innovation in the energy sector lessons learnt from r d expenditures and patents in selected iea countries abstract long time series of the iea and international patent offices offer a huge potential for scientific investigations of the energy innovation process thus this paper deals with a broad literature review on innovation drivers and barriers and an analysis of the knowledge induced by public research and development expenditures r d and patents in the energy sector the cumulative knowledge stock induced by public r d expenditures in 14 investigated iea countries is 102 3 bn eur in 2013 nuclear energy has the largest share of 43 9 bn eur followed by energy efficiency accounting for 14 9 bn eur fossil fuels with 13 5 bn eur and renewable energy with 12 1 bn eur a regression analysis indicates a linear relation between the gdp and the cumulative knowledge with each billion eur of gdp leading to an additional knowledge of 3 1 mil eur however linearity is not given for single energy technologies further the results show that appropriate public r d funding for research and development associated with a subsequent promotion of the market diffusion of a niche technology may lead to a breakthrough of the respective technology

assessing income population and technology impacts on co2 emissions in canada where s the ekc abstract this study investigates the macroeconomic forces underlying carbon dioxide co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada in keeping with the relevant literature on environmental degradation three forces are expected to influence co2 emissions gross domestic product per capita gdp capita population and technological change while previous work has employed reduced form models that allow for non linear relationships between co2 and gdp capita it has been common practice to assume linear relationships between co2 and the latter two variables this study tests a more flexible model using a five region panel data set in canada over the period 1970 2000 findings indicate that gdp capita is unrelated to co2 that an inverted u shaped relationship exists with population and that a u shaped relationship exists with technology thus technological and population changes are supported over the commonly hypothesized environmental kuznets curve an inverted u shaped relationship between gdp capita and environmental degradation for affecting co2 emissions from fossil fuel use in canada

industrial pollution in economic development the environmental kuznets curve revisited abstract using new international data this paper tests the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution we measure the effect of income growth on three determinants of pollution the share of industry in national output the share of polluting sectors in industrial output and end of pipe eop pollution intensities per unit of output in the polluting sectors we find that the industry share of national output follows a kuznets type trajectory but the other two determinants do not when combined our results imply rejection of the ekc hypothesis for industrial water pollution it rises rapidly through middle income status and remains roughly constant thereafter

studying the relationship between economic growth co2 emissions and the environmental kuznets curve in venezuela 1980 2025 abstract this work tries to determine whether it is possible to stabilize co2 emissions under a rapid increase of gross domestic product in a medium term the paper is an effort to study in detail how changes in the driving forces of the economy affect co2 emissions we study the case of venezuela for the period 1980 2025 using the methodology proposed by robalino lopez et al 2014 2013 1 2 which is based on an extension of the kaya identity and on a gdp formation approach that includes the effect of renewable energies we test the environmental kuznets curve ekc 3 hypothesis in a coming future under different economic scenarios considering therefore not only past data but also projections for the coming years we use cointegration techniques 4 and the jaunky 2011 5 specification to test the fulfillment of the ekc hypothesis in venezuela our predictions show that venezuela does not fulfill the ekc hypothesis but however the country could be on the way to achieve environmental stabilization in the medium term this stabilization could be accomplished combining economic growth with increasing use of renewable energy appropriated changes in the energy matrix and in the productive sectoral structure

baumol s disease and dematerialization of the economy this paper argues that there is reason to be skeptical about the idea that the transition to a service economy will bring about dematerialization of production and consequent environmental improvement this is because the shift to a service economy is an illusion in terms of real production but is instead generated by the fall in the price of manufacturing goods relative to services which is in turn caused by more rapid productivity growth in manufacturing than in services this argument relies on the insights baumol provided on the nature of the service economy and uses swedish long term data on relative sectoral development as an empirical illustration on the other hand the paper argues that there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that structural change may bring about a greening of growth namely the changes in growth patterns sometimes labeled the third industrial revolution which is connected to the emergence of microelectronics swedish co2 emissions show a decline after 1970 which is mainly explained by a politically driven change in the mix of energy carriers but is also related to the stabilization of energy consumption this energy stabilization was caused by slow growth of the economy in conjunction with substantial declines in energy intensity within industrial sectors and an absence of relative growth of the heavy sectors a growth that had marked the economy between 1870 and 1970 microelectronics have contributed to permanently transforming the swedish industrial sector in a lighter direction reducing energy losses in heavy industries and stabilizing household energy consumption so it appears as if there may be some environmental gains from this development that was initiated in the 1970s but not from relatively more production in the service sector

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in bric countries abstract this paper examines dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for a panel of bric countries over the period 1971 2005 except for russia 1990 2005 in long run equilibrium energy consumption has a positive and statistically significant impact on emissions while real output exhibits the inverted u shape pattern associated with the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with the threshold income of 5 393 in logarithms in the short term changes in emissions are driven mostly by the error correction term and short term energy consumption shocks as opposed to short term output shocks for each country short term deviations from the long term equilibrium take from 0 770 years russia to 5 848 years brazil to correct the panel causality results indicate there are energy consumption emissions bidirectional strong causality and energy consumption output bidirectional long run causality along with unidirectional both strong and short run causalities from emissions and energy consumption respectively to output overall in order to reduce emissions and not to adversely affect economic growth increasing both energy supply investment and energy efficiency and stepping up energy conservation policies to reduce unnecessary wastage of energy can be initiated for energy dependent bric countries

the environmental kuznets curve and the role of coal consumption in india cointegration and causality analysis in an open economy abstract this study investigates the dynamic relationship between coal consumption economic growth trade openness and co2 emissions in case of india in doing so narayan and popp journal of applied statistics 2010 37 1425 1438 structural break unit test is applied to test the order of integration of the variables long run relationship between the variables is tested by applying the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration developed by pesaran et al journal of applied econometrics 2001 16 289 326 the results confirm the existence of cointegration for long run between coal consumption economic growth trade openness and co2 emissions our empirical exercise indicates the presence of environmental kuznets curve ekc in long run as well as in short run coal consumption as well as trade openness contributes to co2 emissions the causality analysis reports the feedback hypothesis between economic growth and co2 emissions and same inference is drawn between coal consumption and co2 emissions moreover trade openness granger causes economic growth coal consumption and co2 emissions

regulatory attitudes and environmental innovation in a model combining internal and external r d the extent to which environmental regulatory institutions are either green or brown impacts not just the intensity of regulation at any moment but also the incentives for the development of new pollution control technologies we set up a strategic model of r d in which a polluter can deploy technologies developed in house or license technologies developed by specialist outsiders an eco industry polluters exert r d effort and may even develop redundant technologies to improve the terms on which they procure technology from outside we find that while regulatory bias has an ambiguous impact on the best available technology strategic delegation to systematically biased regulators can improve social welfare

international emissions trading under the kyoto protocol credit trading abstract the kyoto protocol allows emissions trading between countries the protocol does however not specify how such trade is to take place so far two options have been discussed in the literature government trading and permit trading this paper discusses a third option credit trading credit trading is based on abatement projects but differs from joint implementation in that it does not require direct foreign investment furthermore credit trading can be implemented both domestically and internationally the main advantages of credit trading are that it excludes trading in hot air while it still makes trade between private entities possible however the environmental effectiveness is doubtful especially when it is based on relative targets the paper shows that several interest groups prefer credit trading based on relative targets to permit trading also governments may have reasons to prefer credit trading to permit trading hence the political acceptability of credit trading is larger than that of permit trading making it more likely that credit trading will be allowed than permit trading

why did the energy intensity fall in china s industrial sector in the 1990s the relative importance of structural change and intensity change there have been a variety of studies investigating the relative importance of structural change and real intensity change to the change in china s energy consumption in the 1980s however no detailed analysis to date has been done to examine whether or not the increased energy efficiency trend in the 1980s still prevailed in the 1990s this article has filled this gap by investigating the change in energy consumption in china s industrial sector in the 1990s based on the data sets of value added and end use energy consumption for the 29 industrial subsectors and using the newly proposed decomposition method of giving no residual our results clearly show that the overwhelming contributor to the decline in industrial energy use in the 1990s was the decline in real energy intensity indicating that the trend of real energy intensity declines in the 1980s at the 2 digit level was still maintained in the 1990s this conclusion still holds even if we lower the growth rate dramatically in line with the belief that the growth rate of china s gdp may be overestimated

frictions in project based supply of permits emissions trading in climate change can entail large overall cost savings and transfers between developed and developing countries however the search for acceptable ji or cdm projects implies a deviation from the perfect market framework used in previous estimations our model combines the search market for projects with a frictionless permit market to quantify the supply side frictions in the co2 market we also decompose the effects of frictions into the effects of search friction bargaining and bilateralism a calibration using previous cost estimates of co2 reductions illustrate changes in cost savings and allocative implications

the effects of environmental regulation and technical progress on co2 kuznets curve an evidence from china based on environmental kuznets curve theory a panel data model which takes environmental regulation and technical progress as its moderating factors was developed to analyse the institutional and technical factors that affect the path of low carbon economic development the results indicated that there was a co2 emission kuznets curve seen in china environmental regulation had a significant moderating effect on the curve and the inflection of co2 emissions could come substantially earlier under stricter environmental regulation meanwhile the impact of technical progress on the low carbon economic development path had a longer hysteresis effect but restrained co2 emission during its increasing stage and accelerated its downward trend during the decreasing stage which was conducive to emission reduction strict environmental regulation could force the high carbon emitting industries to transfer from the eastern regions to the central or the western regions of china which would make the co2 kuznets curve higher in its increasing stage and lower in its decreasing stage than that under looser regulation furthermore energy efficiency energy structure and industrial structure exerted a significant direct impact on co2 emissions we should consider the above factors as essential in the quest for low carbon economic development

a theoretical basis for the environmental kuznets curve abstract this paper attempts to explain the environmental kuznets curve ekc or inverted u shaped relationship between income and environmental degradation in the framework of endogenous growth model considering a closed economy one part of capital is used for commodity production which generates pollution that degrades existing environment and the remaining part is used for abating pollution i e upgrading environment sufficient abatement activity improves restores environmental quality a sufficient abatement activity associated with commodity production could only lead optimally towards steady state the ratio of allocation of capital between two sectors production and abatement is fixed along the optimal path but it varies along the non optimal path that exists in the off steady state in the economy allocation of capital for abatement activity varies over time thus a change from insufficient to sufficient allocation of capital i e investment for abatement activity is the basis for an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental quality and economic growth

environmental innovation and environmental performance abstract by estimating a simultaneous panel data model of environmental innovation and toxic air pollution this paper identifies bi directional causal links between the two we study a panel of 127 manufacturing industries over the period 1989 2004 pollutant emissions are an implicit measure of policy stringency and environmental patent counts are used to measure environmental innovation after accounting for the joint endogeneity we find that environmental innovation is an important driver of reductions in us toxic emissions conversely we find that tightened pollution targets induce environmental innovation however our estimates indicate that the environmental policy multiplier the proportionate contribution of induced innovation to long run emission reduction is small

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

search bargaining money and prices the goal of this paper is to extend existing search theoretic models of fiat money which until now have assumed that the price level is exogenous by explicitly incorporating bilateral bargaining this allows us to determine the price level endogenously and leads to additional insights concerning the role of money for example we find that monetary equilibria are generally inefficient in the sense that output and prices differ from the solution to a social planner s problem although the difference can become small as the discount rate or search friction vanishes we also find that there exist nonstationary inflationary equilibria

determinants of co2 emissions in a small open economy abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the relationship between economic development and carbon dioxide co2 emissions for a small open and industrialized country austria we test whether an environmental kuznets curve relationship also holds for a single country rather than concentrating on panel or cross section data for a set of countries a cubic i e n shaped relationship between gdp and co2 emissions is found to fit the data most appropriately for the period 1960 1999 and a structural break is identified in the mid seventies due to the oil price shock furthermore two variables are additionally significant import shares reflecting the well known pollution haven hypothesis and the share of the tertiary service sector of total production gdp accounting for structural changes in the economy emission projections derived from this single country specification support the widely held opinion that significant policy changes are asked for when implementing the kyoto protocol in order to bring about a downturn in future carbon emissions

an alternative analysis of apparent ekc type transitions abstract the hypothesis of the environmental kuznets curve ekc depends upon the assumption that countries pass through a similar environmental impact trajectory as they experience income growth implying that income levels determine pollution levels the authors present evidence that this is not representative of the way many individual country s pollution emission trajectories evolve and question the emphasis on income determinism by the ekc the study proposes that nonlinear dynamic systems analysis provides a more complete description of individual country pollution trajectories in the case of co 2 emissions the nonlinear time trajectories show abrupt transitions that occur contemporaneously with historical events and over a broad range of incomes

further evidence of an environmental kuznets curve in spain abstract using a long span of data in spain esteve and tamarit 2012b reported evidence of a strong link between per capita income and per capita co2 in this paper we extend their work finding evidence of both non linear cointegration and asymmetric adjustment using a novel approach due to sephton 1994 and sephton and mann 2012 the results suggest that there is a long run non linear attractor drawing per capita income and co2 levels together with asymmetric adjustment

carbon trading thickness and market efficiency abstract this note tests for the efficient market hypothesis emh in the market for co 2 emission allowances in phase i and phase ii of the european union emissions trading scheme eu ets as usually is the case in emerging and non competitive markets such as the eu ets trading often not occurs on a frequent basis this has adverse implications for both the gains from permit trade as well as biases the emh tests variance ratio tests are employed to adjust for the thin trading effect the results indicate that phase i the trial and learning period was inefficient whereas the first period under phase ii shows signs of restoring market efficiency

revisiting the concept of environmental kuznets curve in period of energy disaster and deteriorating income empirical evidence from japan this study investigates the position of the japanese environmental kuznets curve in period of natural disaster and deteriorating income following the recent fukushima energy crisis the study aim to establish whether the ekc exist in period of energy disaster and deteriorating income to ensure this data from 1961 to 2012 was used while the zivot andrew structural break test the ardl bounds test were applied and these were validated using the innovation accounting test the finding of the study established the existence of inverted u shape suggesting the presence of ekc despite the deteriorating income of the country with the discovery of the existence of ekc in this study despite the dwindling productivity and revenue in japan this study challenged the ekc hypothesis and all existing studies on ekc by establishing that natural disasters are in themselves strong causative agents for the ekc to unfold and it is immaterial whether the economic fortunes of a country is increasing or decreasing the study further discovered energy consumption to be the major contributor of environmental degradation in japan while exports declines co2 emissions but imports adds to environmental degradation on the growth prospects of the japanese economy after the crisis the study discovered how energy consumption exports and imports contribute 33 55 1 027 and 7 126 to the country s economic growth respectively in return a minimum of 16 24 23 89 and 44 18 of co2 emissions was discovered the study proposed policy instruments that will help in realizing a balanced environment amidst efficient energy consumption and environmental management among others

inequality of energy intensities across oecd countries a note abstract this paper proposes the use of theil s second measure to analyze international energy intensity differences this index allows differences to be broken down within and between groups of countries in a consistent manner an analysis of oecd countries for the period 1971 1999 shows some basic points first the fall in energy intensities differences is attributable both to within group and between group inequality components second between group inequalities are currently the main contributor to the whole inequality value finally a detailed exploration on within group inequalities reveals the significant explanatory role played by eu countries

the effect of allowance allocations on cap and trade system performance abstractan implication of the coase theorem is that under certain conditions the market equilibrium in a cap and trade system will be cost effective and independent of the initial allocation of tradable rights that is the overall cost of achieving a given aggregate emission reduction will be minimized and the final allocation of permits will be independent of the initial allocation we call this the independence property this property is important because it means that the government can establish the overall pollution reduction goal for a cap and trade system by setting the cap and leaving it up to the legislature to construct a constituency in support of the program by allocating the allowances to various interests without affecting either the environmental performance of the system or its aggregate social costs we examine the conditions under which the independence property is likely to hold both in theory and in practice

economic growth and environmental degradation the environmental kuznets curve and sustainable development abstract in this paper we critically examine the concept of the environmental kuznets curve ekc it proposes that there is an inverted u shape relation between environmental degradation and income per capita so that eventually growth reduces the environmental impact of economic activity the concept is dependent on a model of the economy in which there is no feedback from the quality of the environment to production possibilities and in which trade has a neutral effect on environmental degradation the actual violation of these assumptions gives rise to fundamental problems in estimating the parameters of an ekc the paper identifies other econometric problems with estimates of the ekc and reviews a number of empirical studies the inference from some such ekc estimates that further development will reduce environmental degradation is dependent on the assumption that world per capita income is normally distributed when in fact median income is far below mean income we carry out simulations combining ekc estimates from the literature with world bank forecasts for economic growth for individual countries aggregating over countries to derive the global impact within the horizon of the bank s forecast 2025 global emissions of so 2 continue to increase forest loss stabilizes before the end of the period but tropical deforestation continues at a constant rate throughout the period

strategic choices for renewable energy investment conceptual framework and opportunities for further research this paper introduces the special issue on strategic choices for renewable energy investment which is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in st gallen switzerland in february 2010 substantial private investment is needed if public policy objectives to increase the share of renewable energy and prevent dangerous anthropogenic climate change are to be achieved the aim of this paper and the entire special issue is to draw scholarly attention to the processes underlying strategic choices for renewable energy investment and how they are influenced by energy policy we disentangle the role of risk return perceptions portfolio effects and path dependence in explaining energy investment decisions and suggest that the heterogeneous universe of investors requires a segmentation of policies the paper outlines some of the rich opportunities for further research in this emerging area

co2 emissions energy consumption and economic growth in turkey abstract this paper examines the long run and causal relationship issues between economic growth carbon emissions energy consumption and employment ratio in turkey by using autoregressive distributed lag bounds testing approach of cointegration empirical results for turkey over the period 1968 2005 suggest an evidence of a long run relationship between the variables at 5 significance level in turkey the estimated income elasticity of carbon emissions per capita is 0 606 and the income elasticity of energy consumption per capita is 1 375 results for the existence and direction of granger causality show that neither carbon emissions per capita nor energy consumption per capita cause real gdp per capita but employment ratio causes real gdp per capita in the short run in addition ekc hypothesis at causal framework by using a linear logarithmic model is not valid in turkish case the overall results indicates that energy conservation policies such as rationing energy consumption and controlling carbon dioxide emissions are likely to have no adverse effect on the real output growth of turkey

energy innovations ghg emissions nexus fresh empirical evidence from oecd countries abstract this study explores the impact of improvements in energy research development erd on greenhouse gas ghg emissions using environmental kuznets curve hypothesis for 28 oecd countries over the period of 1990 2014 in doing so we have employed a panel data where public budget in energy research development and demonstration erd d has transformed into a finite inverted v lag distribution model developed by de leeuw 1962 this model considers that energy innovation accumulates in time and presents empirical evidence how energy innovation contributes in reducing energy intensity and environmental pollution as well our results indicate that energy innovation measures require lapses of time to reach their full effect i e innovation applied to measures for environmental correction does not reach its whole effect immediately requiring instead a certain amount of time to pass innovation policies have recommended for improving environmental quality

ekc analysis for studying economic growth and environmental quality a case study in china compared with the extensive research on the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in developed countries there is a paucity of an empirical research on studying the relation for developing countries based upon the environmental kuznets curve ekc theory this paper develops regression models for investigating the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality in china the ekc analysis based on six pollution indices is illustrated with a case study in jiaxing of zhejiang china

stability of equilibria with externalities it is shown that in a class of models with multiple externalities one positive and one negative all stationary equilibria may be locally stable to perturbations in the sense that there exist perfect foresight trajectories leading back to the equilibrium thus scale diseconomies arising for example out of a common resource pool generally overturn the liviatan samuelson result that equilibria are either saddlepoints or sources

costly search and recruiting a labor market model with costly search and recruiting is constructed it incorporates many features found in other models and provides new insights into the effects of externalities and transaction costs the model possesses a continuum of equilibria some of which may be pareto ranked with different rates of unemployment despite the multiplicity of equilibria comparative statics results are obtained copyright 1987 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

are there limits to growth a simple theoretical model of pollution is developed that generates an inverted u shape relationship between per capita income and environmental quality this model is then used to study long run growth the same inverted u shape is shown to appear in time series and the prospects for sustained growth are shown to hinge on whether increasingly strict environmental regulation is compatible with a constant rate of return on capital implementation is also studied tax and voucher schemes are shown to have an advantage over direct regulation because they provide the correct incentives for capital accumulation copyright 1998 by economics department of the university of pennsylvania and the osaka university institute of social and economic research association

the market for sulfur dioxide emissions the 1990 clean air act amendments initiated the first large scale use of the tradable permit approach to pollution control the theoretical case for this approach rests on the assumption of an efficient market for emission rights the authors empirical analysis shows that the emission rights market created by the 1990 amendments had become reasonably efficient by mid 1994 they also show that the auctions specified in the amendments to jump start trading had become a small part of the overall market finally the authors demonstrate that the strategic bidding behavior discussed in the literature has had no effect on market prices copyright 1998 by american economic association

thin versus thick co2 market abstract the idea that trading is more costly the thinner the market is is common in most studies of market exchange with frictions surprisingly this element is lacking from previous attempts to allow for frictions in pollution permit markets this paper considers a co 2 cap and trade model where trading costs develop endogenously as a function of the market size the pre trade allocation of permits determines whether the market size can be strongly influenced by expectations that have a role because of adjustment costs the pre trade allocation also sets preconditions for endogenously vanishing trading costs and thus has nonstandard effects on long run trading levels and market allocations

transaction costs and tradeable permits abstract tradeable permit systems are at the center of current interest and activity in market based reforms of environmental policy because these systems can offer significant advantages over conventional approaches to pollution control unfortunately claims made for their relative cost effectiveness have often been exaggerated transaction costs which may be significant in these markets reduce trading levels and increase abatement costs in some cases equilibrium permit allocations and hence aggregate control costs are sensitive to initial permit distributions providing an efficiency justification for politicians typical focus on initial allocations

global estimates of energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions abstract the present study examines the long run relationship between energy consumption and greenhouse gas emission for different groups of countries comprising lower middle income upper middle income and heavily indebted countries east asia and pacific east europe and central asia latin america and caribbean middle east and north africa south asia sub saharan africa and for aggregate data of the world the data has been analyzed by using various econometric techniques specifically the johnson cointegration modified version of granger causality and variance decomposition analysis from the period of 1975 to 2011 the results confirm that there is a long run relationship between greenhouse gas emissions i e agricultural methane emission agricultural nitrous oxide emission and carbon dioxide emission and energy consumption the results of granger causality indicate that energy consumption granger causes greenhouse gas emission but not vice versa the important finding is that energy consumption granger causes gdp per unit energy use which confirms the energy led growth hypothesis in the world however the vice versa relationship does not hold the results imply that a policy to cut energy consumption tends to diminish greenhouse gas emission though affecting gdp of countries negatively

the dynamic impact of renewable energy consumption on co2 emissions a revisited environmental kuznets curve approach this paper considers a revisited environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis with potential impact of renewable energy consumption on environmental quality to this end paper aims at investigating the validity of the ekc hypothesis employing the dependent variable of co2 emissions and regressors of gdp quadratic gdp and renewable energy consumption this paper hence analyzes this revisited ekc hypothesis to observe if i there exists an inverted u shaped relationship between environmental quality in terms of co2 emissions per capita income and per capita income squared and ii there exists a negative causality from renewables to co2 emissions within ekc model paper employs a panel data set of 17 oecd countries over the period 1977 2010 and launches panel fmols and panel dols estimations the findings support the ekc hypothesis for the panel and indicate that gdp per capita and gdp per capita squared have the impacts on co2 emissions positively and negatively respectively and that renewable energy consumption yields negative impact on co2 emissions another remark of this paper is that the validity of ekc does not depend on income level of individual countries of panel in which ekc hypothesis holds eventually paper argues that if countries carry out i policies i e for fair and easy access to the electricity from renewable sources and ii policies to increase renewables supply through i e improved renewable energy technologies they will be able to contribute to combating global warming problem as they increase their gdp s

using the environmental kuznets curve to evaluate energy policy some practical considerations abstract the environmental kuznets curve ekc is a widely applied empirical model that is used to assess the effect of country s increased income on its emissions such as co 2 typical estimation is of a reduced form model relating per capita emissions to per capita gdp and sometimes to energy consumption with an eye toward determining whether a country s per capita emissions increase or decrease with per capita gdp in this article we consider a number of practical issues in estimating and using the ekc for energy policy analysis proper estimation procedures should be used if the empirical work is to provide valid estimates of the ekc s shape in addition policymakers should proceed with caution when crafting policy on the basis of reduced form estimates of the ekc because the reduced form model provides limited insight into the policy implications of the relationship between income energy consumption and emissions

fairness in a tradeable permit treaty for carbon emissions reductions in europe and the former soviet union this paper evaluates the distributional implications of alternative permit allocations in a tradeable permit regime for carbon emissions reductions 20 below baseline in 2010 for a region consisting of europe and the states of the former soviet union fsu participation in such a regime is expected to hinge on the fairness of the distributional consequences we find that initial permit allocations by populationand or gdp are unlikely to induce participation by most countries of eastern europe and fsu because of the net costs involved we identify a set of initial allocations that would at least compensate these countries a fair treatment of the countries in western europe we is here one which equalizes net costs pergdp for a wide set of cost functions for carbon emission reductions the cost gains that we would reap from a tradeable permit system relative to unilateral reductions by we as a group are found to be on the order of 85 percent this would imply among other things a significant increase in we scapacity to make further emissions reductions

abatement and permits when pollution is uncertain and violations are fined this paper considers a firm s choice of abatement and of the number of permits if actual pollution is stochastic such that full compliance cannot be ensured this straightforward extension induces non trivial and unexpected comparative static properties such as permits and abatement can be either substitutes or complements higher fines can lower the number of acquired permits or abatement and higher permit prices can reduce abatement yet integrating these reactions into a competitive permit market eliminates puzzling features this is an additional justification of tradable permits over standards where regulators must cope with potentially counterproductive firm reactions

do urbanization and industrialization affect energy intensity in developing countries abstract against a backdrop of concerns about climate change peak oil and energy security issues reducing energy intensity is often advocated as a way to at least partially mitigate these impacts this study uses recently developed heterogeneous panel regression techniques like mean group estimators and common correlated effects estimators to model the impact that income urbanization and industrialization has on energy intensity for a panel of 76 developing countries in the long run a 1 increase in income reduces energy intensity by 0 45 to 0 35 long run industrialization elasticities are in the range 0 07 to 0 12 the impact of urbanization on energy intensity is mixed in specifications where the estimated coefficient on urbanization is statistically significant it is slightly larger than unity the implications of these results for energy policy are discussed

induced innovation and energy prices this paper uses u s patent data from 1970 to 1994 to study the impact of energy prices on energy efficient innovations theories of technological change have focused both on demand side factors which spur innovative activity by increasing the value of new innovations and supply side factors such as scientific advancements that make new innovations possible data on demand side factors are easily obtained but data on supply side factors that influence innovation are not readily available this paper uses patent citations as a measure of the usefulness of the existing base of scientific knowledge citations to previous patents are used to construct productivity estimates which measure the usefulness of the existing stock of knowledge to inventors in a given energy field for any given year these estimates are then combined with data on demand side factors to estimate a model of induced innovation in energy technologies the results indicate that both energy prices and the supply of knowledge have strongly significant positive effects on innovation the paper concludes with a discussion of the implication of this work for environmental policy

the optimal size of a permit market regulating the emissions of non uniformly mixed pollutants with a permit market carries the risk of hot spot formation which can be reduced by dividing the regulation area into trading zones the trading zone approach has been extensively discussed for the full information case we consider incomplete information concerning the emitters abatement costs their locations and pollution dispersion we derive the optimal number of trading zones and the optimal number of permits per zone and analyze under which conditions a system of independent trading zones is superior to other policy measures our results show that appropriately sized permit markets are well suited to regulating non uniformly mixed pollutants under informational constraints if firms are not too heterogeneous only for substantial heterogeneity and a highly non linear damage function can it be optimal to use command and control strategies

bringing biophysical models into the economic laboratory an experimental analysis of sediment trading in australia abstract experimental economics has emerged and matured as a formal method for questioning and testing economic theory and assumptions concerning individual behavior more recently experimental methods have been used successfully in an economic laboratory to test alternative environmental policy options the data underpinning these experiments is often stylized or hypothetical in nature ecologists and experimental economists have much to gain by exploring ways to underpin economic experiments with data generated from biophysical models the study makes a contribution by demonstrating how underpinning experiments with regionally modeled biophysical data may give insights which would not necessarily arise from stylized data in this study sediment data generated from an environmental management support system emss a software model of sediment runoff in catchments was used to populate the players decision space the study investigated the relative performance of four different instruments closed first and second price call tenders cap and trade and command and control regulation these market instruments will be compared with the aim of promoting riparian management and reducing total suspended solids exiting a catchment the study finds that the cost of meeting regulatory requirement of sediment reduction through command and control is less than either first or second price auction however cap and trade produced high levels of convergence and production which moved towards minimizing the cost of achieving the cap reduction level

us long term energy intensity backcast and projection energy intensity of the economy is often modeled as being determined by the combined effect of a fixed price elasticity of demand and an exogenously specified fixed technical change parameter denoted as the autonomous energy efficiency improvement aeei typically the aeei rate is set to 0 5 1 5 improvement per annum here we study historic aggregate energy intensity trends for the us from 1954 to 1994 we show that the historic trends are inconsistent with an autonomous model of improved energy efficiency especially when the model is used to inform policies that impact energy prices as an alternative we propose a model of price induced efficiency in which aggregate energy intensity trends respond to changes in energy prices beyond price elasticity of demand e our exercise reveals that the aggregate price elasticity of energy demand of the us economy has declined by roughly 15 over the past four decades but beyond this decline bringing our simulations and historical data into close correspondence requires to change sign before and after 1974 before 1974 after accounting for price elasticity of demand the economy was growing less energy efficient after 1974 after accounting for the price elasticity of demand the economy was growing more energy efficient furthermore since 1984 the rate of energy efficiency gain has been declining when projections of long term energy use are compared those with a price induced energy efficiency formulation generate significantly more price sensitive energy use and emissions trajectories when in the business as usual scenario energy prices are expected to be rising climate policies involve lower shadow carbon prices with than with aeei formulations in scenarios where energy prices are relatively flat energy intensity rises leading to co2 emissions far higher than standard business as usual projections utilizing aeei assumptions

air quality and economic growth an empirical study abstract in the present empirical study we have observed an inverse and sometimes u shaped relationship between environmental degradation and per capita real income as opposed to the inverted u shaped environmental kuznets curve ekc found in many earlier studies it was felt that a possible explanation of the observed pattern of relationship might be sought in the dynamics of the process of economic growth experienced by the countries concerned thus e g economic development may strengthen the market mechanism as a result of which the economy may gradually shift from non market to marketed energy resources that are less polluting this phenomenon may show up in the form of an inverse relationship as mentioned above also due to the global technical progress the production techniques available to the countries all over the world are becoming more and more capital intensive and at the same time less polluting this may mean that given the income level the pollution level decreases as the capital intensity of an economy rises in the present study it is indeed observed that as capital intensity increases the level of suspended particulate matter spm in the atmosphere decreases per capita real income is also found to be inversely related to spm partially but the interaction effect of per capita income and capital intensity on spm is observed to be positive this suggests that given the level of per capita income capital intensity a more capital intensive production technique a higher per capita income level would cause less pollution for spm a surprising result is also obtained i e a u turn is observed at a very high level of per capita real income i e us 12 500 at 1985 us prices this is possibly indicative of the fact that there are technological limits to industrial pollution control such that beyond a threshold level of income further rise in income cannot be achieved without environmental degradation

rational expectations business cycles in search equilibrium we examine the rational expectations equilibrium paths of the model of search and barter in diamond s aggregate demand management in search equilibrium for some initial positions there are two equilibrium paths converging to different steady states with the high activity path pareto dominating the low activity path with some parameters there is also a continuum of equilibrium paths converging to another steady state moreover there can be cycles that are equilibrium paths even though the environment is stationary

an ekc pattern in historical perspective carbon dioxide emissions technology fuel prices and growth in sweden 1870 1997 the environmental kuznets curve ekc has been subject to research and debate since the early 1990s this articleexamines the inverted u trajectory of swedish co2 emissions during an extended time

the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on co2 emissions in south africa abstract this paper explores the effects of financial development economic growth coal consumption and trade openness on environmental performance using time series data over the period 1965 2008 in case of south africa the ardl bounds testing approach to cointegration has been used to test the long run relationship among the variables while short run dynamics have been investigated by applying error correction method ecm the unit root properties of the variables are examined by applying saikkonen and lutkepohl 2002 econometric theory 18 313 348 structural break unit root test our findings confirmed long run relationship among the variables results showed that a rise in economic growth increases energy emissions while financial development reduces it coal consumption has significant contribution to deteriorate environment in south african economy trade openness improves environmental quality by reducing the growth of energy pollutants our empirical results also verified the existence of environmental kuznets curve this paper opens up new insights for south african economy to sustain economic growth by controlling environment from degrdation through efficient use of energy

political economy of the kyoto protocol the kyoto protocol negotiated in december 1997 is the first international treaty to limit emissions of greenhouse gases but kyoto does not mark the conclusion to international cooperation on climate change it is really just a beginning this paper shows that in the aggregate the benefits of undertaking the kyoto reductions should exceed the corresponding costs provided these are achieved cost effectively but although kyoto seeks to promote cost effectiveness it may yet prove very costly moreover the agreement may not even achieve the reductions that it promises either because emissions will relocate to the countries that are not required to stay within kyoto prescribed ceilings or because paper trades will be promoted by the protocol s mechanisms more fundamentally kyoto does not deter non compliance and it only weakly deters non participation these flaws need to be mended but the nature of the problem makes that an especially difficult task copyright 1998 by oxford university press

information the dual economy and development we examine the interactions between different institutional arrangements in a general equilibrium model of a modernizing economy there is a modern sector where productivity is high but information asymmetries are large and a traditional sector where productivity is low but information asymmetries are small consequently agency costs in the modern sector make consumption lending difficult while such lending is readily done in the traditional sector the resulting trade off between credit availability and productivity implies that not everyone will move to the modern sector in fact the laissez faire level of modernization may fail to maximize net social surplus this situation may also hold in the long run in a dynamic version of the model a trickle down effect links the process of modernization with reduction in modern sector agency costs this effect may be too weak and the economy may get stuck in a trap and never fully modernize the two sector structure also yields a natural theoretical testing ground for the kuznets inverted u hypothesis we show that even within the sectoral shifting class of models this phenomenon is not robust to small changes in model specification

income inequality and pollution a reassessment of the environmental kuznets curve abstract improvements in some measures of air and water quality can accompany rising per capita income as illustrated by the so called environmental kuznets curve for pollution variables which show such a relationship we hypothesize that a more equitable distribution of power contributes to these outcomes by enhancing the influence on policy of those who bear the costs of pollution relative to the influence of those who benefit from pollution generating activities an empirical analysis of international variations in seven indicators of air and water quality supports this hypothesis literacy political rights and civil liberties are found to have particularly strong effects on environmental quality in low income countries

designing more efficient markets lessons from los angeles smog control market based approaches for environmental protection are beginning to take root around the world this article attempts to improve our understanding of the performance of environmental markets by constructing and evaluating an information base on trades in los angeles which includes the first detailed data on trading prices the analysis suggests that trading activity has been shaped by the detailed regulations governing the market in addition transaction costs have played a crucial role we argue that the move toward adopting market based approaches for environmental protection needs to be accompanied by a vigorous effort to assess the properties of these systems as they are actually implemented

study on china s low carbon development in an economy energy electricity environment framework abstract emissions mitigation is a major challenge for china s sustainable development we summarize china s successful experiences on energy efficiency in past 30 years as the contributions of energy usage management and integrated resource strategic planning which are essential for low carbon economy in an economy energy electricity environment e4 framework the paper studies the low carbon development of china and gives an outlook of china s economy growth energy electricity demand renewable power generation and energy conservation and emissions mitigation until 2030 a business as usual scenario is projected as baseline for comparison while low carbon energy and electricity development path is studied it is defined as low carbon energy electricity when an economy body manages to realize its potential economic growth fueled by less energy electricity consumption which can be characterized by indexes of energy electricity intensity and emissions per unit of energy consumption electricity generation results show that with eum china could save energy by 4 38 billion ton oil equivalences toes and reduce co2 emission by 16 55 billion tons with irsp china could save energy by 1 5 btoes and reduce co2 emission by 5 7 btons during 2010 2030 to realize the massive potential china has to reshape its economic structure and rely much on technology innovation in the future

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 relationship between energy consumption energy prices and economic growth time series evidence from asian developing countries this paper estimates the causal relationships between energy consumption and income for india indonesia the philippines and thailand using cointegration and error correction modelling techniques the results indicate that in the short run unidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for india and indonesia while bidirectional granger causality runs from energy to income for thailand and the philippines in the case of thailand and the philippines energy income and prices are mutually causal the study results do not support the view that energy and income are neutral with respect to each other with the exception of indonesia and india where neutrality is observed in the short run c 2000 elsevier science b v all rights reserved jel classifications c22 q43 q48

co2 emissions energy consumption and output in france abstract this paper examines the dynamic causal relationships between pollutant emissions energy consumption and output for france using cointegration and vector error correction modelling techniques we argue that these variables are strongly inter related and therefore their relationship must be examined using an integrated framework the results provide evidence for the existence of a fairly robust long run relationship between these variables for the period 1960 2000 the causality results support the argument that economic growth exerts a causal influence on growth of energy use and growth of pollution in the long run the results also point to a uni directional causality running from growth of energy use to output growth in the short run

is environmental degradation an inevitable consequence of economic growth tunneling through the environmental kuznets curve abstract economywide reforms often contribute simultaneously to economic social and environmental gains however unintended adverse side effects occur in many cases when such growth inducing reforms are undertaken while neglecting other policy market or institutional imperfections the remedy does not generally require reversal of the original economywide reforms but rather the ex ante implementation of additional complementary measures that remove such imperfections the ekc approach seeks to relate the state of the environment to the stage of development developing countries could learn from the experiences of industrialized nations and restructure growth and development to tunnel through any potential ekc thereby avoiding going through the same stages of growth that involve relatively high and even irreversible levels of environmental harm an environmentally adjusted measure of national income could significantly change the shape of the development environment relationship recommendations for decision making include actively seeking win win policies that simultaneously yield both economic and environmental gains pre empting environmental harm through ex ante remedial measures and fine tuning reform policies to avoid severe environmental damage the adoption of more sustainable policies will facilitate the attainment of higher levels of development at a lower environmental cost

impact of energy technology patents in china evidence from a panel cointegration and error correction model abstract enhancing energy technology innovation performance which is widely measured by energy technology patents through energy technology research and development r d activities is a fundamental way to implement energy conservation and emission abatement this study analyzes the effects of r d investment activities economic growth and energy price on energy technology patents in 30 provinces of china over the period 1999 2013 several unit root tests indicate that all the above variables are generated by panel unit root processes and a panel cointegration model is confirmed among the variables in order to ensure the consistency of the estimators the fully modified ols fmols method is adopted and the results indicate that r d investment activities and economic growth have positive effects on energy technology patents while energy price has a negative effect however the panel error correction models indicate that the cointegration relationship helps to promote economic growth but it reduces r d investment and energy price in the short term therefore market oriented measures including financial support and technical transformation policies for the development of low carbon energy technologies an effective energy price mechanism especially the targeted fossil fuel subsidies and their die away mode are vital in promoting china s energy technology innovation

prices capacity and the entry decision a conditional logit analysis an understanding of what potential entrants consider in reaching an entry decision is important in assessing the validity of some rather fundamental hypotheses concerning the behavior of firms faced with an entry threat the reason is that such hypotheses are based on implicit assumptions concerning what influences the decisions of potential entrants if for example established firms deter entry by adjusting their prices as suggested by the limit pricing hypothesis then it must be true that prices in fact influence potential entrants 1 similarly if firms build capacity to deter entry as suggested recently by spence 8 then it must be true that observed capacity in fact influences the entry decision hence an examination of whether these considerations are important to potential entrants can be interpreted as a test of a necessary though not sufficient condition for the existence of these types of behavior on the part of established firms despite the significance of this question as a foundation upon which a number of important hypotheses concerning firm behavior rest few studies have attempted to estimate the relationship between the relevant market characteristics and the behavior of identifiable potential entrants the reasons for this are not hard to isolate price data of the type required is not generally available for most industries leaving untested the frequently debated relationship between pre entry market price and the entry decision also in the interindustry context in which empirical resesarch is usually conducted it is virtually impossible to account systematically for the differing levels of knowledge and experience among potential entrants and such differences may significantly influence the relative attractiveness of markets for entry thus any attempt to estimate the relationship between market characteristics and the entry decisions of individual potential entrants in the interindustry context will founder on the inability to account for the influence of knowledge and experience on the attractiveness of the potential entrant s choices this paper circumvents these problems by examining the relationship between market