total factor carbon emission performance of the chinese transportation industry a bootstrapped non radial malmquist index analysis this paper proposes a non radial malmquist co2 emission performance index nmcpi for measuring dynamic changes in total factor co2 emission performance over time this index enables the consideration of non radial slacks in the conventional malmquist co2 emission index mcpi the nmcpi is calculated based on a non radial directional distance function derived by several data envelopment analysis dea models furthermore nmcpi could be decomposed into an efficiency change ec index and technological change tc index a bootstrapping approach is conducted to introduce statistical inferences into the nmcpi and its decompositions based on the proposed indices the dynamic co2 emission performance change and its decompositions of the chinese regional transportation industry from 2002 to 2010 are investigated the empirical results demonstrate that the total factor carbon emission performance of the transportation industry as a whole decreased by 32 8 over the period and this reduction was primarily caused by technological decline

the effects of stock market growth and renewable energy use on co2 emissions evidence from g20 countries the primary objective of this study is to empirically examine the effect of stock market growth and foreign direct investment fdi inflows on co2 emissions further this study investigates the impact of renewable energy consumption on co2 emissions and economic output in a panel of the g20 countries the empirical analysis was carried out on the full sample as well as on sub samples of developed and developing economies of the g20 member countries the results confirm a significant long run equilibrium relationship among the variables across the panels further the long run elasticities suggest that fdi significantly reduces co2 emissions in the full sample and developing economies while stock market growth reduces in developed economies similarly the renewable energy consumption substantially reduces co2 emissions and increases economic output across the panels our findings have important policy implications for instance the policy makers have to initiate effective policies to promote the renewable energy sources to meet the increasing demand for energy by replacing the use of conventional energy such as coal gas and oil this will therefore help to reduce the co2 emissions and also ensure sustainable economic development in the g20 nations

decarbonization under green growth strategies the case of south korea the win win opportunities connected to green growth are appealing to academics and policy makers alike but empirical evaluations about the effectiveness of green growth policies are still scattered taking south korea as case study which set up a highly ambitious green growth program in 2009 our research casts light on the extent to which the korean green growth strategy has been effective in decarbonizing the economy our methodology combines decomposition analysis and econometrics with a review of energy and climate policies including related structural changes on the short term 2008 2012 most of the drivers displayed an enhancing effect on co2 emissions from fuel combustion with gdp per capita being the strongest driver from a historical perspective 1971 2012 findings reveal that important drivers such as energy and co2 intensity even worsened their effects during the first years under the green growth strategy regression statistics revealed that gdp per capita was in fact the driver with the most explanatory power for co2 emissions followed by energy intensity the korean policy mix of modest government support to low carbon energy technologies and a lack of complementary pricing policies did not deliver the targeted emissions reduction at least in the short term despite recent policy developments i e the introduction of a renewable portfolio standard in 2012 and an emissions trading system in 2015 several key policy challenges for decarbonization remain less

a comparative analysis of electricity generation costs from renewable fossil fuel and nuclear sources in g20 countries for the period 2015 2030 abstract despite the positive momentum achieved by the renewable energy sector in recent years there are substantial challenges that need the attention of the global community and one of the more pressing issues is dealing with the deleterious external costs of power generation one of the parameters to compare costs of energy across various technologies is levelised cost of energy lcoe but it has been conventional practice to neglect the external costs in estimating the lcoe of power generation technologies furthermore as lcoe is a critical indicator for policy and decision makers there is a need to juxtapose actual costs of renewable and conventional power generation technologies this research paper attempts to internalise some of these external and ghg emission costs across various power generation and storage technologies in all the g20 countries as they account for 85 of global power consumption as future investment decisions are largely influenced by costs estimates in this research prove renewables and storage to be far cheaper than fossil and nuclear sources by 2030 even without considering external costs the myth that renewables are way too expensive has been debunked repeatedly and the cost decline of wind and solar photovoltaic pv technologies have outpaced most industry expectations the results of this research not only substantiate this trend but also statistically display that all the g20 countries have the opportunity to decrease their energy costs significantly between now and 2030 renewable energy technologies offer the lowest lcoe ranges across g20 countries in 2030 utility scale solar pv generally shows the lowest values ranging from 16 to 117 mwhel and onshore wind lcoe range is from 16 to 90 mwhel rooftop solar pv generally offers the next lowest lcoe ranging from 31 to 126 mwhel followed by lcoe of offshore wind power ranging from 64 to 135 mwhel solar pv and battery systems are highly competitive on an lcoe basis at utility scale ranging from 21 to 165 mwhel and at residential scale from 40 to 204 mwhel the g20 as well as other countries can continue to develop their economies in a sustainable manner along with substantial co benefits in adjacent policy fields such as higher national welfare better health of citizens lower respective health costs and improved energy security

demand for beef from cattle administered growth hormones or fed genetically modified corn a comparison of consumers in france germany the united kingdom and the united states we compare consumer valuations of beef ribeye steaks from cattle produced without growth hormones or genetically modified corn in france germany the united kingdom and the united states results suggest that french consumers place a higher value on beef from cattle that have not been administered added growth hormones than u s consumers however valuations of non hormone treated beef are statistically indistinguishable across germany the united kingdom and the united states results also suggest that european consumers place a much higher value on beef from cattle that have not been fed genetically modified corn than u s consumers copyright 2003 oxford university press

carbon intensity changes in the asian dragons lessons for climate policy design abstract there is a growing political interest in carbon intensity targets because they are the basis for climate pledges from relevant developing countries such as china they may be also the basis for policy designs in developed countries like eu members this paper develops a comprehensive econometric study on the main drivers of national emissions intensity in emerging countries in east asia this regional focus responds to their pivotal position in global economic growth and remarkable trends in carbon emissions intensity the main hypothesis of this paper is that the nature of economic growth has a major effect on carbon intensity trends that deserves some attention accordingly the novelty of this paper is to examine the contribution of intensive and extensive gdp growth for carbon intensity abatements labour productivity is revealed to be the main factor responsible for major carbon intensity reductions by asian dragons whereas household energy per capita and industrial energy per worker contributed in the opposite direction consequently intensity targets may become meaningless for real climate action contributions if they do not take into account labour productivity trends

a metafrontier approach for measuring an environmentally sensitive productivity growth index this paper presents an alternative environmentally sensitive productivity growth index to incorporate group heterogeneities into a conventional malmquist luenberger productivity growth index the p

drivers of stagnating global carbon intensity of electricity and the way forward abstract despite the signing of the paris climate agreement there is still great uncertainty regarding the world s ability to decarbonize and meet the 2 c target in this regard the electricity production sector deserves particular attention the sector has the largest decarbonization potential and its share of the world s co2 emissions from fuel combustion increased from 30 in 1990 to 36 in 2014 to better understand global trends this study analyses the factors influencing changes in the global aggregate carbon intensity aci of electricity a measure of the level of co2 emissions per unit of electricity produced over the last 25 years using multidimensional index decomposition analysis it finds that global aci barely improved since 1990 because of a shift in electricity production from developed to developing countries with higher acis this geographical shift offset consistent improvements to power generation efficiency worldwide and is likely to persist in the future to keep the 2 c target realisable it is imperative to enhance international cooperation to lower the acis of emerging economies and deepen the penetration of renewables which have thus far performed below expectations

has australia surpassed its optimal macroeconomic scale finding out with the aid of benefit and cost accounts and a sustainable net benefit index abstract the sustainable economic welfare of a nation depends largely on the sustainable net benefits the macroeconomy confers to its citizens for this reason an optimal macroeconomic scale can be considered one where the physical scale of the macroeconomy and the qualitative nature of the stock of wealth it comprises maximises a nation s sustainable net benefits the corollary of this definition is thus the physical scale of the macroeconomy should grow only if in the process the sustainable net benefits of a nation increase it should cease to grow once sustainable net benefits are maximised whilst it is one thing to promote an optimal macroeconomic scale it is another entirely to gain an appreciation of the sustainable net benefits yielded by the macroeconomy gaining such an appreciation constitutes the central aim of this paper with the assistance of two separate benefit and cost accounts to replace gross domestic product gdp a sustainable net benefit index is constructed for australia for the period 1966 1967 to 1994 1995 the index particularly at the per capita level indicates that economic welfare in australia is declining i e the average australian is getting poorer despite per capita real gdp increasing the index therefore suggests that the scale of the australian macroeconomy has probably well exceeded the optimum

energy efficiency and marginal carbon dioxide emission abatement cost in urban china abstract energy efficiency improvement and carbon emission reduction are two important ways to mitigate energy consumptions and global warming this paper aims to examine energy efficiency and carbon dioxide co2 emissions abatement costs of city urban areas in china to this end an improved slacks based measure approach is introduced which considers the linkage between desirable and undesirable outputs then measures of energy efficiency co2 emission abatement cost and comprehensive state index of co2 emissions abatement cost and co2 emissions reduction potential are defined the proposed model is then applied to the dataset of 285 cities in china during 2008 2012 the results show that most city urban areas in china have relatively low energy efficiencies surprisingly there are gradually narrowing gaps regarding mean energy efficiencies between areas during 2008 2012 nevertheless there are great disparities in energy efficiencies between cities within a typical area and even a provincial region it is found that co2 emissions abatement cost in urban china exhibits an increasing trend during the study period also significantly geographic disparities in abatement costs between areas regions and cites are found specifically energy efficiency has significantly positive correlation with the comprehensive state index in china some important findings and useful policy implications are achieved

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

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

decomposition of the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier with undesirable output abstract in this paper we present an alternative analysis framework to evaluate the effects of technology heterogeneities and undesirable output on environmental efficiency measurement the proposed framework combines the directional distance function and a meta frontier analysis it can be used to measure efficiency improvements brought about by enhanced technical management and technological advances for demonstration purposes we used the framework to measure the environmental efficiency in 90 countries worldwide for the 2003 2007 period the results showed that when the meta technology set is used as the evaluation basis the average environmental efficiency of high competitiveness countries is greater than that of lower middle low and upper middle competitiveness countries the upper middle competitiveness countries perform worse than the lower middle and low competitiveness countries because of the excessive labor force usage and carbon dioxide emissions in these countries we also found that the environmental inefficiency of the meta frontier for high competitiveness countries can be attributed to managerial failure in the production process whereas that for upper middle lower middle and low competitiveness countries can be attributed to technological differences

public information and performance the role of spatial dependence in the worldwide governance indicators among african countries summary the worldwide governance indicators wgi provide transparent and comparable country statistics for different dimensions of governance linked to under development yet does the public availability of governance data actually enhance performance if investors donor agencies and citizens are made aware of relative governance performance competition for inward investment such as fdi and oda and domestic legitimacy become plausible mechanisms for diffusion of good governance we test whether such mechanisms operate using the wgi for africa and find evidence for spatial diffusion of democracy rule of law and corruption control there is no evidence for diffusion of regulatory quality and government effectiveness

what factors drive inequalities in carbon tax incidence decomposing socioeconomic inequalities in carbon tax incidence in ireland abstract carbon taxes increase the cost of necessary household energy expenditures in many developed countries carbon taxes are regressive as they comprise a greater proportion of a poorer household s income certain socioeconomic groups are more negatively affected by these impacts than others while inequality of incidence by income group has received great attention in the literature a gap exists to quantify the inequality associated with socioeconomic characteristics this information is policy relevant as it may inform the most effective means to offset negative welfare impacts through changes to taxes and or social transfers this paper provides this contribution first the inequality of carbon tax incidence across the income spectrum is quantified using the concentration index methodology a subsequent multivariate decomposition quantifies the contribution each socioeconomic factor makes towards this inequality of incidence this is carried out for electricity motor fuel and all other home fuels to elicit variation of socioeconomic incidence by source while income contributes a great deal towards inequality of incidence for other home fuels other socioeconomic characteristics are the primary determinants of electricity and motor fuel related carbon tax incidence the relative importance of each characteristic in determining regressive impacts is quantified and this varies by carbon tax source

measuring wellbeing performance of carbon emissions using hybrid measure and meta frontier techniques empirical tests for g20 countries and implications for china abstract a quantitative measure of performance that integrates national level carbon emission profiles with key parameters of social and economic wellbeing can provide an effective management tool for policy interventions this paper constructs non parametric evaluation and decomposition models using hybrid measure and meta frontier techniques the proposed models are employed to estimate the wellbeing performance of carbon emissions wpce and identify the sources of wpce inefficiency empirical analyses based on the group 20 g20 countries for the 2000 2015 period shows the worst performance is in the brics country group i e brazil russia india china and south africa known for rapid growth whereas the developed and the developing economies of the g20 group show positive trajectories of performance as for china its performance measure of wpce was the lowest among the g20 indicating significant potential for further improvement the analysis also highlights the role of managerial failure as the primary driver of inefficiency more important than technological inefficiency in explaining efficiency loss within the g20 countries this critical finding the relevance and importance of managerial capability suggests the need for a high level of attention to governance and managerial capacity to ensure continued improvements in performance on carbon emissions and human wellbeing a lesson to be drawn from this study is that china s policies to promote a low carbon economy can benefit from increased priority given to low carbon technological innovation for the energy system transition and enhancement of environmental governance and managerial capacity to achieve a long term sustainability

measuring total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps using a non radial directional distance function a modified approach implementing the common but differentiated responsibilities principle for co2 mitigation requires an understanding of co2 emission performance and technology gaps in different countries this paper uses a meta frontier and non radial directional distance function to propose an alternative three stage approach to measure total factor co2 emission performance and technology gaps the first stage calculates the co2 emission performance of the group frontier the second stage uses these results to calculate the technology gap ratio the third stage integrates data from the first two stages to calculate co2 emission performance under the meta frontier this approach is easier to apply than other approaches in the literature and effectively avoids the phenomenon of the technology gap ratio being greater than unity the proposed approach can also decompose co2 emission performance loss into two categories management inefficiency and technical gaps to demonstrate the method an empirical analysis using data for 54 countries was conducted the study highlighted three main findings first upper middle income countries did not perform as well as high income countries and lower middle income countries second high income countries generally enjoy optimized production technology whereas the lower middle income countries generally had the lowest technological levels third both management inefficiency and technical gaps negatively impacted co2 emission performance but management inefficiency played a dominant role

green growth in the post copenhagen climate global climate change stands out from most environmental problems because it will span generations and force us to think in new ways about intergenerational fairness it involves the delicate problem of complex coordination between countries on a truly global scale as long as fossil fuels are too cheap climate change policy will engage all major economies the costs are high enough to make efficiency a priority which means striving toward a single market for carbon plus tackling the thorny issues of fairness hopes for a grand deal were mercilessly shattered at copenhagen in december 2009 and in other recent unfccc meetings with the result that green growth is promoted as an alternative path indeed green growth is clearly the goal but it is no magic bullet the world economy will require clear and rather tough policy instruments for growth to be green and it is naive to think otherwise growth green or not will boost demand for energy and coal is normally the cheapest source the magnitude of the challenge is greater if we also consider the problems related to nuclear fission energy and in some instances to bioenergy such as its competition for land that may be essential for the poor this paper discusses some necessary ingredients for a long term global climate strategy as we wait for the final and maybe elusive worldwide treaty we must find a policy that makes sense and is not only compatible with but facilitates the development of such a treaty c 2011 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

inequalities in life expectancy and the global welfare convergence abstract becker et al 2005 maintain that including life expectancy gains in a welfare indicator result in a reduction of inequality between 1960 and 2000 twice as great as when measured by per capita income we discuss their methodology and show it determines the convergence result we use an alternative methodology based on fleurbaey and gaulier 2009 which monetizes differences in life expectancy between countries at each date rather than life expectancy gains we show that including life expectancy has no effect on the evolution of world inequality

the effect of growth and corruption on soil sealing in italy a regional environmental kuznets curve analysis this paper analyses and looks more closely at the empirical debate regarding the income elasticity hypothesis postulated in relation to the environmental kuznets curve and the impact of corruption on the relationship between growth and environmental impact measured in terms of soil sealing as proxied by the number of building permits issued by public authorities it postulates that when current private rent is high compared to perceived social costs and a large enough minority benefits from the rules the ekc does not emerge and public intervention fails to perceive social optimality to validate this hypothesis we run a panel data regression model based on data from all italian regions results confirmed the hypothesis evidencing a u shaped relationship i e a detrimental relationship between income and environmental impact quality it also demonstrated that this is contingent on the level of corruption the latter affects the position and the shape of the inverted ekc speeding up the exploitation process it shows that the higher the income the higher the effect of corruption on the environment therefore it advocates caution against any simplistic inference from ekc