urbanization openness emissions and energy intensity a study of increasingly urbanized emerging economies this paper analyses the impact of urbanization and trade openness on emissions and energy intensity in twenty two increasingly urbanized emerging economies we employ three second generation heterogeneous linear panel models as well as recently developed nonlinear panel estimation techniques allowing for cross sectional dependence the empirical results show that population density and affluence increase emissions and energy intensity while renewable energy seems to be dormant in these emerging economies but non renewable energy increases both co2 emissions and energy intensity in addition openness significantly reduces both pollutant emissions and energy intensity whereas urbanization significantly increases energy intensity but it is insignificant in increasing emissions this may be in part due to the recent increasing trend in adopting cleaner technologies in these increasingly urbanized developing economies

the impact of population on co2 emissions evidence from european countries this paper analyses the impact of population growth on co2 emissions in european union countries traditionally researchers have assumed a unitary elasticity of emissions with respect to population growth in this study population is treated as a predictor in the model instead of being included as part of the dependent variable per capita emissions thus relaxing the above mentioned assumption of unitary elasticity we also contribute to the existing literature by taking into account the presence of heterogeneity in the sample and considering a dynamic specification the sample covers the period 1975 1999 for the current european union members our results show that the impact of population growth on emissions is more than proportional for recent accession countries whereas for old eu members the elasticity is lower than unity and non significant when the properties of the time series and the dynamics are correctly specified the different impact of population change on co2 emissions for the current eu members should therefore be taken into account in future discussions of climate change policies within the eu

off grid energy services for the poor introducing led lighting in the millennium villages project in malawi lanterns that use light emitting diodes leds powered by batteries which are in turn charged by grid electricity or small solar panels have emerged as a cost competitive alternative to kerosene and other fuel based lighting technologies offering brighter light for longer duration at equal or lower cost over time this paper presents lessons learned from the introduction of solar led lanterns in rural malawi we discuss a market based program using new and existing local commercial structures such as vendors and cooperatives to sell lanterns to village households without subsidy the paper addresses issues of enterprise development community interactions and survey data on lighting use and expenditure patterns before and after led lantern introduction households that purchased a lantern reported high levels of satisfaction with the led lanterns as well as savings in annual kerosene expenditure comparable to the price of the lantern these households also reported monthly incomes comparable to the price of the led lanterns whereas non adopters surveyed reported monthly incomes about half this level suggesting a need for financing options to maximize adoption among poorer populations in rural areas these results suggest that similar market based models of led lighting technology dissemination have the potential to be replicated and scaled up in other off grid regions in developing countries however viability of local cooperatives and supply chains for lantern products over the medium to long term remain to be assessed

technological change and the rebound effect in the stirpat model a critical view abstract technological change is key to understand the explanatory variables behind environmental impacts in the context of the stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model an adequate representation and analysis of the significance of the technology variable t in the stirpat model becomes crucial even more if one aims to better understand underlying processes such as the environmental rebound effect e re a critical review of the application of the stirpat model has been conducted to understand the diversity and value of the variables scopes assumptions statistical approaches and the environmental impacts commonly studied the findings highlight that despite the multiple applications and the high potential of the stirpat model inconclusive results and or knowledge gaps remain notably 1 a geographical imbalance in the scope of studies 2 the almost exclusive focus on carbon emissions 3 a lack of agreement on the choice of data additional explanatory variables and regression models 4 a lack of consensus on how to approximate t and 5 a lack of explicit analyses of the e re our findings are useful to both policymakers and academics for method design further research and policy evaluation

renewable and non renewable energy use economic growth nexus the case of mena net oil importing countries abstract this study examines the energy use economic growth nexus by disaggregating energy use into two types of energy renewable and non renewable energy use our sample consists of eleven mena net oil importing countries noics during the period 1980 2012 a multivariate panel framework was used to estimate the long run relationship and the panel granger causality tests was employed to assess the causality direction among variables the empirical results provide evidence for long term equilibrium relationship between real gross domestic product gdp renewable energy use non renewable energy use real gross fixed capital formation and labor force the results provide evidence also for positive and statistically significant elasticities moreover the empirical findings from panel error correction model confirm the existence of bidirectional causality between renewable energy use and economic growth and between non renewable energy use and economic growth results that support the feedback hypothesis moreover our empirical findings provide evidence for two way bidirectional causal association in both the short and long run between renewable and non renewable energy use which proves the substitutability and interdependence between these two types of energy sources the policies implications of these results are also proposed and discussed

co2 emissions renewable energy and the environmental kuznets curve a panel cointegration approach abstract this study combines a panel cointegration analysis with a set of robustness tests to assess the short and long run impacts of renewable energy on co2 emissions as well as the kuznets environmental curve hypothesis for 25 selected african countries over the period 1980 2012 the results provide no evidence of a total validation of ekc predictions however co2 emissions are found to increase with income per capita the overall estimations strongly reveal that renewable energy with a negative effect on co2 emissions coupled with an increasing long run effect remains an efficient substitute for the conventional fossil fuelled energy nonetheless the impact of renewable energy is outweighed by primary energy consumption in both the short and long run entailing more global synergy for outpacing the environmental challenges

on the design of optimal grandfathering schemes for emission allowances to meet its commitment under the kyoto protocol the eu plans to implement an emissions trading system whith grandfathering of allowances besides having distributional impacts the choice of the grandfathering scheme may affect efficiency if firms anticipate how future allocations depend on upcoming decisions in this paper we determine central design rules for optimal grandfathering within a simple two period model we find that for small open trading systems where allowance prices are exogenous first best second period grandfathering schemes must not depend on firm specific decisions in the first period second best schemes correspond to a ramsey rule of optimal tax differentiation and are generally based on both previous emissions and output however ofr closed emissions trading systems i e endogeneous allowance prices firstand second best rules coincide and must not depend on previous output levels they consist of an assignment proportional to the emissions in the first period plus a term which does not depend on firm specific decisions in either of the two periods

negotiating a uniform emissions tax in international environmental agreements abstract a consensus appears to be emerging that a global carbon tax is the best policy for managing greenhouse gas emissions emissions tax systems are relatively straightforward cost effective and can generate revenues used to offset other distortionary taxes moreover recent theoretical research weitzman 2014 has demonstrated that under some conditions the globally efficient tax rate can be implemented through a majority voting rule we extend this area of research by examining a uniform emissions tax system in the framework of an international environmental agreement in which only countries that voluntarily participate are subject to the tax we show that in the simplest situation in which countries have identical marginal benefit and cost functions the largest stable agreement consists of two countries and the tax system has little impact on abatement levels our analysis highlights that by ignoring the participation decision and assuming commitment by all parties the efficiency gains from a uniform emissions tax system are overstated

investigation of the causal relationships between combustible renewables and waste consumption and co2 emissions in the case of tunisian maritime and rail transport abstract this study investigates the dynamic causal links between carbon dioxide co 2 emissions real gross domestic product gdp combustible renewables and waste consumption and maritime and rail transport in tunisia spanning the period 1980 2011 the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach and granger causality tests are employed to examine the short and long run relationships between variables the empirical results suggest a bidirectional short run causality between co 2 emissions and maritime transport and a unidirectional causality running from real gdp combustible renewables and waste consumption rail transport to co 2 emissions the long run estimates reveal that real gdp contributes to the decrease of co 2 emissions while combustible renewables and waste consumption and maritime and rail transport have a positive impact on emissions our policy recommendation is that tunisia should use more combustible renewables and waste energy and increase the number of passenger s rail and maritime transport in order to motivate economic activities however the level of renewables energy required to reduce co 2 emissions caused by transport sector is still very weak

does more stringent environmental regulation induce or reduce technology adoption when the rate of technology adoption is inverted u shaped abstract we show that for a broad class of technologies the relationship between policy stringency and the rate of technology adoption is inverted u shaped this happens when the marginal abatement cost mac curves of conventional and new technologies intersect which invariably occurs when emissions are proportional to output and technological progress reduces emissions per output this outcome does not result from policy failure on the contrary in social optimum the relationship between the slope of the marginal damage curve and the rate of technology adoption is also inverted u shaped under more general conditions these curves can look even more complicated e g such as inverted w shaped

the environmental kuznets curve for pm2 5 pollution in beijing tianjin hebei region of china a spatial panel data approach abstract the purpose of this study is to exam the existence of environmental kuznets curve ekc of pm2 5 pollution in the beijing tianjin hebei bth region of china as one of the most important economic growth poles in china bth region has long been suffering from air pollution especially pm2 5 pollution thus in this study we utilized satellite observations of pm2 5 pollution and panel data of 13 cities in bth region from 1998 to 2016 to investigate the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution after verifying the spatial effect of pm2 5 pollution by spatial statistical analysis the spatial econometric model spatial durbin model sdm was chosen over the non spatial model in the examination of ekc the results showed that 1 the relationship between economic growth and pm2 5 pollution presented a significant inverted u shaped pattern though bth region is still in the upward section there is a hope that it will cross the point and enter the downward section in the future 2 the turning points of ekc would happen later with spatial effect considered compared to the result of non spatial model 3 the turning point of ekc would not happen until the region enter the post industrial economy stage moreover though some of the cities in bth region have entered post industrial stage none of them has cross the turning point of ekc results of this study indicate a promising future in the control of pm2 5 pollution as well as provide suggestions to put more emphasis on regional cooperative governance in air pollution control for the policy makers

does moving towards renewable energy causes water and land inefficiency an empirical investigation this study investigates the effect of renewable energy production on water and land footprint in 58 developed and developing countries for the period of 1980 2009 utilizing the ecological footprint as an indicator the fixed effects difference and system generalized method of moment gmm approaches were employed and eight different models were constructed to achieve robustness in the empirical outcomes despite the use of different methods and models the outcome was the same whereby gdp growth urbanization and trade openness increase the water and land footprint moreover renewable energy production increases the water and land inefficiency because of its positive effect on ecological footprint additionally based on the square of gdp it is concluded that the ekc hypothesis does not exist while the square of renewable energy production indicates that renewable energy production will continue to increase water and land footprint in the future from the outcome of this study a number of recommendations were provided to the investigated countries

does urbanization increase pollutant emission and energy intensity evidence from some asian developing economies abstractthis paper aims to investigate the effects of urbanization on pollutant emissions and energy intensity in selected asian developing countries after controlling for the effects of disaggrega

a new environmental kuznets curve relationship between direct material input and income per capita evidence from industrialised countries abstract many studies have focused on the quantification of the input of materials into the economy however the insights provided by those studies have generally been limited this paper attempts to bring analytical value to the discussion on dematerialization considering direct material input dmi per capita as the dependent variable in a test of the environmental kuznets curve ekc the explanatory variable is as usual gross domestic product per capita the quadratic and cubic versions of the ekc are tested econometrically using panel data ranging from 1960 to 1998 for 16 industrialised countries the results indicate a strong and robust support for both the quadratic and cubic ekc relationships between material input and income in industrialised economies while the statistical support to both types of evolution may seem contradictory it suggests that as industrialised economies grow the intensity of material consumption first increases but eventually starts exhibiting a decreasing trend after a certain income threshold is reached the inverted u or quadratic relationship is confirmed even though for the ranges of income considered in this study the trend is mostly on the increasing part of the inverted u curve however the statistical support to the cubic specification suggests that these results need to be regarded with caution overall the statistically stronger models are the quadratic and cubic models with country random effects and the cubic model with country and year fixed effects

environmental degradation renewable and non renewable electricity consumption and economic growth assessing the evidence from algeria abstract the imperative to reduce c o 2 emissions is stronger than ever and investment in renewable energy is one of the most viable options to reduce the carbon footprint this article explores the dynamic causal relationship between co2 emissions renewable electricity consumption non renewable electricity consumption and economic growth in algeria by using autoregressive distributed lag cointegration approach over the period 1980 2012 the empirical results confirm the existence of cointegration long run relationship among the variables we find that in the long run economic growth and non renewable electricity consumption have a detrimental effect on the environment quality whereas renewable energy use has a beneficial environmental effect furthermore in the short run results reveal unidirectional causality relationship running from gdp to nrec supporting the conservation hypothesis i e electricity consumption is dictated by economic growth the results suggest broadly that renewable electricity consumption can help to enhance environmental quality in algeria but so far renewable electricity generation has not reached a level that allows a significant contribution to energy based carbon dioxide emissions reduction target

overcoming obstacles against effective solar lighting interventions in south asia abstract basing on our devised world bank s design principles for effective renewable energy projects in developing countries and an in depth analysis of our two solar lighting projects in bangladesh and india this paper explores three key obstacles that constrain poor people from obtaining solar lighting financial exclusion weak governance and passive ngo and customer participation the low take up rate has a social and psychological impact this paper recommends creating easy access to credit establishing a robust complaint system and developing strategic partnership to overcome the obstacles

the trials and tribulations of the village energy security programme vesp in india the indian ministry of new and renewable energy mnre launched the village energy security programme vesp in 2004 but discontinued it during the 12th five year plan starting in 2012 after a series of unexpected challenges planners structured the program so that a village energy committee vec ran a decentralized village program involving biomass gasifiers straight vegetable oil svo systems biogas plants and improved cookstoves this suite of technologies was intended to produce electricity and thermal energy to meet the total energy requirements of rural communities at the end of january 2011 a total of 79 vesp projects were sanctioned in 9 states and 65 of these projects were fully commissioned yet more than half were not operational the mnre envisaged that the vesp would provide energy services to eradicate poverty improve health reduce drudgery enhance education raise agricultural productivity create employment generate income and reduce migration however vesp projects have had limited success and the trials and tribulations of the vesp offers important lessons for policymakers launching rural energy programs in india and other developing economies

a review on implementation strategies for demand side management dsm in kuwait through incentive based demand response programs abstract since the export of fossil fuel is the backbone of kuwait s economy the enormous upsurge in the internal fuel consumption creates anguish and bane at present 46 of the internal fossil fuel consumption is used for electricity generation the increase in fuel consumption hurled kuwait as one of the highest per capita electricity consuming as well as co 2 emitting countries in the world consumers pay only 6 of the production cost of electricity the government subsidizes the balance which is one of the major reasons behind the high electricity consumption in the country any reduction in electricity consumption can positively reflect on both per capita electricity consumption and co 2 emission additionally the saved fossil fuel can be exported to generate revenue to support the country s economy worldwide demand side management dsm is considered as an effective tool to curtail electricity demand the objective of this review paper is to explore the available literature to find out the most suitable dsm measures to control the growth of per capita electricity consumption in kuwait after conducting a detailed strengths weaknesses opportunities and threats swot analysis it is concluded that incentive based demand response programs can be considered as one of the most suitable solutions to address this problem

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

the merits of new pollutants and how to get them when patents are granted the performance of market based environmental regulation is affected by patents and vice versa this interaction is studied for a type of innovation where a new technology reduces emissions of a specific pollutant but at the same time causes a new type of damage if the new pollutant associated with this technology is sufficiently different from existing ones such that marginal damage is increasing in each of them but additive across pollutants a diversification of the pollution portfolio is socially desirable in a situation where the incentives to develop such a technology are created by patents the efficiency of permits is affected by monopoly pricing of the patent holding firm this result carries over to other types of innovation the performance of taxes is limited by either the inability to implement specific pollution mixes or monopoly pricing for constant returns to scale at the industry level the combined use of taxes and permits ensures the first best mix of technologies and provides positive research incentives

efficient co2 emissions control with emissions taxes and international emissions trading abstract we consider a stylized model of the hybrid co 2 emissions control in the eu a group of countries operates a joint emissions trading system ets covering only part of each country s economy the countries levy an emissions tax in the rest of their economy and possibly an additional tax in their ets sectors welfare maximizing governments are shown to lack incentives for group efficient policies preexisting taxes overlapping with the ets lead policy makers to allocate more permits to their ets sectors than cost effectiveness would suggest the cases of small and large countries exhibit significantly different efficiency implications

renewable and non renewable energy growth emissions linkages review of emerging trends with policy implications abstract this study is an extension of the previous studies which focused mainly on energy growth nexus but fails to consider the carbon emission implication of this relationship the methodology of the study permits a comprehensive and comparative analysis of existing studies on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission nexus in order to draw some implications for policy and research the survey revealed the extent of the spread of studies across issues time and geographical space countries and regions it also disclosed the range of methodological approaches adopted to analyse the issues over time and the frequency of their use it unravelled the varied findings across countries and regions given the diverse methods employed and specific features of the economies analysed arising from the literature survey this study highlights the existing gaps in the literature and new direction for policy and research the general policy implication of the findings of this study is that pollution effect of energy growth nexus should be taken into consideration in policy formulation for sustainable development further the design of regional and global policies should recognise the fact that energy growth emission linkages varied across countries even in the same region some new direction for research on renewable and non renewable energy growth emission linkages pointed out in this survey includes the following future research on energy growth nexus without considering the pollution impact may not contribute so much to the literature studies should investigate the substitution complementary effects of the energy varieties on growth emission nexus while new methodological contributions are imperative

the contribution of energy use and financial development by source in climate change mitigation process a global empirical perspective abstract the danger of climate change has over the years become a reality in the public domain while efforts to mitigate climate change involve energy mix energy efficiency and cleaner technology financial development has also been considered as an important factor indicator of financial development may draw fdi and advanced degree of research and development which can accelerate economic growth and hence affect dynamism of environmental performance this study examines the impacts of energy use and financial development indicators by source in the environment growth energy model for 90 countries categorized on the basis of income possession over the period 1980 2014 the study applies the panel analysis that accounts for cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity of series used in the estimation results from panel dynamic ordinary least squares dols show that in all the categories of countries fossil fuel energy use and gdp per capita are found to be the major drivers of co2 emissions though fossil fuel energy use possesses the bigger elasticities population however displays a sign contrary to expectation regarding economic theory in high income countries renewable energy and financial development on the other hand are capable of reducing co2 emissions however the magnitude of the long run elasticity of co2 emissions with respect to renewable energy use and financial development are much greater in the models with m2 gdp than the model with m2 reserve especially in the high income countries policies should be geared towards stimulating investments in renewable energy technology there is need to develop robust financial systems to lend financial credence to research institutes to work towards producing energy that have less carbon or are carbon free

does economic integration damage or benefit the environment africa s experience abstract the leaders of african nations have committed to the establishment of the continental free trade area cfta over the coming years improved links among the african nations via increased intra regional trade have been considered as an essential mechanism to produce desired growth run overs and to support regional economic improvement however remarkable theoretical and empirical evidence has shown that increased trade might damage the environment and therefore may hinder the effort towards sustainable development and poverty reduction on the continent the present paper seeks to investigate and test the impact of intra africa trade using two measurements of environmental pollutants namely co2 and mp10 whilst integrating economic growth and energy consumption the study used a panel dataset regarding 46 african countries over the period 1990 2017 to carry out the empirical analysis the latest panel estimation techniques were employed more specifically and for the urbaneness purpose we employed a parametric technique which is dynamic ols and a non parametric approach which is fmols the results of both methods suggested that intra africa trade improved environmental quality on the continent in addition the results confirmed the presence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the findings also indicated that whilst the consumption of energy played a vital role in the deterioration of the environment its impact remained marginal overall the results implied that intra regional trade and the environment quality were mutually supportive in africa

nexus between clean energy consumption economic growth and co2 emissions abstract to investigate the nexus among clean energy consumption economic growth and co2 emissions a newly developed bootstrap ardl bounds test with structural breaks is employed to survey the cointegration and causality for g7 countries we find no cointegration among real gdp per capita clean energy consumption and co2 emissions in canada france italy the us and the uk however cointegration exists in germany when real gdp per capita and co2 emissions serve as dependent variables and in japan when co2 emissions is the dependent variable regarding the results of causality test that we find clean energy consumption causes real gdp per capita for canada germany and the us and co2 emissions causes clean energy consumption for germany besides we find feedbacks between clean energy consumption and co2 emissions for germany and unidirectional causality running from clean energy consumption to co2 emissions for the us our study has important policy implications for g7 countries conducting efficient energy use strategy to reduce co2 emissions

renewable energy consumption and income in emerging economies abstract increased economic growth and demand for energy in emerging economies is creating an opportunity for these countries to increase their usage of renewable energy this paper presents and estimates two empirical models of renewable energy consumption and income for a panel of emerging economies panel cointegration estimates show that increases in real per capita income have a positive and statistically significant impact on per capita renewable energy consumption in the long term a 1 increase in real income per capita increases the consumption of renewable energy per capita in emerging economies by approximately 3 5 long term renewable energy per capita consumption price elasticity estimates are approximately equal to 0 70

dissemination of cooking energy alternatives in india a review abstract energy requirements for cooking account for 36 of total primary energy consumption in india the rural and urban populaces depend mainly on non commercial fuels to meet their energy needs diverse urban growth patterns have led to structural changes in economy and have important ramifications on energy consumption in household sector it is observed that india follows income based ladder starting with fuelwood and ending with sophisticated fuels like liquefied petroleum gas lpg and electricity this paper discusses cooking energy dissemination in the country with an objective of understanding the underlying socioeconomic factors governing the utilization of various fuels energy carriers in cooking the diffusion of renewable energy devices is observed to be far below their estimated potential policy interventions required for better dissemination of renewable energy based devices are also discussed

non renewable and renewable energy consumption and co2 emissions in oecd countries a comparative analysis abstract this paper attempts to explore the determinants of co 2 emissions using the stirpat model and data from 1980 to 2011 for oecd countries the empirical results show that non renewable energy consumption increases co 2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption decreases co 2 emissions further the results support the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanisation and co 2 emissions implying that at higher levels of urbanisation the environmental impact decreases therefore the overall evidence suggests that policy makers should focus on urban planning as well as clean energy development to make substantial contributions to both reducing non renewable energy use and mitigating climate change

the impact of economic development and social political factors on ecological footprint a panel data analysis for 15 mena countries abstract this paper extends the work of al mulali and ozturk 2015 1 by re investigating the environment kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for 15 mena middle east and north african countries using the ecological footprint ef as a proxy of environmental degradation over the period 1975 2007 unlike the existing studies we augment the basic ekc relationship by considering life expectancy at birth fertility rate and political institutional index variables as new possible determinants of environmental degradation the estimation of this relationship has been conducted for all mena 15 countries for oil exporting and non oil exporting countries sub samples the results show that energy use worsens ecological footprint whereas real gdp per capita exhibits an inverted u shaped relationship with ef in oil exporting countries and in the sample as a whole i e the ekc hypothesis is validated for the non oil exporting countries the relationship between ef and economic growth is u shaped moreover our findings show that socio demographic variables such as urbanization life expectancy at birth and fertility rate improve the environment in the long term we also found that the improvement of political institutions in those countries has not been accompanied by a reduction of environmental stress the granger causality results support evidence of the existence of an error correction mechanism between the ef real gdp energy use and the fertility rate specifically in the short term we found strong evidence for bidirectional causality among the ecological real gdp and energy use variables

a test for parameter homogeneity in co2panel ekc estimations this paper casts doubt on empirical results based on panel estimations of an inverted u relationship between per capita gdp and pollution using a new dataset for oecd countries on carbon dioxide emissions for the period 1960 1997 we find that the crucial assumption of homogeneity across countries is problematic decisively rejected are model specifications that feature even weaker homogeneity assumptions than are commonly used furthermore our results challenge the existence of an overall environmental kuznets curve for carbon dioxide emissions

impacts of renewable energy consumption on the german economic growth evidence from combined cointegration test abstract germany is the largest economy in europe and the leading renewable energy user comparable to none in the entire of the european continents it is in reference to these developments that this study investigates whether the impacts of renewable energy have consolidated the economic growth prospects of the country to ensure this quarterly time series data from 1971q1 to 2013qiv was used the study employed the clemente montanes reyes detrended structural break test the bayer hanck combined cointegration test and the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration in addition the causality analysis was observed using vecm granger causality framework the results confirmed the existence of cointegration among the variables the results show that renewable energy consumption in germany consolidates the country s economic growth prospects to the extend that a 1 increase in renewable energy consumption boosts german economic growth by 0 2194 in addition to that a 1 increase in capital lead to the rise in economic growth by 1 1320 while a 0 5125 increase in economic growth is due to 1 increase in labor productivity the causality analysis on the other hand revealed the existence of feedback effect between renewable energy consumption and economic growth while the relationship between renewable energy consumption and capital is found to be bidirectional and same inference was found to exist between capital and economic growth the study proposes solid mechanisms that will help in averting renewable energy market failure locally and internationally among others

footprints on the earth the environmental consequences of modernity growing evidence demonstrating clear threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems supporting human societies has given rise to a variety of sociological theories of human environment interactions these environmental impact theories fall into three general perspectives human ecology modernization and political economy these theories however have not been empirically tested in a common analytic framework here a framework that relies on ecological principles is adopted and modified using a revised stochastic formulation of that framework and the most comprehensive measure of environmental impact to date the ecological footprint the factors driving the environmental impacts of societies are assessed the overall findings support the claims of human ecologists partially support the claims of political economists and contradict the claims of modernization theorists basic material conditions such as population economic production urbanization and geographical factors all affect the environment and explain the vast majority of cross national variation in environmental impact factors derived from neo liberal modernization theory such as political freedom civil liberties and state environmentalism have no effect on impacts taken together these findings suggest societies cannot be sanguine about achieving sustainability via a continuation of current trends in economic growth and institutional change authors

examining the multiple impacts of technological progress on co2 emissions in china a panel quantile regression approach abstract whilst a plethora of literature has viewed technological progress as one of the critical influencing factors in relation to energy consumption and co2 emissions little effort has been made to identify the sectoral differences in the relationship between technological progress and co2 emissions thereby this paper remedies the inadequacies in the extant literature by empirically investigating the impact of technological progress on co2 emissions specifically taking into account its heterogeneous effect in various economic sectors this paper first decomposes the effect of technological progress as taking place in heavy industry in light industry in construction industry and in service industry a panel quantile regression approach and a balanced city panel data model are then applied covering the period 2001 2013 in china the empirical results show that technological progress in heavy industry and light industry surprisingly facilitates a higher level of co2 emissions despite its prominent contribution to energy efficiency improvement meanwhile as distinct from the effect it shows in the heavy and light industries technological progress in construction and service industries exerts a negative effect on co2 emissions additionally this paper further discovers that the strength of the multiple impacts of technological progress also varies with the level of emitters by studying the heterogeneous effect brought about by technological progress in different economic sectors and emitters this paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between co2 emissions and technological progress

carbon dioxide income and energy evidence from a non linear model abstract this study applies the panel smooth transition regression pstr model to explore the impacts of real income energy and investment on the co 2 income nexus for 99 countries covering the period from 1971 to 2010 we find that in the full sample as real income rises co 2 emissions rapidly increase first and then their increasing rate starts to slow down while the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for co 2 emissions is supported from the composite results of three income groups our results show that decreasing energy usage improving energy efficiency and enhancing clean energy usage could effectively ease the impacts of real income on co 2 emissions moreover countries with different energy trade conditions and income levels have different co 2 income correlations indicating that one size does not fit all

impacts of urbanization and industrialization on energy consumption co2 emissions does the level of development matter urbanization and industrialization have significant impacts on energy consumption and co2 emissions but their relationship varies at different stages of economic development taking cognizance of heterogeneity and the ratchet effect this paper adopts the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat framework as a starting point and re estimates the relationship using different panel date models the main results are obtained by dynamic panel threshold regression models which divide a balanced panel dataset of 73 countries over the period of 1971 2010 into four groups according to their annual income levels the key results are 1 in the low income group urbanization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions 2 in the middle low income and high income groups industrialization decreases energy consumption but increases co2 emissions while urbanization significantly increases both energy consumption and co2 emissions 3 for the middle high income group urbanization does not significantly affect energy consumption but does hinder the growth of emissions while industrialization was found to have an insignificant impact on energy consumption and co2 emissions 4 from the population perspective it produces positive effects on energy consumption and also increases emissions except for the high income group these novel methodology and findings reveal that different development strategies of urbanization and industrialization should be pursued depending on the levels of income in a bid to conserve energy and reduce emissions

innovation and diffusion of clean green technology can patent commons help abstract this paper explores the characteristics of 238 patents on 90 inventions contributed by major multinational innovators to the eco patent commons which provides royalty free access to third parties to patented innovations on green technologies we compare the pledged patents to other patents in the same technologies or held by the same multinationals to investigate the motives of the contributing firms as well as the potential for such commons to encourage innovation and diffusion of climate change related technologies we find pledged patents to protect environmentally friendly technologies and to be of similar value as the average patent in a pledging firm s patent portfolio but of lower value than other patents in their class our analysis of the impact of the patent commons on diffusion of patented technologies suggests that making patents accessible royalty free did not result in any significant increase in diffusion as measured by citing patents this study therefore indirectly provides evidence on the role of patents in the development and diffusion of green technologies

climate treaties and breakthrough technologies an effective climate change treaty must promote the joint supply of two global public goods climate change mitigation and knowledge of new technologies that can lower mitigation costs r d is especially needed to bring about substantial long term reductions in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases for this will require the development and diffusion of revolutionary breakthrough technologies martin i hoffert et al 2002 in principle such an outcome could be realized by the kyoto protocol approach if that agreement were strengthened over time however that response may be inadequate kyoto makes no provision for r d and as i shall demonstrate unlikely to succeed can a treaty system relying directly on targeted r d and the adoption of breakthrough technologies perform better in this same setting of anarchic international relations i will show that as a general rule the answer is no essentially the same forces that undermine kyoto also challenge the r d and technology approach there is one exception to this rule r d leading to breakthrough technologies exhibiting increasing returns can improve dramatically on the kyoto approach even when these technologies are otherwise inferior to the alternatives available this suggests that our approach to treaty design should be strategic

international emission permit markets with refunding we propose a blueprint for an international emission permit market such as the eu trading scheme each country decides on the amount of permits it wants to offer a fraction of these permits is grandfathered the remainder is auctioned revenues from the auction are collected in a global fund and reimbursed to member countries in fixed proportions we show that international permit markets with refunding lead to outcomes in which all countries tighten the issuance of permits and are better off compared to standard international permit markets if the share of grandfathered permits is sufficiently small we obtain approximately socially optimal emission reductions

testing the ekc hypothesis for the top six hydropower energy consuming countries evidence from fourier bootstrap ardl procedure abstract environmental degradation is an important threat to sustainable development economic growth and fossil fuel based energy consumption are main factors causing environmental pollution the use of renewable energy as an alternative for fossil fuels can help to reduce environmental pollution and thus sustainable development can be achieved from this point of view hydropower is the most widely used renewable energy source in several countries however the effects of hydropower energy on the environment are controversial to add a new dimension to the discussion this study investigates the relationship between hydropower energy consumption ecological footprint and economic growth for the top six hydropower consuming countries within the framework of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis the study employs newly developed cointegration and causality tests with smooth structural changes over the period 1965 2016 the findings of the fourier bootstrap ardl procedure demonstrate that no cointegration exist between the variables therefore the ekc hypothesis is not valid for brazil china canada india norway and the us furthermore the findings of the fourier toda yamamoto causality test suggest unidirectional causality running from hydropower energy consumption to economic growth in brazil and bidirectional causality between these variables in china in the case of the top six hydropower consuming countries no evidence was found for a causal relationship between hydropower energy and ecological footprint overall these results are important for policy makers hydropower energy plays a crucial role in china and brazil s economic growth policies on the other hand hydropower energy consumption and economic growth do not have a role in mitigating the ecological footprint in six countries for this reason different types of renewable energy consumption should be taken into consideration by countries for the solution of environmental problems

impacts of urbanization and real economic development on co 2 emissions in non high income countries empirical research based on the extended stirpat model abstract this article focuses on the effects of urbanization and economic development on carbon dioxide co 2 emissions in non high income countries using the extended stirpat model following the building idea of the ipat model co 2 emissions i are decomposed into nine factors population affluence technology level urbanization level urban employment level industrialization level population carrying intensity of the real economy built on goods and services co 2 emission intensity and energy intensity then the extended ipat model is reconstructed as the extended stirpat model furthermore based on panel data from 1991 to 2013 and using the extended stirpat model this article respectively analyzes the effects of the driving forces especially urbanization and real economic development on co 2 emissions for non high income countries upper and lower middle income countries the results indicate that urbanization and real economic development have a small impact on co 2 emissions in non high income countries accelerating urbanization and real economic development will not result in a significant increase in co 2 emissions in fact for upper middle income countries real economic development will lead to a decrease in co 2 emissions and acceleration of the urbanization process will only cause a small increase in emissions the main driving factors of co 2 emissions remain population affluence energy intensity and co 2 emission intensity this article also quantitatively calculates the actual contribution rate of each driving force for the 1991 2013 period the study contributes to understanding the emission characteristics and key driving forces in each type of countries allowing for appropriate policy recommendations

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

on the causal dynamics between emissions nuclear energy renewable energy and economic growth this paper examines the causal relationship between co2 emissions nuclear energy consumption renewable energy consumption and economic growth for a group of 19 developed and developing countries for the period 1984 2007 using a panel error correction model the long run estimates indicate that there is a statistically significant negative association between nuclear energy consumption and emissions but a statistically significant positive relationship between emissions and renewable energy consumption the results from the panel granger causality tests suggest that in the short run nuclear energy consumption plays an important role in reducing co2 emissions whereas renewable energy consumption does not contribute to reductions in emissions this may be due to the lack of adequate storage technology to overcome intermittent supply problems as a result electricity producers have to rely on emission generating energy sources to meet peak load demand

the environmental kuznets curve in the oecd 1870 2014 carbon dioxide co2 emissions play an important role in global warming consequently studying the relationship between co2 emissions and economic development is important especially when viewed from a historical perspective we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for a panel of 20 oecd nations dating back to the first globalization boom in the nineteenth century utilising recently developed panel data estimators that account for cross sectional dependence and parameter heterogeneity for the period 1870 to 2014 we find support for the ekc hypothesis for the panel as a whole with three of our preferred four estimators with turning points in income per capita that lie between 18 955 and 89 540 in 1990 us country specific results however only provide mixed support for the ekc hypothesis specifically we find evidence of an ekc for nine of the 20 countries with five exhibiting a traditional inverted u shaped relationship three exhibiting an n shaped relationship and one an inverted n shaped relationship

energy microfinance intervention for below poverty line households in india more than 72 of india s population resides in rural india1 and it also has a high concentration of people living under abject poverty of the total rural population 27 1 28 3 lives below the poverty line2 bpl a lack of energy finance options is hampering the quality of life of the bpl community the members of this disadvantaged household which forms 27 1 and 23 6 of the india s rural and urban population3 has no ready access to mainstream finance or know how of sustainable energy products nor do they have access to energy service providing agency this lack of energy finance options has provided the marginalized population little means to break the conventional energy paradigm and the corresponding poverty cycle considering the afore mentioned problem we propose an energy microfinance intervention or a model that encompasses two independent entities one has an energy expertise and the other possesses finance management skills alternately we also propose a special purpose entity that comprises of these two entities this entity fosters different institutional technical and financial engineering approaches to the provision of energy finance and infrastructure services necessary for poverty alleviation

an econometric study of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in turkey abstract this study attempts to empirically examine the dynamic causal relationships between carbon emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of turkey using the time series data for the period 1960 2005 this research tests the interrelationship between the variables using the bounds testing to cointegration procedure the bounds test results indicate that there exist two forms of long run relationships between the variables in the case of first form of long run relationship carbon emissions are determined by energy consumption income and foreign trade in the case of second long run relationship income is determined by carbon emissions energy consumption and foreign trade an augmented form of granger causality analysis is conducted amongst the variables the long run relationship of co2 emissions energy consumption income and foreign trade equation is also checked for the parameter stability the empirical results suggest that income is the most significant variable in explaining the carbon emissions in turkey which is followed by energy consumption and foreign trade moreover there exists a stable carbon emissions function the results also provide important policy recommendations

urbanization and co2 emissions a semi parametric panel data analysis this paper investigates the relationship between urbanization and co2 emissions in a sample of 20 emerging countries over the period 1992 2008 using the semi parametric panel data model with fixed effects proposed by baltagi and li 2002 we find little evidence in support of an inverted u curve and thus the kuznets hypothesis is not confirmed by our analysis our findings shed new light on the urbanization co2 emissions nexus

renewable and non renewable electricity consumption environmental degradation and economic development evidence from mediterranean countries abstract in this article we develop an empirical model to investigate the causal link amid renewable and non renewable electricity consumption gdp and carbon emissions by using a panel of 9 mediterranean countries over the period 1980 2014 using the pmg panel ardl and panel econometric technics heterogeneity and cross sectional dependence among the panel were considered to explore the long and short run dynamic relationships as well as the validity of a proposed model the results provide panel empirical evidence that there is short term bidirectional causality between gdp renewable electricity consumption and co2 emissions and between non renewable electricity consumption gdp and renewable electricity consumption for the long term causal relationship the result indicates that there is bidirectional causality between non renewable electricity consumption and co2 emissions however there is evidence of unidirectional causal relationships from gdp to co2 emissions and non renewable electricity consumption and from renewable electricity consumption to co2 emissions the findings imply that non renewable electricity consumption and economic growth stimulate co2 emissions in southern and northern mediterranean countries while renewable electricity reduces them this empirical evidence suggests that expansion of renewable energy sources is a viable strategy for addressing energy security and reducing carbon emissions to protect the environment for future generations

explaining the relationship between co2 emissions and national income the role of energy consumption i estimate a simultaneous equation system in which gdp and co2 emissions are jointly determined i find that including energy consumption in the regression implies a negative relationship between income and co2 emissions which is contrary to previous findings

renewable energy in turkey great potential low but increasing utilization and an empirical analysis on renewable energy growth nexus abstract concerns about the exhaustion of fossil energy sources energy security problems and increasing environmental problems have led policy makers to pay greater attention to renewable energy sources all over the world additionally high current account deficits stemming from energy import dependency make substitution of fossil energy with renewable energy a necessity for turkey although turkey has a great potential in terms of renewable energy it has not begun to utilize this great potential until recent years however turkey has many motives to utilize renewable energy further this paper aims to investigate whether renewable energy consumption raises gdp in turkey for this purpose the paper uses data spanning the period 1990 2015 and employs cointegration and causality tests which can present efficient output in small samples the findings indicate that gdp is not related to renewable energy consumption and there is no causality between gdp and renewable energy consumption in turkey in conclusion the paper argues that these findings may stem from the low share of renewable energy in total energy and turkey needs to utilize renewable energy sources further to i meet energy needs for economic activities ii mitigate environmental problems and iii reduce energy import dependency and current account imbalances

climate contracts a game of emissions investments negotiations and renegotiations the paper presents a dynamic game where players can contribute to a public bad invest in technologies and write incomplete contracts despite the n 1 stocks in the model the analysis is tractable and the symmetric markov perfect equilibrium unique the framework helps to analyze emissions investments and international environmental agreements if only the emission levels are contractible then investments are suboptimally small if the contract is short term or close to its expiration date to encourage investments the optimal contract is more ambitious if it is short term and it is tougher to satisfy close to its expiration date and for countries with small investment costs if renegotiation is possible such an incomplete contract implements the rst best the results have important lessons for how to design a climate treaty

influential factors of carbon emissions intensity in oecd countries evidence from symbolic regression abstract carbon emissions intensity is used as a yardstick to evaluate the relative extent of carbon emissions of a country to reduce carbon emissions intensity it is crucial to find out the dominant factors that enhance it and take actions to manage them this study is an attempt to employ symbolic regression method to explore the most influential factors of carbon emissions intensity in 34 oecd member countries using data from 1995 to 2014 rooted in genetic programming symbolic regression method can explore the inherent functional structures amidst the variables and could discover the influential factors robotically the results confirm that the influential factors of carbon emissions intensity vary from country to country gdp is found as the most frequent and important factor of carbon emissions intensity in 17 countries each of industrialization and technological innovation is the prominent factor in every 4 countries and each of urbanization total population and foreign direct investment plays a pro active role in 3 individual nations based on the empirical results some policy implications are also conferred

internalizing co2 emissions via central banks financials evidence from the world researchers and policy makers have suggested tools to mitigate co2 emissions worldwide however there appears to be uncertainty in terms of policy effectiveness the objective of this paper is to develop an innovatively effective co2 internalizing mechanism worldwide which builds on currency in circulation as its core operational tool the study is based on a large sample of countries findings show that urbanization electric power consumption and trade positively impact on co2 emissions no evidence is found in favour of the environmental kuznets curve while the use of renewable energy reduces the level of co2 emissions the paper proposes a central bank carbon dioxide emissions internalizing fund which rests on quantitative and qualitative tools to ensure a truly effective mechanism in co2 emissions abatement quantitatively this implies the use of a direct tax on currency in circulation and a conversion penalty in the fund qualitatively there is the need to establish a global institution which would ensure that funds flow to the most polluting sectors in each country in view of unleashing the strongest decline in co2 emissions

access to modern energy services an economic and policy framework abstract affordable and accessible modern energy services are a pre requisite for development economic environmental or social and are crucial to reduce poverty and sustain growth hence there is a need to promote the uptake of modern energy the present study investigates the issue of accessibility of modern energy services in relation to three indicators availability affordability and reliability and suggest practical ways of evaluating them and identifies various strategies to provide them to the needy households in a cost effective manner promoting the development of small rural enterprises is a key contributor to achieve this goal and a central aspect in this promotion is the large scale diffusion of sustainable energy technologies which provide affordable and reliable services the suggested framework helps the policymakers to identify technologies that are better than others under the present conditions implementing and scaling up the energy demand requires collaboration among various actors like households local bodies energy utilities governments entrepreneurs research organisations non governmental organisations community groups financial institutions and international agencies

role of renewable energy and non renewable energy consumption on ekc evidence from pakistan the main contribution of this study is to test the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis at individual country analysis by the significance of renewable energy and non renewable energy consumption in the context of pakistan a series of econometric techniques is used for the period of 1970 2012 the findings provide strong support for the presence of the ekc in the case of pakistan the results show that renewable energy plays a dominant role in reducing carbon dioxide emission and non renewable energy consumption indeed the main culprit for promoting carbon dioxide emission it is also observed that bi directional causality exists not only between renewable energy consumption and co2 emission but also non renewable energy consumption and co2 emission granger cause each other sensitivity analysis is performed to prove that model of this study is stable and findings of the study are valid and reliable for policy implication these findings suggest that government needs to expand investment in renewable energy projects that might contribute to the efforts of climate mitigation

a further inquiry into the pollution haven hypothesis and the environmental kuznets curve abstract empirical research on the relationship between economic growth and its impact on the environment often tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc a hypothesis that rising national output leads to increases in pollution emissions until an economy reaches a certain size and decreases thereafter this paper addresses a branch of ekc literature focused on the role international trade plays in shaping this relationship in particular we test the pollution haven hypothesis which posits that emission reductions observed in developed nations are partly the result of shifting dirty production to developing nations with lax environmental standards we estimate ekcs for seven oft studied pollutants and find little evidence that pollution havens play a significant role in shaping the ekc we also find that confidence intervals around ekc turning points are very wide often including values well above the range of the data this leads us to be skeptical of the optimistic view that economic growth naturally leads to improvements in environmental quality

technology diffusion with market power in the upstream industry this paper compares taxes and tradable permits when used to regulate a competitive and polluting downstream industry that can purchase an abatement technology from a monopolistic upstream industry second best policies are derived for the full range of the abatement technology s emission intensities and marginal abatement costs the second best permit quantity can be both above or below the socially optimal emission level explicit consideration of the output market provides further insights on how market power distorts the allocation in the downstream industry the ranking between permits and taxes is ambiguous in general but taxes weakly dominate permits if full diffusion is socially optimal in addition it is analysed how a cap on the permit price affects the diffusion of an abatement technology

the effects of internet usage and economic growth on co2 emissions in oecd countries a panel investigation this paper estimates the short and long run effects of internet usage and economic growth on carbon dioxide co2 emissions using oecd panel data for the period 1991 2012 the pedroni panel cointegration test confirms that the variables are cointegrated although pooled mean group pmg estimates indicate a positive significant long run relationship between internet usage and co2 emissions the coefficient is very small and no causality exists between them which both imply that the rapid growth in internet usage is still not an environmental threat for the region the study further indicates that economic growth has no significant short run and long run effects on co2 emissions internet use stimulates both financial development and trade openness the findings offer support in favor of the argument that oecd countries can promote their internet usage without being significantly concerned about its environmental consequences but the future emissions effect of internet usage cannot be ruled out as is evident from the variance decomposition analysis therefore this study recommends that in addition to boosting the existing measures for combating co2 emissions oecd countries need to use ict equipment not to simply reduce its own carbon footprint but also to exploit ict enabled emissions abatement potential to reduce emissions in other sectors such as the power energy agricultural transport and service sectors

what causes pm2 5 pollution cross economy empirical analysis from socioeconomic perspective abstract is it true that as the mainstream intuition asserts urbanization and industrialization are the two main socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 how do the two trends affect pm2 5 emission this paper quantitatively analyzes the socioeconomic drivers of pm2 5 through assessment on stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stripat based on the panel data of 79 developing countries over 2001 2010 the average levels of pm2 5 pollution are calculated using remote sensing data overcoming the difficulties that developing countries are in lack of pm2 5 monitors and that point data cannot reflect the overall level of pm2 5 pollution on a large scale squared terms of income and urbanization and their cross term are included in the regression models respectively to analyze the possible heterogeneous impacts on pm2 5 emissions in different development stages the results show that income urbanization and service sector have significant impact on pm2 5 pollution income has a positive effect on pm2 5 all the time but the effect decreases as the level of urbanization or income goes up an inverted u relationship exists between urbanization and pm2 5 in which pm2 5 pollution positively correlates with a low level of income or urbanization but negatively at a high level policy recommendations from the perspective of macro level social and economic regulation are provided for developing economies to reduce pm2 5 pollution

co2 emissions in australia economic and non economic drivers in the long run abstractaustralia has sustained a relatively high economic growth rate since the 1980s compared to other developed countries per capita co2 emissions tend to be highest amongst oecd countries creating new challenges to cut back emissions towards international standards this research explores the long run dynamics of co2 emissions economic and population growth along with the effects of globalization tested as contributing factors we find economic growth is not emission intensive in australia while energy consumption is emissions intensive second in an environment of increasing population our findings suggest australia needs to be energy efficient at the household level creating appropriate infrastructure for sustainable population growth high population growth and open migration policy can be detrimental in reducing co2 emissions finally we establish globalized environment has been conducive in combating emissions in this respect we establish the beneficial effect of economic globalization

why do some emerging economies proactively accelerate the adoption of renewable energy abstract this article analyses the determinants of renewable energy consumption in a panel of six major emerging economies namely brazil china india indonesia philippines and turkey that are proactively accelerating the adoption of renewable energy using fully modified ordinary least square fmols dynamic ordinary least square dols and granger causality methods this paper finds that in the long run renewable energy consumption is significantly determined by income and pollutant emission in brazil china india and indonesia while mainly by income in philippines and turkey causal link between renewable energy and income and between renewable energy and pollutant emission are found to be bidirectional in the short run these results suggest that the appropriateness of the efforts undertaken by emerging countries to reduce the carbon intensity by increasing the energy efficiency and substantially increasing the share of renewable in the overall energy mix

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

modern energy access to all in rural india an integrated implementation strategy abstract expanding energy access to the rural population of india presents a critical challenge for its government the presence of 364 million people without access to electricity and 726 million who rely on biomass for cooking indicate both the failure of past policies and programs and the need for a radical redesign of the current system we propose an integrated implementation framework with recommendations for adopting business principles with innovative institutional regulatory financing and delivery mechanisms the framework entails establishment of rural energy access authorities and energy access funds both at the national and regional levels to be empowered with enabling regulatory policies capital resources and the support of multi stakeholder partnership these institutions are expected to design lead manage and monitor the rural energy interventions at the other end trained entrepreneurs would be expected to establish bioenergy based micro enterprises that will produce and distribute energy carriers to rural households at an affordable cost the escos will function as intermediaries between these enterprises and the international carbon market both in aggregating carbon credits and in trading them under cdm if implemented such a program could address the challenges of rural energy empowerment by creating access to modern energy carriers and climate change mitigation

can product demonstrations create markets for sustainable energy technology a randomized controlled trial in rural india abstract the literature on sustainable energy technology sees informational barriers as a major obstacle to technology adoption in the case of solar home systems recent studies report positive socio economic effects on households but technology adoption remains underwhelming in collaboration with a local solar technology provider we conduct a randomized controlled trial in 75 large villages in the state of uttar pradesh india to examine the ability of village solar demonstrations to create markets for solar home systems we find no effect of such demonstrations on technology sales awareness or perceptions of solar technology technology adopters report high levels of satisfaction with product quality and service suggesting that the null finding cannot be attributed to poor technology these findings suggest that lack of awareness is not a binding constraint on the growth of solar technology markets in the study area based on additional surveys we find evidence suggesting that access to credit from rural banks is an important explanation for variation in sales across villages these results do not prove that information and awareness are irrelevant in general but they show that even carefully designed marketing campaigns cannot increase demand for new products in the presence of a binding credit constraint

pollution permits and environmental innovation abstract this paper starts with a warning about the negative impact of plain pollution allowance markets on environmental pollution innovation stand alone spot markets enable the government to expropriate an innovation by offering a competing technology pollution permits that puts an arbitrary downward pressure on the licensing price advance allowances reduce expropriation but still create suboptimal incentives for innovation they have the further drawback that permits are inefficiently used when the innovation occurs options to pollute at a given striking price fare better than allowances because they create private incentives to phase out pollution in the case of innovation we characterize the social optimum and show that it can be implemented by issuing options to pollute inter alia finally the paper compares ex ante and ex post government procurement surprisingly ex post licensing by the innovator to the government may yield a higher licensing fee than an ex ante contract

renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus evidence from a threshold model abstract the existing literature on renewable energy consumption and economic growth nexus produces mixed results as the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth can be either positive negative or not significant this paper examines the causal link between renewable energy use and economic growth by employing a threshold model using a 103 country sample in the 1995 to 2015 period we find that the relationship between renewable energy consumption and economic growth depends on the amount of renewable energy used our results demonstrate that the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is positive and significant if and only if developing countries or non oecd countries surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption however if developing countries use renewable energy below a given threshold level the effect of renewable energy consumption on economic growth is negative however we also find that renewable energy consumption has no significant effect on economic growth in developed countries and a positive and significant effect on economic growth in oecd countries the findings of this paper suggest that for developing countries to realize positive economic growth from their investment to renewable energy they need to surpass a certain threshold of renewable energy consumption

the climate policy hold up green technologies intellectual property rights and the abatement incentives of international agreements the success of global climate policies over the coming decades depends on the diffusion of green technologies this requires that international environmental agreements ieas and trade related intellectual property rights trips interact productively using a simple and tractable model we highlight the strategic reduction in abatement commitments on account of a hold up effect in anticipation of rent extraction by the innovator signatories might abate less than non signatories turning the iea brown self enforcing ieas have fewer signatories and diffusion can reduce global abatement under trips countries hosting patent holders extract rents from trips but may be better off without them

the influence of real output renewable and non renewable energy trade and financial development on carbon emissions in the top renewable energy countries due to tremendous increase in the level of carbon dioxide co2 emissions in the last several decades a number of studies in the energy growth environment literature have attempted to identify the determinants of co2 emissions a major criticism related to the existing studies we realize is the selection of panel estimation techniques almost all studies use panel methods that ignore the issue of cross sectional dependence even though countries in the panel are most likely heterogeneous and cross sectionally dependent in addition the majority of existing studies use aggregate energy consumption and thus fail to identify the impacts of energy consumption by sources on the environment in order to fulfill the mentioned gaps in the literature this empirical study analyzes the influence of the real income renewable energy consumption non renewable energy consumption trade openness and financial development on co2 emissions in the ekc model for the top countries listed in the renewable energy country attractiveness index by employing heterogeneous panel estimation techniques with cross section dependence we find that the analyzed variables become stationary at their first differences by using the cadf and the cips unit root tests and the analyzed variables are cointegrated by employing the lm bootstrap cointegration test by using the fmols and the dols we also find that increases in renewable energy consumption trade openness and financial development decrease carbon emissions while increases in non renewable energy consumption contribute to the level of emissions and the ekc hypothesis is supported for the top renewable energy countries

socioeconomic driving forces and scenario simulation of co2 emissions for a fast developing region in china abstract guangdong is one of china s fastest developing provinces and thus faces the challenge of reducing co2 emissions whilst fostering economic growth in order to advance the goal of developing a low carbon economy in china this study explored influencing factors change trends and reduction potential in relation to co2 emissions in guangdong province using a provincial dataset covering the period 1995 to 2014 we used extended stirpat stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology model and the technique of ridge regression in order to identify key influencing factors behind guangdong s co2 emissions we also forecasted emission trends and estimated reduction potential in the period 2015 2030 our empirical results indicate that economic development population growth urbanization fixed asset investment and industrialization level all positively affected co2 emissions during the period studied while the impacts of energy consumption structure and technology progress were found to be negative scenario simulations reveal that the aggregate co2 emissions of guangdong province will increase continuously up to 2030 under all of the twenty scenarios developed and tested in this study despite this we argue that the potential for emission reduction remains large an optimal scenario was identified after cross sectional comparison our analysis casts new light on the importance of exploring socioeconomic determinants and reduction potential in relation to emissions in order to plan for rapidly developing regions like guangdong the empirical findings have significant implications for the chinese government in implementing policy measures in order to promote low carbon development

does urbanization lead to less energy use and lower co2 emissions a cross country analysis despite the relationship between urbanization energy use and co2 emissions has been extensively studied in recent years little attention has been paid to differences in development stages or income levels most previous studies have implicitly assumed that the impact of urbanization is homogenous for all countries this assumption can be questionable as there are many characteristic differences among countries of different levels of affluence this paper investigates empirically the effects of urbanization on energy use and co2 emissions with consideration of the different development stages using the stochastic impacts by regression on population affluence and technology stirpat model and a balanced panel dataset of 99 countries over the period 1975 2005 the findings suggest that the impact of urbanization on energy use and emissions varies across the stages of development surprisingly urbanization decreases energy use in the low income group while it increases energy use in the middle and high income groups the impact of urbanization on emissions is positive for all the income groups but it is more pronounced in the middle income group than in the other income groups these novel findings not only help advance the existing literature but also can be of special interest to policy makers and urban planners

the heterogeneous effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations in g20 countries evidence from panel quantile regression abstract pm2 5 emissions have serious adverse impacts on health and impede transport activities especially air and highway consequently policymakers and economists have focused on this issue the primary objective of this study is to investigate the effect of democracy political globalization and urbanization on pm2 5 concentrations within g20 countries ecological modernization theory is used to gain the best understanding of the impact of these driving forces on pm2 5 concentrations and obtains an analytical framework the method utilized is the panel quantile regression which takes into account the unobserved individual and distributional heterogeneity the results demonstrate that first the direct effect of democracy on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive in countries with higher emissions and has no impact on lower emission countries second the direct effect of political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations is significantly positive and especially greater in extremely low and high emission countries third persuasive evidence proves the existence of an environmental kuznets curve between urbanization and pm2 5 concentrations additionally this paper further assesses the direct and indirect influence mechanisms of democracy and political globalization on pm2 5 concentrations across pollution levels both have a positive negative indirect effect on pm2 5 concentrations in countries with higher lower emissions through its effect on gdp per capita the total effect appears positive suggesting that the increase in democracy and political globalization degrade environmental quality these results provide policymakers with critical policy recommendations that contribute to the reduction of pm2 5 concentrations and ensure sustainable economic development in the g20 countries

the impact of urbanization on co2 emissions evidence from developing countries abstract this paper analyzes the impact of urbanization on co2 emissions in developing countries from 1975 to 2003 it contributes to the existing literature by examining the effect of urbanization taking into account dynamics and the presence of heterogeneity in the sample of countries the results show an inverted u shaped relationship between urbanization and co2 emissions indeed the elasticity emission urbanization is positive for low urbanization levels which is in accordance with the higher environmental impact observed in less developed regions among our contributions is the estimation of a semi parametric mixture model that allows for unknown distributional shapes and endogenously classifies countries into homogeneous groups three groups of countries are identified for which urbanization s impact differs considerably for two of the groups a threshold level is identified beyond which the emission urbanization elasticity is negative and further increases in the urbanization rate do not contribute to higher emissions however for the third group only population and affluence but not urbanization contribute to explain emissions the differential impact of urbanization on co2 emissions should therefore be taken into account in future discussions of climate change policies

literature survey on the relationships between energy environment and economic growth abstract the aim of this study is to exhibit an exhaustive survey which is related to the great flight of the literature of energy environment growth nexus at the individual and regional scale studies covering the period from 1978 to 2014 the survey takes into consideration the sample country region etc periods covering econometric strategies and conclusions our survey is based on the causality direction among i the energy use variables electricity nuclear renewable and non renewable and output growth ii between economic growth and environment and between the three variables at the same time globally these surveys provide paradoxical and not conclusive results which energy consumption can boost economic growth through the productivity enhancement and it can boost also the environmental damages through the enhancement of pollutant emissions our survey sheds more the lights on the energy environment growth literature by giving an extensive listing 1978 2014 of these causal linkages among the energy use variables environment and economic growth for both individual and collective cases there is a unanimous consensus about the importance of dealing with such dynamic relationship which is seems to be a cornerstone element in setting any ambition strategies energy ecological and economics

richer and cleaner a study on carbon dioxide emissions in developing countries abstract the climate change debate has drawn attention to the problem of greenhouse gases emissions into the atmosphere one of the most important issues in the policy debate is the role that should be played by developing countries in joining the commitment of developed countries to reduce ghg emissions and particularly co2 emissions this debate calls into play the relationship between energy consumption co2 emissions and economic development in this paper we use a panel data model for 110 world countries to estimate the relationship between co2 emissions and gdp and to produce emission forecast the paper contains three major results i the empirical relationship between carbon dioxide and income is well described by non linear gamma and weibull specifications as opposed to more usual linear and log linear functional forms ii our single equation reduced form model is comparable in terms of forecasted emissions with other more complex less data driven models iii despite the decreasing marginal propensity to pollute our forecasts show that future global emissions will rise the average world growth of co2 emissions between 2000 and 2020 is about 2 2 yr while that of non annex 1 countries is posted at 3 3 yr

pooled mean group estimation of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 abstract we apply the pooled mean group estimator to test for the existence of an environmental kuznets curve for co2 in 22 oecd countries this approach allows for more flexible assumptions in a panel data framework the period goes from 1975 to 1998

the incentives for north south transfer of climate mitigation technologies with trade in polluting goods the need to transfer climate mitigation technologies towards the developing world has been acknowledged since the beginning of climate negotiations little progress has however been made as shown by article 10 of the paris agreement one reason is that these technologies could become vital assets to compete on global markets this paper presents a partial equilibrium model with two regions the north and the south and imperfect competition in the international polluting goods market to analyze the north s incentives to accept technology transfer results crucially depend on the existence of environmental cooperation when both northern and southern governments set emission quotas non cooperatively inducing fewer global emissions is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the north to accept the transfer in contrast when governments set quotas cooperatively the north has no incentive to share its technology either before or after the agreement technology transfer commitments may be included in the agreement but with no effect on global emissions and global surplus the only impacts are distributional technology transfers and side payments may be substitute instruments

what is better for mitigating carbon emissions renewable energy or nuclear energy a panel data analysis abstract this paper investigates the determinants of carbon emissions based on energy consumption analyzing the data of 30 countries using nuclear energy for the period 1990 2014 renewable energy and nuclear energy consumption are adopted as determinants and real coal price and real gdp are used as additive variables the panel cointegration analysis and granger causality tests are conducted to investigating the relationship among the variables first the panel cointegration test results suggest that long run equilibrium relationship exists among carbon emissions renewable energy consumption and nuclear energy consumption the results of the long run cointegrating vector and granger causality tests indicate that nuclear energy does not contribute to carbon reduction unlike renewable energy thus the development and expansion of renewable not nuclear energy are essential to prevent global warming though there is a concern that rising energy prices caused by the expansion of renewable energy may impact the economy negatively our empirical results also imply that renewable energy consumption will promote economic growth in other words our evidence shows that using and expanding renewable energy is both economically and ecologically beneficial

timing and commitment of environmental policy adoption of new technology and repercussions on r d we investigate the interplay between environmental policy incentives to adoptnew technology and repercussions on r d we study a model where a monopolistic upstream firm engages in r d and sells advanced abatement technology to polluting downstream firms we consider four different timing and commitment regimes of environmental tax and permit policies ex post taxation or issuing permits interim commitment to a tax rate a quota of permits after observing r d success but before adoption and finally two types of ex antecommitment before r d activity one with a unique tax rate quota of permits the other one with a menu of tax rates permit quotas we study the second best tax and permit policies and rank these with respect to welfare in particular we find that commitment to a menu of tax rate dominates all other policy regimes