energy utilities and morphological constraints in the urban fabric limit their universalization natural gas is part of a mix of energies at the urban level and often competes with other energy forms specifically renewables like solar water heaters lastly the development of urban natural gas networks sparks heated politics in relation to unfulfilled energy demand and affordability

from production based to consumption based national emission inventories abstract under the united national framework convention of climate change unfccc countries are required to submit national emission inventories nei to benchmark reductions in greenhouse gas ghg emissions depending on the definition and system boundary of the nei the mitigation options and priorities may vary the territorial system boundary used by the unfccc has been critiqued for not including international transportation and potentially causing carbon leakage to address these issues past literature has argued in favour of using consumption based nei in climate policy this article discusses several issues in moving from the standard production based nei to consumption based nei first two distinct accounting approaches for constructing consumption based nei are presented the approaches differ in the allocation of intermediate consumption of imported products second a consistent method of weighting production based and consumption based nei is discussed this is an extension of the previous literature on shared responsibility to nei third due to increased uncertainty and a wide system boundary it may be difficult to implement consumption based nei directly into climate policy several alternative options for incorporating consumption based inventories into climate policy are discussed

the role of intermediaries in low carbon transitions empowering innovations to unlock district heating in the uk abstract the literature on socio technical transitions considers how technological innovations can be established within the context of an incumbent regime that is often resistant or inflexible to change strategic niche management is an approach to catalysing a transition to a new regime using protected niche spaces to enable development and experimentation with an innovation intermediary actors play an important role in establishing these niches as they facilitate knowledge sharing and build the wider networks and systems needed to support an innovation the influence of intermediaries within socio technical transitions and strategic niche management is still an under researched area in this paper we use a decision theatre research process to collect empirical evidence from a range of local stakeholders involved in establishing new district heating projects in the united kingdom uk this method carried out in a group workshop format enables understanding of the interactions between stakeholders throughout the stages of the district heating development process the study suggests that intermediaries can play a role in supporting niche empowering processes the existing institutional framework surrounding intermediary actors and the geographical scale at which they work within that framework are shown to be influential on actors agency to choose their approach to empowering an innovation the work highlights the potential for intermediaries to support the restructuring of this institutional framework to enable more radical stretch and transform empowering activities

potential impacts of electricity price changes on price formation in the economy a social accounting matrix price modeling analysis for turkey recent reforms in the turkish electricity sector since 2001 aim to introduce a tariff system that reflects costs this is expected to affect the production and consumer prices of electricity the changes in electricity prices are then reflected in production costs in other segments of the economy subsequently producer and consumer prices will be affected the potential impact of the changes in electricity prices that the ongoing electricity reforms in turkey will bring about may have important implications on the price formation in economic activities and the cost of living for households this paper evaluates the potential impacts of changes in electricity prices from a social accounting matrix sam price modeling perspective it is found that based on the estimated price multipliers that prices in the energy producing sectors mining and iron and steel manufacturing sectors would be affected more severely than the remaining sectors of the economy consumer prices are affected slightly less than producer prices

scaling up local energy infrastructure an agent based model of the emergence of district heating networks abstract the potential contribution of local energy infrastructure such as heat networks to the transition to a low carbon economy is increasingly recognised in international national and municipal policy creating the policy environment to foster the scaling up of local energy infrastructure is however still challenging despite national policy action and local authority interest the growth of heat networks in uk cities remains slow techno economic energy system models commonly used to inform policy are not designed to address institutional and governance barriers we present an agent based model of heat network development in uk cities in which policy interventions aimed at the institutional and governance barriers faced by diverse actors can be explored three types of project instigators are included municipal commercial and community which have distinct decision heuristics and capabilities and follow a multi stage development process scenarios of policy interventions developed in a companion modelling approach indicate that the effect of interventions differs between actors depending on their capabilities successful interventions account for the specific motivations and capabilities of different actors provide a portfolio of support along the development process and recognise the important strategic role of local authorities in supporting low carbon energy infrastructure

the stuttering energy transition in germany wind energy policy and feed in tariff lock in this article aims to examine whether the formulation of specific low carbon policy such as the feed in tariff for wind energy in germany can partly be a barrier to a comprehensive energy transition energiewende despite their short and medium term success these policies could create a long term lock in if they are formulated in a way that leads to a stagnation of systems innovation the research finds that while the share of wind energy has increased rapidly over time the feed in tariff and other low carbon policies and incentives have not been sufficient to achieve a socio technical regime transition in germany yet we suggest that the german feed in tariff has incorporated wind energy a niche innovation and wind energy actors pathway newcomers into a slightly modified socio technical regime that is rather similar to the earlier fossil fuel dominant socio technical regime

lost in transition comparing strategies of electricity companies in delhi this paper examines the notion of energy transition when implemented by private utilities in 2000 the delhi government privatized electricity distribution to three private distribution companies most research was concerned with the impact of privatization on energy reliability tariff settings and regulation issues this paper looks at two under researched themes the expansion of services to poorer neighborhoods and the rollout of clean energy policies this focus allows to unpack the materiality of socio technical systems to analyze how energy infrastructures are being technically deployed on the ground and to identify which social approach is used to detail the specific practices of each company provides a more nuanced and accurate understanding of the reform in depth analysis of the three private utilities show that they interpret the reform mandate differently they use a varied range of technical tools they respond differently to social concerns in poorer neighborhoods and they have distinctive internal management choices and corporate cultures all these four factors can strengthen or undermine the transition towards increased access and clean energy

a review of recent multi region input output models used for consumption based emission and resource accounting abstract the interest in consumption based emission and resource accounting has grown significantly many studies juxtapose consumer emissions carbon footprint and producer territorial emissions of greenhouse gases in order to demonstrate the effects of trade on the national emission budget to this end a respectable number of studies have been undertaken worldwide in order to estimate emissions embedded in international trade of numerous countries and world regions input output approaches and increasingly multi region input output mrio models are commonly chosen as they provide an appropriate methodological framework for complete carbon footprint estimates at the national and supra national level with increasing processing capabilities of computers and a wider availability of economic accounts environmental accounts and trade data such models are now being implemented on a wide scale after a brief overview of salient single region input output studies i provide an in depth review of the most recent multi region input output models used for the purpose of consumption based environmental accounting the main methodological features and important results are described for around twenty studies covering the years 2007 to 2009 this is followed by a detailed review of studies dealing with uncertainty in mrio analysis an area which has not received a lot of attention so far i conclude that further research is mainly needed in two areas a improvements in data availability and quality and b improvements in the accuracy of mrio modelling

geographies of energy transition space place and the low carbon economy this paper makes a case for examining energy transition as a geographical process involving the reconfiguration of current patterns and scales of economic and social activity the paper draws on a seminar series on the geographies of energy transition security climate governance hosted by the authors between 2009 and 2011 which initiated a dialogue between energy studies and the discipline of human geography focussing on the uk government s policy for a low carbon transition the paper provides a conceptual language with which to describe and assess the geographical implications of a transition towards low carbon energy six concepts are introduced and explained location landscape territoriality spatial differentiation scaling and spatial embeddedness examples illustrate how the geographies of a future low carbon economy are not yet determined and that a range of divergent and contending potential geographical futures are in play more attention to the spaces and places that transition to a low carbon economy will produce can help better understand what living in a low carbon economy will be like it also provides a way to help evaluate the choices and pathways available

budgetary rules to minimize societal poverty in a general equilibrium context abstract this paper derives budgetary rules for the allocation of an exogenously supplied budget to mutually exclusive socioeconomic groups so that the maximum reduction of poverty for society as a whole is attained budgetary rules are derived for two mechanisms of intra group benefit distribution and for the cases where the effects of economic interaction within and between groups is considered and where it is not a computer simulation of the budgetary rules on a hypothetical economy demonstrates the importance of economic interaction both to the optimal allocation of benefits and to the resulting reduction in poverty

quantifying biodiversity footprints of dutch economic sectors a global supply chain analysis abstract economic sectors contribute to biodiversity loss via environmental pressures such as land use and greenhouse gas ghg emissions directly and via their supply chains this study is the first that systematically quantifies supply chain related environmental pressures and terrestrial biodiversity losses in relation to sectoral production by presenting so called biodiversity footprints for 47 sectors in the dutch economy the supply chains of the food and chemical sectors were investigated in more detail by applying a structural path analysis mean species abundance msa was used as a biodiversity indicator representing the degree of ecosystem naturalness our results revealed that i the largest supply chain related biodiversity losses occur in land intensive and energy intensive sectors ii sectors that produce primary resources such as crops and livestock showed the largest biodiversity footprint per eur of output iii for most sectors in the dutch economy more than 50 of the biodiversity losses related to their supply chains were being caused abroad and iv more than 45 of the supply chain related losses caused by the food and chemical sectors occurred upstream of the direct suppliers our results imply that mitigation of ghg emissions as well as land use related options should be considered in sectoral strategies to protect global biodiversity the results create a clear rational for not only improving sectoral production efficiency but also for taking supply chain responsibility supply chain related biodiversity losses often cannot be directly influenced by the sector or occur in other countries additional strategies may be needed then to reduce global biodiversity losses

an environmentally extended social accounting matrix although the social accounting matrix sam approach has been widely used in nationalaccounting and development economics it still neglectsimportant information among which are theinteractions between an economy and the environment this paper environmentally extends sam to capture therelationships among economic activities pollutionabatement activities and pollution emissions anumerical example of the environmentally extendedsocial accounting matrix esam using chinese 1990data is presented the multiplier and structural pathanalyses are applied to the esam for assessingenvironmental impacts of pollution related economicpolicies the analysis results show that an esam canbe a useful tool for environmental policy analysis

understanding carbon lock in abstract this paper narrative argues that industrial economies have been locked into fossil fuel based energy systems through a process of technological and institutional co evolution driven by path dependent increasing returns to scale it is asserted that this condition termed carbon lock in creates persistent market and policy failures that can inhibit the diffusion of carbon saving technologies despite their apparent environmental and economic advantages the notion of a techno institutional complex is introduced to capture the idea that lock in occurs through combined interactions among technological systems and governing institutions while carbon lock in provides a conceptual basis for understanding macro level barriers to the diffusion of carbon saving technologies it also generates questions for standard economic modeling approaches that abstract away technological and institutional evolution in their elaboration the question of escaping carbon lock in is left for a future paper

improvising innovation in uk urban district heating the convergence of social and environmental agendas in aberdeen abstract research on district heating has focused on technical economic appraisal of its contribution to energy and carbon saving in urban centres there is however lack of analysis of political and social processes which govern its actual take up this paper examines these processes through a case study of aberdeen scotland interviews and documentary analysis are used to examine the 2002 development of aberdeen heat and power ahp an independent energy services company esco technical economic feasibility was a necessary component of appraisal but not sufficient to govern decision making in the uk centralised energy market dh investment is unattractive to commercial investors and local authorities lack capacity and expertise in energy provision in aberdeen the politics of fuel poverty converged with climate politics creating an a typical willingness to innovate through improvisation the welfare priority resulted in creation of a non profit locally owned esco using cost rather than market based heat tariffs ahp has developed three combined heat and power energy centres and heat networks supplying 34 mwh pa of heat carbon savings are estimated to be 45 in comparison with electric heating and heating costs are reduced by a similar amount the conclusion outlines potential policy improvements

geography matters international trade patterns and the indirect land use effects of biofuels this article investigates the relationship between international trade patterns and the global distribution of coarse grain production responses to market developments in the united states our null hypothesis is that world markets are fully integrated rendering the geographic persistence of bilateral trade flows irrelevant in the global production response to a change in us prices the alternative hypothesis allows price transmission to vary along with the intensity of competition among countries in specific markets using data from 1975 to 2002 we reject the null hypothesis our work has direct implications for the analysis of the global land use impacts of biofuel mandates

integrating sustainable chain management with triple bottom line accounting abstract triple bottom line accounting is widely advanced as a way in which firms can realise broader societal objectives in addition to increasing shareholder value in our analysis of the australian economy we integrate financial input output tables that describe the interdependencies between economic sectors with national social and environmental accounts to construct numerate triple bottom line accounts for 135 discrete sectors the accounts are portrayed against the numeraire of one dollar of gdp thus for a sector of the economy financial aspects of performance can be expressed for example as dollars of export earnings per dollar of gdp social aspects such as employment can be portrayed as minutes of employment generated per dollar greenhouse issues can be portrayed as kilograms of carbon dioxide emitted per dollar since these indicators of triple bottom line performance are referenced against financial units and are consistent with the system of national accounts they can be applied to financial accounts of a firm a service or a product and allow a robust triple bottom line account to be developed across a range of scales the critical advantage of this approach is that it includes both the direct or immediate effects as well as the indirect or diffuse effects associated with a large and distant chain of supply paths the incorporation of most indirect or upstream effects therefore expands the range of issues and effects within the analytical boundary and also includes imports and exports both products and firms can then be assessed properly in sustainable chain management scm terms thus a firm that uses a key intermediate input that requires a large amount of water for example cannot hide the environmental implications since they are revealed in the analysis of the full production chain this revelation can also underpin progress when firms acknowledge both the direct and indirect effects and improve their selection of key inputs on a wider range of criteria rather than on price alone our analysis is well developed at the economic sector level for australia and is also being applied to number of government institutions firms and individual products before the full benefits of numerate triple bottom line accounting can be applied to the equity issues of globalisation trade interdependencies between groups of typical countries will have to be analysed using these whole economy approaches this will allow country specific intensities to be applied to important items in the international production chain

assessing the importance of international tourism for the turkish economy a social accounting matrix analysis abstract the international tourism sector has grown rapidly in turkey since the 1980s and turkey ranks among the top ten countries in terms of tourist arrivals and receipts previous studies on international tourism in turkey are partial equilibrium studies which emphasized the importance of the sector for foreign exchange earnings employment creation and economic growth the social accounting matrix sam modeling approach is superior to partial equilibrium analysis as it takes into account intersectoral linkages this paper analyzes the contribution of international tourism to the turkish economy using two sams for 1996 and 2002 respectively two analyses are conducted using the sam impact model i sectoral comparison of gdp elasticities and ii sam impact analysis of international tourism on output value added and employment the results show that the gdp elasticity of international tourism is relatively low and the impact of foreign tourist expenditures on domestic production value added gdp and employment in turkey are modest the results imply the possibility of leakage of foreign tourist expenditures out of the economy

equilibrium models displaying endogenous fluctuations and chaos abstract this paper surveys current developments in dynamic general equilibrium theory concerned with conditions under which endogenous fluctuations are possible existing contributions are divided into two classes the larger one consists of models with a unique perfect foresight equilibrium while the second includes models where equilibrium is indeterminate and the set of equilibria involving endogenous fluctuations includes sunspots equilibria while the two classes of models involve oscillations of different natures and with different policy implications we show that both are consistent with optimizing behavior and competitive equilibrium

environmental and social accounting for brazil an environmentally extendedsocial accounting matrix sam has beenconstructed for brazil for the first time wereview in detail previous studies in thisfield describe the construction structure anddata sources of the brazilian sam anddemonstrate the effect of system closure examining a range of type i and type iimultipliers we show that incomes generated byfinal consumption are highly skewed towardsrich households but energy requirements andcarbon emissions are higher for the consumptionof the poor a significant negative correlationexists between employment and income on onehand and energy requirements and carbonemissions on the other while a significantpositive correlation exists between imports and energy and carbon these correlationsdemonstrate that there is scope for policiesthat pursue imports substitution and reduceenergy consumption and carbon emissions whilstincreasing employment and income

structural path analysis of india s carbon emissions using input output and social accounting matrix frameworks abstract while input output io tables have been widely employed to study energy and environmental issues social accounting matrix sam which further considers the interactions of the production system primary factors households and social institutions in the economy is rarely seen in this field this paper thus compares the transmission dynamics under an io framework and a sam framework with the help of structural path analysis spa technique which decomposes the io and sam analysis results by extracting the interconnections in the economic system a case study is performed to investigate india s carbon emissions based on its latest publicly available io and sam tables as the fourth largest emitter in the world india s large population base fast population growth and huge unmet demand imply a surge of carbon emissions following future economic development there have been a few studies on india s energy and emission issues using io tables but more research from different perspectives is still needed to better support policy making this is the first study on india s carbon emissions under a sam framework and using spa techniques and also the first study that extends the use of spa by transmission path to the energy and environmental literature

international trade and the sustainability footprint a practical criterion for its assessment a simple and minimal criterion for sustainability is that the value of natural capital plus manufactured capital be not decreasing on the basis of any individual country or region the above simple comparison may be misleading as it does not take account of the production of goods for consumption in other countries regions via international trade in other terms the full environmental footprint of a country may not be properly assessed a method of calculating a weak sustainability criterion has been established for both a closed economy approach and an open economy approach there are significant differences between the open and closed economies measures for several regions particularly the middle east overall global sustainability on this criterion has been positive and increasing using a difference equation approach a further analysis has been made of the average proportional rate of change of global sustainability between 1980 and 1990 and its various regional and structural components have been determined these indicate that most of global sustainability growth can be attributed to western europe other asia and japan particularly through high savings ratios the usa on the other hand has made a very small net contribution to the growth in global sustainability

institutional entrepreneurship in sustainable urban development dutch successes as inspiration for transformation sustainable urban development is a wicked problem on the basis of three case studies we conclude that institutional entrepreneurs play an important role in sustainable urban development the question we address is how institutional entrepreneurs do this we theorize and find six tactics that entrepreneurs employ to influence both formal and informal institutions to create a favourable institutional context for sustainable development we do so by combining insights from both institutional theory and institutional economics through framing and theorizing institutional entrepreneurs create new visions on sustainable urban developments whereas collaboration and lobbying are important for the realization of the projects the study adds new insights into how negotiation private governance contracts property rights and standardization certification standards form a key to altering incentive schemes and to create a competitive advantage through the joint changes in both informal institutions and the formal institutions the entrepreneurs are able to change the institutional context in which projects are embedded thereby increasing the feasibility of their projects 2013 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

towards more accurate and policy relevant footprint analyses tracing fine scale socio environmental impacts of production to consumption the consumption of internationally traded goods causes multiple socio environmental impacts current methods linking production impacts to final consumption typically trace the origin of products back to the country level lacking fine scale spatial resolution this hampers accurate calculation of trade and consumption footprints masking and distorting the causal links between consumers choices and their environmental impacts especially in countries with large spatial variability in socio environmental conditions and production impacts here we present the sei pcs model spatially explicit information on production to consumption systems which allows for fine scale sub national assessments of the origin of and socio environmental impacts embedded in traded commodities the method connects detailed production data at sub national scales e g municipalities or provinces information on domestic flows of goods and in international trade the model permits the downscaling of country to country trade analyses based on either physical allocation from bilateral trade matrices or mrio models the importance of producing more spatially explicit trade analyses is illustrated by identifying the municipalities of brazil from which different countries source the brazilian soy they consume applications for improving consumption accounting and policy assessment are discussed including quantification of externalities of consumption consumer labeling trade leakages sustainable resource supply and traceability

identifying critical supply chain paths that drive changes in co2 emissions abstract to address the problem of global warming it is important to identify the supply chain paths that drive changes in life cycle co2 emissions and provide both policy makers and decision makers with the information on the critical paths in order to efficiently reduce the co2 emissions in this article i extract and analyze the factors and key supply chains involved in changes in co2 emissions associated with japan s overall demand from 1990 to 2000 using the structural path decomposition spd method applied to the 1990 1995 2000 linked japanese environmental input output tables at the four digit commodity classification level the results reveal that the volume of co2 emissions increased as a result of changes in the input structure of the electricity of the services sector such as electricity amusement and recreation facilities household demand electricity retail trade household demand and electricity public administration local local government demand indicating increasing dependence of services on energy input i also find that the final demand shift changed co2 emissions for example the rise in demand for integrated circuits in exports has contributed to increasing co2 emissions generated from electricity the fall in demand for frozen fish and shellfish in household demand has contributed to decreasing co2 emissions from marine fisheries

energy requirements of sydney households supporting the lifestyles of the populations of modern cities requires vast quantities of natural resources and leads to environmental stresses such as air and water pollution research into the metabolism of cities therefore aims at understanding the physical flows into within and out of cities with a view to reducing the use of resources and the environmental impacts one important physical indicator is energy use most studies on cities only consider direct or end user energy consumption since the function of cities is to serve the lives of their residents indirect energy use in cities or energy embodied in the consumption of goods and services by its residents can be regarded as being as important as direct energy use however physical models of cities are extremely complex and have difficulty in dealing with boundary issues and hence the indirect resource requirements in this paper we use input output analysis and detailed household expenditure data to yield comprehensive energy use breakdowns for the 14 statistical subdivisions of sydney multivariate regression and structural path analysis spa are used to interpret the results clear correlations can be drawn between energy use and income household size age and degree of urbanity the structural path analysis is used to demonstrate how significant differences in lifestyles between inner and outer areas of sydney leads to different energy use characteristics this final consumption based approach to analysing the energy requirements for households has important implications for measures aimed at reducing energy use which tend to only consider direct energy use d 2004 elsevier b v all rights reserved

detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company application to the food portfolio of a retailer companies are called by institutional organizations to assess their impacts on biodiversity and to take actions to achieve collectively conservation objectives this paper presents a method to assess whether the pressures exerted by a business and its value chain on biodiversity are compatible with biodiversity conservation the absolute environmental sustainability assessment framework is used to compare relevant life cycle assessment midpoint and endpoint indicators to the ecological budgets assigned to the company this approach is illustrated based on the case study of a mass market retailer with a focus on the pressures exerted by its food portfolio at the agricultural production step the results indicate that several pressures driving biodiversity loss are not sustainable the study also highlights the prominent weight of a few product categories in the ecological burden these findings have implications for mass market retailers as well as their food value chains and open research perspectives to make such an approach fully operational

the employment effects of an income redistribution in developing countries the 1970 ilo mission report to colombia first proposed the notion that since the poor tend to consume a more labour intensive basket of commodities than the rich a redistribution of income in their favour will tend to increase employment this proposal gave rise to a host of attempts in the 1970s to demonstrate its empirical validity in a number of developing countries the results however provided only a very limited degree of support to the ilo hypothesis indeed by 1978 the clear conclusion of the general equilibrium macroeconomic models was that income redistribution would have only a tiny effect on employment 1

growth and inequality in india analysis of an extended social accounting matrix summary based on an extended social accounting matrix sam for 2002 03 this study shows how sectoral growth in india affects inequality a breakdown of the wage account into three educational levels and 10 sectors of employment improves the link between sectoral expansion and household income in the sam the results show that only agricultural growth reduces inequality while growth in heavy manufacturing and services sectors raises inequality given india s current growth pattern inequality is likely to increase further in an analysis of the standard sam growth in any sector would appear to reduce inequality which underlines the importance of our extension

swedish district heating a system in stagnation current and future trends in the district heating sector this paper argues that sweden s old and established district heating sector is heading into a stagnation phase the aim is to analyse the factors influencing this development as well as the strateg

introduction to the special issue urban energy governance local actions capacities and politics introduction to a special issue showing how there is much to be gained for deeper understandings of energy policy from a specifically urban analysis of rationales forms and repercussions of energy systems in transition the special issue offers an in depth examination of the variety of urban responses to quite distinctive and sometimes competing energy related challenges

growth in global materials use gdp and population during the 20th century the growing industrial metabolism is a major driver of global environmental change we present an assessment of the global use of materials since the beginning of the 20th century based on the conceptual and methodological principles of material flow accounting mfa on the grounds of published statistical data data compilations and estimation procedures for material flows not covered by international statistical sources we compiled a quantitative estimate of annual global extraction of biomass fossil energy carriers metal ores industrial minerals and construction minerals for the period 1900 to 2005 this period covers important phases of global industrialisation and economic growth the paper analyses the observed changes in the overall size and composition of global material flows in relation to the global economy population growth and primary energy consumption we show that during the last century global materials use increased 8 fold humanity currently uses almost 60 billion tons gt of materials per year in particular the period after wwii was characterized by rapid physical growth driven by both population and economic growth within this period there was a shift from the dominance of renewable biomass towards mineral materials materials use increased at a slower pace than the global economy but faster than world population as a consequence material intensity i e the amount of materials required per unit of gdp declined while materials use per capita doubled from 4 6 to 10 3 t cap yr the main material groups show different trajectories while biomass use hardly keeps up with population growth the mineral fractions grow at a rapid pace we show that increases in material productivity are mostly due to the slow growth of biomass use while they are much less pronounced for the mineral fractions so far there is no evidence that growth of global materials use is slowing down or might eventually decline and our results indicate that an increase in material productivity is a general feature of economic development

national accounting with natural and other types of capital we do double entry national accounting and incorporate zero profit arbitrageconditions euler equations for different types of capital includingnatural capital in non balanced growth capital gains terms for capitalgoods appear in the income side of the accounts depreciation terms appearon the product or expenditure side we consider renewable natural capital aswell as non renewable of both durable and non durable types

consumer and producer environmental responsibility comparing two approaches abstract two different indicators of environmental responsibility were independently proposed by rodrigues et al rodrigues j domingos t giljum s schneider f 2006 designing an indicator of environmental responsibility ecological economics 59 3 256 266 and lenzen et al lenzen m murray j sack f wiedmann t 2007 shared producer and consumer responsibility theory and practice ecological economics 61 27 42 these indicators are both supposed to reflect the indirect effects of consumer and producer behavior in the generation of environmental pressure in this paper we compare their mathematical properties and interpretation we conclude that they have different implications for environmental policy

technology choice and income distribution within the context of the agricultural sector one can point to numerous attempts to assess the macro economic effects of alternative technologies on the distribution of income one of the most influential early efforts for example was undertaken mainly in the indian context by john mellor 1 who was seeking to redefine agriculture s role in development strategy and policy in rejecting the then existing capital intensive and industry led development model and advocating instead a rural led employment intensive path to development mellor was concerned among other things with the relationships between increased foodgrain production using alternative technologies and the growth rate of non agricultural employment non agricultural sector capital labour ratios and the course of per capita incomes of the labour force more recently haggblade and hazell2 have used an input output based model to examine how differences in the choice of agricultural technology and farm size influence the indirect or multiplier effects of increases in agricultural output they show for example that the input intensity consumption profile of targeted farms and processing characteristics of the farm output all affect the size and composition of nonfarm spinoffs 3 the finding that consumption linkages generally dominate the total multiplier confirms mellor s emphasis on the importance of this particular type of linkage effect

energy supply and urban planning projects analysing tensions around district heating provision in a french eco district abstract through the analysis of energy supply choices this article explores the way in which energy priorities and their climate related features are incorporated into urban public policy these choices must take account of different factors as is the case with district heating which is justified as a vehicle of renewable energy while subject to pressure in eco districts because its techno economic balances are destabilised by falls in demand our study focuses particularly on the city of metz france which has chosen district heating as the primary source for provision for the municipal area and for its first eco district we analyse the tensions within these choices with particular attention to the way in which they are negotiated inside municipal departments and with the local energy operator this enables us to explore the tensions in defining the scale that governs decisions and the linkages between energy related and urban priorities

modeling prices in a sam structure the aim of this paper is to develop an intersectoral price model in a social accounting matrix traditionally the emphasis of the social accounting methodology has been on quantity oriented models and their income effects in contrast the authors use the social accounting matrix to develop a price model that captures the interdependence among activities households and factors and provides a complete set of accounting prices furthermore they use decomposition techniques to trace underlying general equilibrium effects copyright 1995 by mit press

conflicting strategies towards sustainable heating at an urban junction of heat infrastructure and building standards approaches to sustainability transitions stress the possibility of aligning actors around a shared vision of the future e g at the scale of a city empirical accounts reveal how difficult such

structural path and decomposition analysis of aggregate embodied energy intensities in china 2012 2017 abstract the dependence of the economic development of a region on its energy consumption is a major challenge for developing countries the aggregate embodied energy intensity aei based on an input output framework reflects the interaction between regional economy and energy consumption driven by final demand studying the change in aei from the perspective of sector production and final demand can effectively control the source and trend of energy intensity change in order to control the growth of energy intensity however there is a relative lack of studies determining the causes of aei changes from the perspective of sectors and final demands this study attempted to identify the influencing factors of aei changes and establish an aei based environmental policy in china a multiplicative structural decomposition analysis and a structural path analysis were used to study the aei under conditions of different final demands sectors and transmission layers along with the factors influencing aei changes in china from 2012 to 2017 our results indicate that the final demand category of gross fixed capital formation made the largest contribution to aei changes in 2012 and 2017 and the multiplicative intensity factor significantly inhibited the decrease in aei among the sectors studied only a few were found to significantly affect the change in aei with s11 processing of petroleum coking and nuclear fuel s12 chemical industry and s14 smelting and rolling of metals being the key sectors that input high energy consumption products to other sectors

unequal raw material exchange between and within countries galicia nw spain as a core periphery economy abstract a global multi regional input output model with sub national resolution for galicia north west spain was used to study physical and value added trade balances between galicia the rest of spain and the world within the framework of ecologically unequal exchange theory we argue that a region such as galicia can play a twofold role as core and periphery in the global division of extractive activities we show that galicia is a sink i e net importer of natural resources from middle and low income economies and that the lower the income of the trade partner the more raw material intensive the imports measured as upstream kg per usd imported value added however this physical deficit is less accentuated than for the rest of spain and galicia s material footprint is significantly lower 14 2 compared with 24 5 t capita moreover galicia is a source i e net exporter of raw materials compared with more thriving european union economies and even for some key trade partners such as germany uk and the rest of spain it is a net importer of value added

structural path analysis and multiplier decomposition within a social accounting matrix framework the main purpose of this paper is to apply structural path analysis to a social accounting matrix sam framework because the sam is a comprehensive essentially general equilibrium data system the whole network through which influence is transmitted can be identified and specified through structural path analysis the latter provides an alternative and much more detailed way to decompose multipliers as compared with the traditional treatment of stone 1978 and pyatt and round 1979 this paper consists of five sections the first one reviews the sam framework as a basis for multiplier analysis and multiplier decomposition in particular the additive decomposition in terms of transfer open loop and closed loop effects is succinctly presented section ii applies this conventional decomposition to a sam of south korea to illustrate with eleven specific cases the effects of an exogenous injection on the endogenous accounts of the sam i e the incomes of the factors household groups and production activities section iii is devoted to the presentation of the elements of structural analysis and more particularly the transmission of economic influence within a structure finally section iv applies structural path analysis to the south korean sam and compares and contrasts the multiplier decomposition which it yields with the alternative decomposition discussed in section ii the comparison is the more significant in that the two decomposition methods are applied to the same eleven selected cases spanning a variety of sectors i e poles of origin for the injection and sectors poles of destination the empirical analysis in section iv suggests that structural path analysis applied to a sam is a potentially operationally useful technique within which a whole series of policy issues can be addressed the final section is devoted to a brief summary and conclusions

the role of actor networks in the early stage mobilisation of low carbon heat networks abstract low carbon heat networks lchns offer great potential for carbon and heating cost reduction despite these benefits lchns provide for just two per cent of heat demand in the uk when estimates suggest they have the potential to provide for around 43 per cent these low levels of lchn provision are in stark contrast to the nordic nations which exemplify some of the highest quality and most extensive heat networks in the world it is within this context that the pioneer cities project the project was launched by the uk government to help local authorities overcome barriers to the deployment of lchns this paper reports the findings of an evaluation of this project drawing on 86 interviews across five local authorities analysed using elements of actor network theory ant the evaluation found that the project s success has been limited participating local authorities have encountered challenges regarding marketisation public sector retrenchment and inexperience in mobilising lchns these factors militate against the formation of the robust actor networks required to deploy lchns analysis using ant reveals insights into why lchns remain elusive in the uk and suggests that policy makers need to strengthen local authorities ability to lead and deliver complex infrastructure projects

the economy wide impact of controlling energy consumption in indonesia an analysis using a social accounting matrix framework escalating oil prices and the need to control carbon emissions sound the alarm for indonesia to reduce or be more efficient in its energy use instead of eliminating the fuel oil subsidy to promote better and more efficient use of energy the indonesian government seems to be more in favour of restricting energy use by for example requiring all hotels restaurants night clubs and other business activities to close down by 1 am societies need to understand the full consequences of adopting restricting energy use and more efficient energy use strategies toward their incomes this paper aims to analyse the impact on the economy of energy policies aiming to reduce and to improve the efficiency of energy use particularly on the income of various household groups this paper will first construct a social accounting matrix for indonesia with detailed energy sectors and second utilise various multiplier analyses to observe and understand the impact of these energy policies

effects and mechanism of influence of china s resource tax reform a regional perspective abstract china s resource tax reform beginning with xinjiang as a pilot area in june 2010 marked a new stage in the progression of china s resource tax system based on the 2007 social accounting matrix sam for xinjiang constructed by ourselves this paper takes a regional perspective on china s resource tax reform to quantitatively calculate its degree of influence and qualitatively analyze its mechanism of influence by adopting an energy computable general equilibrium cge model and a sam price model the results show that the main significance of the reform lies in bolstering local government finances rather than energy conservation or carbon reduction this is because revenue will be transferred from resource enterprises and the central government to the local government while simultaneously the low tax rate narrow tax scope and unreasonable price mechanism will combine to prevent the reform from reaching its environmental goals promoting resource price mechanism reform and deepening resource tax reform will be two key elements of china s future energy strategies because resource enterprises will bear the increased burden caused by the reform the degree of sectoral price increases will be limited therefore the fear that resource tax reform will push up inflation is unnecessary and should not be a barrier to reform

the water footprint of tourism in spain this study complements the water footprint wf estimations for spain incorporating insights of the process analysis and inputeoutput io analysis we evaluate the virtual both blue and green consumed water trade of agricultural and industrial products but also of services especially through tourism for a country in which more than 10 of the gross domestic product gdp derives from this activity we use domestic and import disaggregated tables in the agro alimentary activities based mainly on national agrarian industrial services and trade statistics in order to obtain import coefficients water data and io tables of the main trade partners are used to reproduce the technology of these economies results show that 16 of the spanish exports are due to foreign tourism thus the water footprint of foreign tourism in spain is 3 7 km 3 finally we compare reductions in total tourism expenditure and the domestic and

market opening and third party access in district heating networks the purpose of this paper is to analyse the possible effects of introducing tpa in district heating networks by identifying and scrutinizing a number of possible scenarios for increased competition the analysis builds on a theoretical discussion of economic efficiency in district heating operations and the possible impacts on consumer prices of a market opening an important conclusion is that regulated tpa may have small positive effects on competition and at the same time it can have a negative impact on the possibility to run the integrated district heating operations in a cost effective manner this conclusion stems in part from the observation that most district heating networks are local in scope moreover district heating operations are highly interdependent in for instance that the level of the return temperature of the water will affect the efficiency of combined heat and power plants for these reasons the introduction of the so called single buyer model or perhaps even more preferable an extended and more transparent producer market could represent more efficient market designs moreover in networks with clear natural monopoly characteristics an ex ante price regulation must be considered

exogenous shocks social skill and power urban energy transitions as social fields abstract the constantly growing scholarship on urban energy transitions needs a framework to analyze these transitions this article proposes the field perspective fp as an approach for the study of urban energy transitions fp analyses how the interplay of actors who are dedicated to a similar purpose and the structures guiding this interplay co evolve by applying fp to the energy transition in the german city emden the article shows how the transition evolves through a alterations in the exogenous context of the city e g national feed in tariffs for renewables b the social skill and changing interplay of local actors engaged in the transition and c the emergence of power constellations and rules

re regulating district heating in sweden abstract the electricity market reform in sweden has had great but little discussed consequences for the district heating industry formerly regulated municipal district heating companies are now obliged to operate in a commercial manner and pricing previously regulated by the local authority act is now free the swedish competition authority has on several occasions mentioned to the government that a price regulation ought to be reinstated since district heating is a natural monopoly and in many cases in a dominant market position on local heating markets the competition authority also believes that cross subsidies occur in multi service utilities i e between monopolistic district heating and competitive electricity production and sales municipal district heating is often organised together with electricity sales and production in a municipally owned limited company many municipalities have recently sold their energy utilities to private or state owned commercial actors thus creating private monopolies exempt from price regulations in 1999 the national energy administration stem was given the task to monitor the district heating market and to suggest means to come to terms with these issues stem does not favour a price regulation as the first measure stem also has an operative goal of increasing the use of district heating as a means of reducing electricity dependence in the heating of premises here an interesting conflict of interest exists between the two government authorities we argue that the differences in opinion go beyond the actual tasks given to the authorities but rather depend on perspectives economics and consumer perspective versus an engineering environmental and production perspective we would also like to encourage a broad discussion about the state of district heating and its regulatory condition and that neither economical models nor energy models are taken for granted

business models for sustainable biofuel transport the potential for intermodal transport the use of solid wood biofuels for energy production in heating plants has increased drastically during the last decades great interest has been shown in replacing unsustainable road transport of wood fuel with more sustainable intermodal transport this paper maps the common business models for biofuel transport in sweden and suggests how these models may be developed to accommodate intermodal transport a view of the biofuel supply chain as five overlapping networks industry material operations transport and infrastructure connected by four transaction markets sourcing operations transport and traffic have been used four typical business models have been found regional national biofuel company local biofuel company heating plant own account and wood processing industry cooperation and vertical integration among the actors are important to reach the large transport volumes required for intermodal transport key issues to increase the intermodal potential are increased vertical integration and cooperation sharing of transport resources and infrastructure joint purchases outsourcing to expert actors building trust and open communication and not underestimating the complexity of intermodal transport the results have implications for any actor interested in developing intermodal transport or policy measures the contribution includes the new approach of developing business models by using the five layer network market model

two period cycles in a three period overlapping generations model abstract we study the properties of two period monetary cycles in simple pure exchange overlapping generations economies in which the households live for three periods we demonstrate that these economies can support cycles under a much broader and arguably more plausible range of assumptions than the analogous two period economies we show that economies that fail the well known grandmont econometrica 53 1985 995 condition can have cycles and that economies that satisfy the condition can fail to have cycles in addition we show that economies can have monetary cycles when they do not have conventional monetary steady states and when aggregate demand for assets is not decreasing in the real return rate at a gross real rate of unity

realising local government visions for developing district heating experiences from a learning country abstract district heating dh has an important role to play in enabling cities to transition to low carbon heating although schemes are commonplace in some countries in learning countries where building level technologies make up the majority of heating systems there are numerous barriers to introducing dh local governments are seen as key actors in helping to create a shared vision for dh amongst stakeholders this study uses interviews with stakeholders from a range of sectors in the uk an example of a learning country to examine the visions of local actors for developing dh and the types of national policy that would support local implementation of these visions the analysis shows that in engaging with dh development local governments seek multiple types of value realising this value will most likely happen by taking a long term planned approach to development in contrast national government policy is geared towards techno economic criteria and may lead to only a minority of potential sites being developed without realisation of wider social or environmental benefits aligned to local visions the work highlights the importance of local strategic planning enabled by aligned national policy in realising the full economic environmental and social benefits of dh

a three perspective view of greenhouse gas emission responsibilities in new zealand abstract while responsibility for the environmental impacts of production has been commonly assigned to producers production is driven by consumer demand and it is valid to question whether impacts should instead be assigned to consumers however in each of these approaches producers and consumers either bear the full burden of responsibility or none at all an example of this is the kyoto protocol where all greenhouse gas emissions are assigned to the producer and no consideration is given to where goods are finally consumed rather than taking the conventional producer or consumer responsibility approach a third perspective is possible in which responsibility is shared we use input output analysis to apply all three of these responsibility perspectives to new zealand s domestic greenhouse gas emissions our main findings from the shared responsibility approach are that new zealand producers are responsible for 44 of domestic emissions new zealand consumers take 28 and 27 are exported a shared responsibility approach appears to distribute the burden of responsibility and associated liability between parties more fairly and is likely to be more widely acceptable than pure producer or consumer perspectives

the landscape of energy initiatives in sub saharan africa going for systemic change or reinforcing the status quo abstract this article examines recent interventions by major players in sub saharan africa s energy sector and asks whether they acknowledge or seek to address energy as a complex problem and energy systems as socio technical systems several scholars have begun advocating the socio technical approach to energy by noting that the mainstream conceptualization of energy challenges in strictly technological or economic terms does not capture the complexity and inertia inherent to energy systems moreover the article also seeks to examine how well have recent interventions integrated pro poor and low carbon concerns two of the major tenets of un s sustainable development goal 7 findings suggest that initiatives studied take only partial consideration of key aspects of a socio technical approach to the energy problem nonetheless the initiatives have taken on board pro poor and low carbon concerns to a certain extent two main policy implications are drawn from this study a continued focus on status quo approaches has the potential to generate investment inefficiencies and an effective low carbon transition will require a broader discussions about the types of lifestyles people in sub saharan africa aspire to

tracing distant environmental impacts of agricultural products from a consumer perspective globally trade flows of agricultural products are increasing while value is typically added along the whole production chain certain environmental impacts such as land and water use biomass appropriation and soil degradation are intrinsically linked to where the primary products originate from when taking a consumer oriented approach on environmental problems bilateral trade statistics can help in providing a clearer picture about the location of impacts caused by consumption elsewhere however in today s increasingly globalized world consumer goods are often imported from countries other than where the primary product originated from for instance soybeans are transported from brazil to the netherlands where they are processed into soy oil which is shipped to austria where it is consumed utilizing bilateral trade matrices and matrix algebra we present a method that allows to clearly link consumption patterns to the origin of primary products in this the method can help to provide information about consumption related distant environmental impacts we employ the case of land and water use linked to austria s soy product consumption to demonstrate the approach s relevance finally we outline some possible applications of this method to show its potential in enhancing understanding for informed consumer based environmental decision making

cropland area embodied in international trade contradictory results from different approaches with rapidly increasing trade volumes resource use and environmental pressures related to traded products are high on research and policy agendas robust accounts of biophysical resources used in the production processes of traded goods are required to support sustainable consumption and to expose problem shifting related to environmental policies in this context multi region input output analysis mrio is becoming a widely applied tool to establish consumption based accounts and to analyse production consumption links along complex international supply chains using the example of china s trade in cropland products and embodied cropland we make the case for a re evaluation of its application to land and other resources while analyses based on physical trade matrices show that china is a major net importer of cropland products and embodied cropland mrio based results suggest exactly the opposite we do not find convincing arguments that could explain these large differences based on our knowledge of land systems and biomass metabolism and on the results from physical accounting we question the plausibility of mrio derived results we conclude by outlining next steps in research that are required to improve assessments of trade related resource use in order to produce more robust results a prerequisite for the formulation of policy recommendations

quo vadis mrio methodological data and institutional requirements for multi region input output analysis abstract in order to understand wider sustainability impacts of consumption and to successfully promote and implement sustainable consumption and production policies there is a need to capture the whole life cycle impact of products and services across international supply chains multi region input output mrio databases are a well described and suitable foundation for global sustainability analyses addressing a wide range of policy and research questions in this paper we reflect on the reasons for the recent boom in mrio compilation summarise the current state of development and discuss future options for mrio analysis we list in detail the requirements for efficient and effective mrio research and propose systemic and institutional changes we deliberately try to go beyond existing ambitions for mrio compilation and thus intend to stimulate discussion and to lay out the options for the future of mrio research

expectations in stability and in viability in realistic overlapping cohorts models abstract in this paper we shall consider the multi cohort generalization of overlapping generations models namely overlapping cohorts olc models each time period consumers of different ages form expectations on future interest rates and conditionally maximize utility arising from their remaining consumption paths under the condition of zero bequest for every time period a coordinator determines the new interest rate to ensure that the total consumption is equal to the total endowment of the society the message of the paper is the following 1 in olc the dynamics generated by rational expectations is frequently not only unstable but unviable 2 in olc the dynamics generated by naive expectations is practically asymptotically stable and viable around the lower steady state

the co2 trade balance between scotland and the rest of the uk performing a multi region environmental input output analysis with limited data in this paper we attempt an empirical application of the multi region input output mrio method proposed by turner lenzen wiedmann and barrett turner k lenzen m wiedmann t barrett j 2007 examining the global environmental impact of regional consumption activities part 1 a technical note on combining input output and ecological footprint analysis ecological economics 62 1 37 44 in a recent issue of this journal in order to enumerate the co2 pollution content of interregional trade flows between scotland and the rest of the uk ruk we extend the analysis to account for direct emissions generation by households as final consumers and to a social accounting matrix sam where a more comprehensive account of incomes and expenditures is possible while the existence of significant data problems mean that the quantitative results of this study should be regarded as provisional the interregional economy environment io and sam framework for scotland and ruk allows an illustrative analysis of some very important issues in terms of the nature and significance of interregional environmental spillovers within the uk and the existence of a co2 trade balance between scotland and ruk

low carbon transition in a distributed energy system regulated by localized energy markets abstract low carbon transition becomes an urgent need of modern societies for energy conservation and environmental protection the purpose of this work is to evaluate the roles of market regulation energy consumption and energy capacity in low carbon transition for distributed energy systems through an agent based simulation a set of agent behavioral rules for the competition of high carbon and low carbon energies mimics the local dynamics of the energy production of distributed energy systems and the energy consumption of industrial firms under the impact of energy market fluctuation simulation results show that under the condition of increased energy capacities with a positive feedback between supply and demand low carbon transition can be facilitated by the combination of market adjustment favoring low carbon energies and the policy adjustment for low energy consumptions by contrast with low energy capacities and high energy consumptions transitions from high carbon economy to low carbon economy inevitably render a catastrophic economic depression policy implications for different situations of countries are drawn regarding the regulation of localized energy markets for restricting the supply of high carbon energy while cultivating the demand for low carbon energy and the improvement on energy saving energy production efficiency and storage capacity

governing sustainability transitions through business model innovation towards a systems understanding this paper examines the role of innovative business models in the transformation of socio technical systems focusing on decentralised energy technologies we explore business model innovation in the context of a transition towards a more sustainable energy system we conduct an empirical study of two energy services company esco models for the deployment of combined heat and power with district heating chp dh infrastructure in the uk based on these case studies we illustrate the different ways in which local authorities develop business models to create and capture value from more efficient resource use and to deploy sustainable technologies drawing from systems theories in the business model and socio technical literatures we analyse the interfaces between business models energy infrastructure and institutions we propose that a systems based approach to the analysis of business models as embedded in their socio technical contexts can offer new insights into the dynamics and governance of sustainability transitions

uk local authority engagement with the energy service company esco model key characteristics benefits limitations and considerations abstract this paper explores how some uk local authorities las have opted to engage with the energy service company esco model in a bid to enhance their influence over local energy system change and help them to deliver on their political public good objectives three common approaches to la esco model engagement are outlined including the 1 la owned arm s length model 2 private sector owned concession agreement model and 3 community owned and run model the la s decision to establish its own esco or alternatively enter into a partnership with another predominantly depends on its willingness to expose itself to risk the level of strategic control it desires and the resources it has at its disposal however the business case is contingent on the extent to which the national policy and regulatory framework facilitates and obligates las to play an active energy governance role stronger alignment of local and national energy agendas through communication and coordination between different governance actors could help to remove critical barriers to la esco engagement and their wider energy governance activities

quantifying the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint abstract analysis of household consumption and its environmental impact remains one of the most important topics in sustainability research nevertheless much past and recent work has focused on domestic national averages neglecting both the growing importance of international trade on household carbon footprint and the variation between households of different income levels and demographics using consumer expenditure surveys and multi country life cycle assessment techniques this paper analyzes the global and distributional aspects of american household carbon footprint we find that due to recently increased international trade 30 of total us household co 2 impact in 2004 occurred outside the us further households vary considerably in their co 2 responsibilities at least a factor of ten difference exists between low and high impact households with total household income and expenditure being the best predictors of both domestic and international portions of the total co 2 impact the global location of emissions which cannot be calculated using standard input output analysis and the variation of household impacts with income have important ramifications for polices designed to lower consumer impacts on climate change such as carbon taxes the effectiveness and fairness of such policies hinges on a proper understanding of how income distributions rebound effects and international trade affect them

short memory equilibrium in stochastic overlapping generations economies abstract in stochastic olg exchange economies we show that short memory equilibria the natural extension from deterministic economies of steady states low order cycles or finite state space stationary sunspots equilibria fail to exist generically in utilities as a result even with independent and identically distributed exogenous shocks there is serial correlation in endogenous economic variables in equilibrium this arises even if utilities are time separable some goods inferior and there are no technological lags hence the origins of economic fluctuations can be traced only to the demographic structure of a heterogeneous agent multiple good economy

emerging in between the multi level governance of renewable energy in the english regions abstract analysis explains the emergence of a regional dimension to the multi level governance of renewable energy in england the case sits in a tense yet informative position between the two poles of ordered and messy multi level governance these tensions which are currently debilitating could be rendered more creative and fruitful if greater authority was devolved to the regions and if policy learning between the regions and the central government was institutionalised more deeply improved legitimacy and accountability mechanisms must accompany increased authority however english ambivalence over regionalisation generally means such changes are unlikely

impact of rural industrialization on village life and economy a social accounting matrix approach the effects of decentralization of industries on rural development is one of the neglected topics in the recent development literature of india the impact of industrialization was studied intensively in the early 1970s when the second and third five year plans were emphasizing creation of large industrial units especially basic industries it was observed that such industrialization did not have much effect on rural development industrialization was taking place in a few pockets having little impact on the surrounding areas the industrial scene in the 1990s is quite different instead of basic industries chemical engineering and consumer goods industries dominate the scene industries are being established outside the megalopolies many small industrial towns have come into existence and the process of rural industrial decentralization appears under way so far there has been little analysis of how such decentralization of industries is affecting rural growth and development some indications of the impact do exist in the literature but they do not take into account important factors such as the development of the service sector around the factory and the changes in the village employment structure and in the socioeconomic fabric of village life 2 in this study we attempt to revive the debate on the impact of decentralization of industries on rural development we compare two relatively similar indian villages one close to a factory boriya and another located in a remote area aurepalle to provide insights on the socioeconomic effects of industrial decentralization field surveys of socioeconomic characteristics of households were conducted in both villages to understand better how people s outlook the employ