assessment of the economic impacts of continuous energy intensity target constraint in china based on an analytical general equilibrium model abstract based on the framework of analytical general equilibrium model this study builds an energy intensity target eit constraint model and simulates the impacts of continuous eit constraint policy on the fossil fuel production ffp sector non fossil fuel production nffp sector household sector and price system in china the main findings of this paper are firstly the eit constraint can change the marginal products and the cross price elasticities of input factors secondly stricter eit constraint can transfer capital and labor inputs from the ffp sector to the nffp sector and lead to a contractionary effect in the ffp sector shown as declining inputs and output the contractionary effect will decline gradually or even fade away if the eit constraint is gradually reduced thirdly if the total capital and labor inputs in the whole economy continue to grow at certain rates along with the weakening of the eit constraint the reduction in energy input and the growth of capital and labor inputs in the nffp sector will slow down however the growth rates of output and intermediate input will increase continuously fourthly the eit constraint has negative impacts on the nffp sector price system and household consumption but these impacts are affordable to the whole economy if the eit constraint is loosened under a certain level it may not curb the growth of fossil fuel consumption anymore therefore other supporting policies for energy conservation must be in place

estimates of inter fuel substitution possibilities in chinese chemical industry abstract the chemical sector is a key driver of china s remarkable growth record and accounts for about 10 of the country s gdp this has made the industry energy intensive and consequently a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions ghg and other pollutants this study has attempted to investigate the potential for inter fuel substitution between coal oil natural gas and electricity in chinese chemical sector by employing a translog production and cost function ridge regression procedure was adopted to estimate the parameters of the function estimation results show that all energy inputs are substitutes in addition the study produces evidence that the significant role of coal in the chinese chemical fuel mix converges over time albeit slowly these results suggest that price based policies coupled with capital subsidy programs can be adopted to redirect technology use towards cleaner energy sources like electricity and natural gas hence retaining the ability to fuel the chemical sector while also mitigating ghg emissions notwithstanding one must understand that the extent to which substituting electricity for coal will be effective depends on the extent to which coal or oil is used in generating electricity the findings of this study provide general insights and underscore the importance of chinese government policies that focus on installed capacity of renewable electricity energy intensity targets as well as merger of enterprises

longitude matters time zones and the location of foreign direct investment abstract using bilateral foreign direct investment fdi data we find that differences in time zones have a negative and significant effect on the location of fdi we show that this finding is robust across different specifications estimation methods and proxies for time zone differences time zones also have a negative effect on trade but this effect is smaller than that on fdi finally the impact of the time zone effect has increased over time suggesting that it is not likely to vanish with the introduction of new information technologies

the impacts of transport energy consumption foreign direct investment and income on co2 emissions in asean 5 economies abstract in this study we incorporate new variables and assess the impact of transportation sector s energy consumption and foreign direct investment on co2 emissions for asean 5 economies using the cointegration and granger causality methods this study also attempts to validate the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis our results reveal that the co2 emissions and their determinants are co integrated only in indonesia malaysia and thailand the long run elasticity estimation suggests that income and transport energy consumption significantly influence co2 emissions whereas fdi is not significant economic growth plays a greater role in contributing to co2 emission in asean 5 nonetheless we find that the inverted u shape ekc hypothesis is not applicable to the asean 5 economies especially in indonesia malaysia and thailand in the long run the bi directional causality between economic growth and co2 emissions is detected in indonesia and thailand while we find unidirectional causality running from gdp to co2 emissions in malaysia we also observe bi directional causality between transport energy consumption fdi and co2 emissions in thailand and malaysia as an immediate policy option controlling energy consumption in transportation sector may result in a significant reduction in co2 emissions however this may slow the process of economic growth in malaysia and indonesia alternatively we suggest policymakers to place more emphasis on energy efficient transportation system and policies to minimise fossil fuel consumption thus the quality of environment can be improved with less deleterious impact on economic growth

using latent variable approach to estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the energy rebound effect has been a significant issue in china which is undergoing economic transition since it reflects the effectiveness of energy saving policy relying on improved energy efficiency based on the ipat equation and brookes explanation of the rebound effect this paper develops an alternative estimation model of the rebound effect by using the estimation model and latent variable approach which is achieved through a time varying coefficient state space model we estimate china s economy wide energy rebound effect over 1954 2010 the results show that the rebound effect evidently exists in china as a result of the annual average of 39 73 over 1954 2010 before and after the implementation of china s reform and opening up policy in 1978 the rebound effects are 47 24 and 37 32 with a strong fluctuation and a circuitously downward trend respectively indicating that a stable political environment and the development of market economy system facilitate the effectiveness of energy saving policy although the energy saving effect of improving energy efficiency has been partly realised there remains a large energy saving potential in china

carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth panel data evidence from developing countries in this paper we test the environment kuznet s curve ekc hypothesis for 43 developing countries we suggest examining the ekc hypothesis based on the short and long run income elasticities that is if the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run income elasticity then it is evident that a country has reduced carbon dioxide emissions as its income has increased our empirical analysis based on individual countries suggests that jordan iraq kuwait yemen qatar the uae argentina mexico venezuela algeria kenya nigeria congo ghana and south africa approximately 35 per cent of the sample carbon dioxide emissions have fallen over the long run that is as these economies have grown emissions have fallen since the long run income elasticity is smaller than the short run elasticity we also examine the ekc hypothesis for panels of countries constructed on the basis of regional location using the panel cointegration and the panel long run estimation techniques we find that only for the middle eastern and south asian panels the income elasticity in the long run is smaller than the short run implying that carbon dioxide emission has fallen with a rise in income

energy savings and the rebound effect with multiple energy services and efficiency correlation abstract the rebound effect or the increased use of energy services following an increase in the efficiency of that service is widely studied in the literature but it is usually only considered in a single service environment such a framework ignores the potentially significant indirect rebound effects that occur through increased purchasing power for other services and does not allow for joint efficiency improvements across many services what we call efficiency correlation we develop a household production model with two energy services and distinct but simultaneous efficiency changes to test the implications of efficiency correlation on net energy elasticities and the rebound effect positively correlated efficiency choices across end uses not only increase technically feasible energy reductions but also drive additional rebound responses that erode these savings model simulations suggest that the rebound effects through the efficiency correlation channel are just as large as traditional direct and indirect rebound effects reported in the literature though they are offset by added technical energy savings moreover we find that negative correlation can significantly reverse any energy savings e g a household installs energy saving window panes but then trades in their sedan for a suv but current federal efficiency standards make this scenario unlikely this paper offers new insight into a host of additional behavioral responses to efficiency improvements particularly the incidence of efficiency correlation across different energy services and highlights its implication for realized energy savings

energy rebound effect in china s industry an aggregate and disaggregate analysis abstract considering the crucial role of industrial sectors in energy conservation this paper investigates the impact of output growth on energy consumption in china s industrial sectors with an index decomposition model and the energy rebound effect in the industrial sectors with a panel data model using the annual data during 1994 2012 the empirical results indicate that first industrial output growth is proved to be the major factor in promoting industrial energy consumption while energy intensity reduction and structure shifts across industrial sub sectors play the dominant roles in slowing down industrial energy consumption second there does exist energy rebound effect in china s aggregate industry which ranges from 20 to 76 during 1995 2012 or 39 on average in particular the energy rebound effect in manufacturing is relatively smaller during the sample period i e 28 on average finally the energy rebound effect in both china s aggregate industry and manufacturing exhibit an overall decreasing trend over time

a comparative analysis of the costs of onshore wind energy is there a case for community specific policy support abstract there is growing policy interest in increasing the share of community owned renewable energy generation this study explores why and how the costs of community owned projects differ from commercially owned projects by examining the case of onshore wind in the uk based on cross sectoral literature on the challenges of community ownership cost differences are attributed to six facets of an organisation or project internal processes internal knowledge and skills perceived local legitimacy of the project perceived external legitimacy of the organisation investor motivation and expectations and finally project scale these facets impact not only development costs but also project development times and the probability that projects pass certain critical stages in the development process using survey based and secondary cost data on community and commercial projects in the uk a model is developed to show the overall impact of cost time and risk differences on the value of a hypothetical 500 kw onshore wind project the results show that the main factors accounting for differences are higher pre planning costs and additional risks born by community projects and suggest that policy interventions may be required to place community owned projects on a level playing field with commercial projects

does fdi have energy saving spillover effect in china a perspective of energy biased technical change abstract existing studies pay little attention to when or under which conditions foreign direct investment fdi can spill energy saving technologies from a perspective of energy biased technical change and using a two layer nested constant elasticity of substitution ces production function this paper investigates the energy saving spillover effect of fdi on technical change i e energy saving spillovers in china between 2002 and 2015 in particular we consider the conditions of marketization industry technology and labor mobility to examine whether and when fdi has energy saving spillovers the results indicate no income inequality effect i e there is no evidence supporting that fdi flowing into low and middle income regions increases energy consumption while fdi flowing into high income regions conserves energy however there is a condition effect fdi can improve support the halo effect or deteriorate contradict the halo effect the environmental performance under different conditions moreover there is a threshold effect the direction of fdi spillovers varies with the different levels of the threshold variables an increasing marketization motivates enterprises to select energy biased technologies it is more likely to generate energy saving spillovers in the regions with a lower specialized agglomeration level fdi will have energy biased spillovers when domestic technological level is relatively high with an evident energy biased technology in addition a moderate labor mobility is beneficial to the energy saving spillovers of fdi

economy wide estimates of energy rebound effect evidence from china s provinces abstract the ongoing debate on the magnitude of china s economy wide energy rebound effect re entails further investigations not only with more details but also with more credible methods in this study a modified two stage approach which could avoid methodological issues regarding re estimation is applied to estimate macroeconomic re with a data panel of 30 provinces in china during the period 1997 2015 in particular in order to comprehensively measure energy efficiency we construct a dynamic energy efficiency indicator which considers not only the static efficiency of energy use but also the technical change regarding energy usage using dynamic panel data models we estimate the elasticity of energy consumption with respect to energy efficiency which directly links to the measurement of re the short run and long run estimates of re are reported and the 95 confidence interval was computed for each sample based on the nonparametric bootstrap method to further analyze the macroeconomic re of different regions results indicate that the average re of all provinces is 88 55 in the short run and the average long run re is 77 50 the re in the developed eastern region continuously decreased while re in the western region increased to be the largest during the research period

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

causality relationship between electricity consumption and gdp in bangladesh in this paper we examine the causal relationship between the per capita electricity consumption and the per capita gdp for bangladesh using cointegration and vector error correction model our results show that there is unidirectional causality from per capita gdp to per capita electricity consumption however the per capita electricity consumption does not cause per capita gdp in case of bangladesh the finding has significant implications from the point of view of energy conservation emission reduction and economic development

the macro economic rebound effect and the uk economy abstract this paper examines the macroeconomic rebound effect for the uk economy arising from energy efficiency policies 2000 2010 using the macroeconomic model mdm e3 the literature distinguishes between three types of rebound effect direct indirect and economy wide the macroeconomic rebound effect considered here is the combination of the indirect and economy wide effects policies for the domestic business commercial and public and transport sectors of the economy are analysed for 2000 2010 overall the policies lead to a saving of about 8 of the energy which would otherwise have been used and a reduction in co2 emissions of 10 or 14 mtc by 2010 there are also favourable macroeconomic effects lower inflation and higher growth we find that the macroeconomic rebound effect arising from uk energy efficiency policies for the period 2000 2010 is around 11 by 2010 averaged across sectors of the economy when this is added to the assumed direct rebound effect of around 15 this gives a total rebound effect of around 26 arising from these policies thus the findings of the study support the argument that energy efficiency improvements for both consumers and producers stimulated by policy incentives will lead to significant reductions in energy demand and hence in greenhouse gas emissions

an empirical study of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china transport sector accounts for about 8 of total energy consumption in china and this share will likely increase in the visible future improving energy efficiency has been considered as a major way for reducing transport energy use whereas its effectiveness might be affected by the rebound effect this paper estimates the direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china by using the linear approximation of the almost ideal demand system model and simulation analysis our empirical results reveal the existence of direct rebound effect for passenger transport in urban china a majority of the expected reduction in transport energy consumption from efficiency improvement could be offset due to the existence of rebound effect we have further investigated the relationship between the magnitude of direct rebound effect and households expenditure it was found that the direct rebound effect for passenger transport tends to decline with the increase of per capita household consumption expenditure

the contribution of foreign direct investment to clean energy use carbon emissions and economic growth the paper investigates the contributions of foreign direct investment fdi net inflows to clean energy use carbon emissions and economic growth the paper employs cointegration tests to examine a long run equilibrium relationship among the variables and fixed effects models to examine the magnitude of fdi contributions to the other variables the paper analyzes panel data of 19 nations of the g20 from 1971 to 2009 the test results indicate that fdi has played an important role in economic growth for the g20 whereas it limits its impact on an increase in co2 emissions in the economies the research finds no compelling evidence of fdi link with clean energy use given the results the paper discusses fdi s potential role in achieving green growth goals

china s changing energy intensity trend a decomposition analysis china experienced a dramatic decline in energy intensity from the onset of economic reform in the late 1970s until 2000 but since then the rate of decline slowed and energy intensity actually increased in 2003 most previous studies found that most of the decline was due to technological change but disagreed on the role of structural change to the best of our knowledge no decomposition study has investigated the role of inter fuel substitution in the decline in energy intensity or the causes of the rise in energy intensity since 2000 in this paper we use logarithmic mean divisia index lmdi techniques to decompose changes in energy intensity in the period 1980 2003 we find that 1 technological change is confirmed as the dominant contributor to the decline in energy intensity 2 structural change at the industry and sector sub industry level actually increased energy intensity over the period of 1980 2003 although the structural change at the industry level was very different in the 1980s and in the post 1990 period 3 structural change involving shifts of production between sub sectors however decreased overall energy intensity 4 the increase in energy intensity since 2000 is explained by negative technological progress 5 inter fuel substitution is found to contribute little to the changes in energy intensity

multilateral resistance to migration the rate of migration observed between two countries does not depend solely on their relative attractiveness but also on the one of alternative destinations following the trade literature we term the influence exerted by other destinations on bilateral flows as multilateral resistance to migration and we show how it can be accounted for when estimating the determinants of migration rates in the context of a general individual random utility maximization model we propose the use of the common correlated effects estimator pesaran 2006 and apply it to high frequency data on the spanish immigration boom between 1997 and 2009 compared to more restrictive estimation strategies developed in the literature the bias goes in the expected direction we find a smaller effect of gdp per capita and a larger effect of migration policies on bilateral rates

explaining the diversity of motivations behind community renewable energy community based renewable energy initiatives may be important actors in the transition toward low carbon energy systems in turn stimulating investments in renewable energy production at the community level requires a better understanding of investors motives this paper aims to study the heterogeneity of motivations that drive individuals to participate in community renewable energy projects and the underlying explanatory factors behind this as well as the implications for their level of engagement in initiatives based on quantitative data from an original survey conducted with two renewable energy cooperatives in flanders the statistical analysis shows that cooperative members should not be considered as one homogeneous group several categories of members with different motives and levels of engagement can be distinguished this heterogeneity is explained by contrasts in terms of institutional settings spatial patterns and attitudes to the diffusion of institutional innovations regarding policy implications the findings suggest that this heterogeneity should be taken into account in designing more effective supporting policies to stimulate investments at the community level the activation of social norms is also shown to be a promising mechanism for triggering investment decisions although the implications of its interplay with economic incentives should be further explored

governing community energy feed in tariffs and the development of community wind energy schemes in the united kingdom and germany this paper analyses the development of community energy in the uk by comparing it to germany in relation to decentralisation scales and ownership structures particularly of wind energy varying approaches to energy generation at the community scale provide interesting insights into the impact of policy innovation as well as the capacity of national energy frameworks to foster socially innovative engagement practices beyond the purely technological diffusion of innovations by examining interactions between technological and social innovations with the help of a qualitative analysis opportunities for potential generators not traditionally engaged in energy generation to tap into these innovation systems are analysed this paper suggests that greater commitment to diversification beyond the implementation of policy measures such as the feed in tariff is required to provide communities with the capacity to develop new generation practices in terms of scale and ownership the uk in particular is struggling to protect these new generation practices which allow communities to derive benefits facilitated by specific energy policy measures according to their potential it concludes by indicating areas where niche protection might need to be expanded if community energy is to play a greater role in the uk s ambitious transition to a low carbon economy

a general equilibrium assessment of rebound effects in this paper we use a general equilibrium model applied to a national economy norway to explore the potential for energy efficiency improvements to trigger economic forces that offset potential savings from using more efficient technologies rebound effects two types of energy efficiency improvements electricity and oil are introduced into various sectors of the economy our results suggest significant and surprising differences across sectors concerning both energy use and consequences for the build up of greenhouse gases rebound effects are found to be quite significant for manufacturing sectors since long term consumption of energy undergoes minor reductions or increases in response to efficiency improvements in other sectors rebound effects appear to be weak or almost absent

the determinants of cross border equity flows abstract we explore a new panel data set on bilateral gross cross border equity flows between 14 countries 1989 1996 we show that a gravity model explains international transactions in financial assets at least as well as goods trade transactions gross transaction flows depend on market size in source and destination country as well as trading costs in which both information and the transaction technology play a role distance proxies some information costs and other variables explicitly represent information transmission an information asymmetry between domestic and foreign investors and the efficiency of transactions the geography of information is the main determinant of the pattern of international transactions while there is weak support in our data for the diversification motive once we control for the informational friction we broaden the scope of our results by presenting some evidence linking the results on equity transactions to equity holdings

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

is economic growth good or bad for the environment empirical evidence from korea abstract the effects of economic growth on the environment in korea for a given level of energy consumption and fossil fuels and nuclear energy in electricity production are examined in a dynamic cointegration framework to that end the autoregressive distributed lag ardl approach is used we find empirical evidence supporting the existence of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis for korea that is economic growth indeed plays a favorable role in influencing environmental outcomes it is also found that in both the short and long run nuclear energy has a beneficial effect on environmental quality whereas fossil fuels in electricity production and energy consumption have a detrimental effect on the environment

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

an improved approach to estimate direct rebound effect by incorporating energy efficiency a revisit of china s industrial energy demand abstract the rebound effect or the response to energy efficiency improvement has drawn considerable attention from economists and policymakers however the magnitude remains quite controversial because of the differences in the definitions and methods being used originating from the definition of direct rebound effect we develop an improved approach incorporating energy efficiency the main advantages of the proposed approach are twofold first it enables us to estimate the demand elasticity of useful energy service with respect to energy service price the estimates are more consistent with the definition of rebound effect and are more effective second it decomposes direct rebound effect into substitution and output channels enabling us to further understand the microeconomic mechanisms applying this method we assess the direct energy rebound effect in china s industrial sectors we find that the direct rebound effect for the industry is 37 0 and the substitution and output channels contribute to 13 1 and 23 9 respectively substantial variations in the magnitudes and mechanisms occur by sector for heavy industry most energy rebound is induced by output expansion because of its sizeable cost decrease from efficiency improvements unlike heavy industry most energy rebound in light industry comes from substituting energy service for other inputs because firms in light industry are more flexible in adjusting production inputs our results provide evidences for the importance of energy efficiency measures and highlight the necessity of differentiated measures according to the sectoral characteristics

co2 emissions energy consumption trade and income a comparative analysis of china and india in order to prevent the destabilisation of the earth s biosphere co2 emissions must be reduced quickly and significantly the causes of co2 emissions by individual countries need to be apprehended in order to understand the processes required for reducing emissions around the globe china and india are the two largest transitional countries and growing economies but are in two entirely different categories in terms of structural changes in growth trade and energy use co2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels have significantly increased in the recent past this paper compares china and india using the bounds testing approach to cointegration and the ardl methodology to test the long and short run relationships between growth trade energy use and endogenously determined structural breaks the co2 emissions in china were influenced by per capita income structural changes and energy consumption a similar causal connection cannot be established for india with regard to structural changes and co2 emissions because india s informal economy is much larger than china s india possesses an extraordinarily large number of micro enterprises that are low energy consumers and not competitive enough to reach international markets understanding these contrasting scenarios is prerequisite to reaching an international agreement on climate change affecting these two countries

taking stock of the local impacts of community owned renewable energy a review and research agenda abstract a growing literature suggests that community owned renewable energy cre projects have the potential to deliver a range of environmental and local socio economic benefits there is relatively little empirical evidence to substantiate this with few systematic efforts to assess social and environmental impacts or to understand the context in which given impacts arise in this paper we review and conceptualise the local impacts commonly cited in the literature and dissect the empirical evidence currently available to support their occurrence having assessed the quality of evidence and pinpointed knowledge gaps we draw on methodological literature to identify approaches necessary to improve our understanding of the local impacts of cre and explore their patterns of occurrence we find a lack of robust survey and statistical evidence across all the seven impact categories identified of the impacts identified empowerment and access to affordable energy are found to be the least studied in addition several impacts are associated only with specific types of community energy projects we argue that the paucity of consistent evidence for direct impacts associated with the development processes and direct outcomes of projects suggests that the most substantial local impacts result from medium to long term indirect project outcomes and the investment of project revenues in the local community as such collective funding pools and negotiation processes around their distribution towards private versus public goods play a crucial role in determining transformative local impacts of cre

technological progress and energy rebound effect in china s textile industry evidence and policy implications abstract although energy efficiency improvement can reduce energy consumption reduction of the effective price will also increase the demand for energy services part of this reduction is then offset because of the energy efficiency improvement the magnitude of this energy rebound effect is one of the important factors that must be considered in the formulation and implementation of energy policies the textile industry is a traditional pillar industry in china it is an important part of the national economy and contributes significantly to international trade this study uses the morishima elasticities of substitution mes model combined with asymmetric energy prices trans log cost function and other econometric methods to establish a framework to measure the rebound effect in china s textile industry the empirical results of this paper indicate that the rebound effect for china s textile industry is 20 991 this reveals that energy efficiency improvement is conducive for energy saving to a certain degree notwithstanding these results also prove that energy efficiency improvement is not the only way for china s textile industry to realize energy saving and emission reduction finally based on the analysis future policy priorities are suggested

let s do it ourselves individual motivations for investing in renewables at community level renewable energy communities have multiplied the last years in many countries even in contexts that the structural conditions are not favorable the paper analyses individual motivations for partaking in local renewable projects and generating energy jointly in an investment community in order to inform policy debates on how to support such communities to do so we applied a socio psychological approach for studying renewable energy communities in germany and the netherlands our results show that mainly gain such as decreasing energy costs and normative such as addressing climate change considerations played a role in the decision but in the background hedonic motivations were also present such as having fun and integrating in a community each of the groups examined emerged in already existing strong communities where trust was relatively high which seems to be an important condition for the realization of local energy projects consequently we argue that tailor made incentives addressing the different types of motivations can be more effective for the support and spread of renewable energy communities

innovation diffusion public policy and local initiative the case of wood fuelled district heating systems in austria abstract this paper comprises a three level study on wood fuel utilisation for district heating in austria first we discuss the framework conditions for the diffusion in austria of rural biomass district heating bdh plants an energy conversion plant type which constituted a real innovation in the 1980s second we describe the diffusion of bdh systems in the austrian province of vorarlberg where a variety of biomass energy systems have been promoted by capital grants since 1993 as part of a dedicated bioenergy promotion programme third the paper contains a case study of a 2 mw bdh plant put into operation in 2000 in rankweil a small market town located in vorarlberg on the east side of the rhine valley analysis of the plant history reveals that an oversupply of forest residues caused by devastating storms and forest diseases together with the more general need to rejuvenate severely over aged forest stands created strong incentives to form local actor networks and initiatives to push for the adoption and diffusion of centralised biomass heating systems in rural areas in addition intensive lobbying and strong political and public support were necessary to successfully combat interventions by both the natural gas industry and influential gas supplied industrial enterprises finally a capital grant of 45 of eligible investment costs as well as careful capacity expansion and other planning significantly improved and safeguarded the economic viability of the plant these considerations combined with a dedicated forest restructuring programme render the plant one of the most successful integrated forestry and bdh projects in vorarlberg and an important model for later adopters overall the analysis sheds some light on the role of public policy local actors and economic and other framework conditions on the market diffusion dynamics of bdh in austria

measuring energy rebound effect in the chinese economy an economic accounting approach estimating the magnitude of china s economy wide rebound effect has attracted much attention in recent years most existing studies measure the rebound effect through the additional energy consumption from technological progress however in general technological progress is not equivalent to energy efficiency improvement consequently their estimation may be misleading to overcome the limitation this paper develops an alternative approach for estimating energy rebound effect based on the proposed approach china s economy wide energy rebound effect is revisited the empirical result shows that during the period 1981 2011 the rebound effects in china are between 30 and 40 with an average value of 34 3

engaging the public on paths to sustainable energy who has to trust whom the aim is to observe how hydrogen in its wider meaning as a system innovation is understood by a cross section of the general public in three regions of the uk that have embryonic developments teesside south west wales and london focus groups were conducted in two separate phases the first involving nine groups took place between june 2005 and march 2006 the second involving seven groups took place in the period october november 2006 mainly with groups reconvened after the first phase they presented to participants user friendly information about possible scenarios for a hydrogen economy and helped the group to identify criteria that might be most salient for decision makers public awareness of hydrogen in the three case study areas both in general and in relation to local demonstration projects proved minimal with the exception of the few who had direct experience of the chemical industry in teesside and south west wales when engaged in an informed debate about hydrogen and its future possible developments participants were willing to learn about the different options and expected to be fully informed on how these would impact on their everyday lives as consumers and citizens risk perception is important but not the only factor in lay understanding of hydrogen more relevant is the extent to which the different configurations of hydrogen systems align with the public s view of the world social and environmental values needs and expectations and how participants think hydrogen energy would be embedded in their daily routines there is a lack of trust in political authorities business and industry and within and across different social groups ambivalence in how trust is placed on information providers role models and opinion formers and public unease in dealing with and making sense of conflicting information coming from expert sources the evidence is useful to inform policy both on national and local level it is especially useful in addressing public engagement as a political strategy

how large is the economy wide rebound effect abstract the size of the economy wide rebound effect is crucial for estimating the contribution that energy efficiency improvements can make to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for understanding the drivers of energy use economy wide rebound from an energy efficiency improvement includes changes in the use of energy to produce complementary and substitute goods or inputs and other flow on effects that affect energy use across the economy as well as the direct rebound due to energy users using more of an energy service that has become less costly as result of improved energy efficiency jevons first argued in 1865 that improvements in energy efficiency increase total energy use and in recent decades researchers have argued for and against this backfire hypothesis theory provides some guidance on the factors affecting rebound but does not impose much constraint on the range of possible responses historical evidence suggests that the improved energy efficiency of recent technology has not reduced energy use because consumption has shifted to more energy intensive goods and services simulations and econometric research have produced mixed results some recent general equilibrium studies find large rebound around 100 but more research is needed to confirm or refute these findings

the rebound effect microeconomic definitions limitations and extensions abstract the rebound effect results in part from an increased consumption of energy services following an improvement in the technical efficiency of delivering those services this increased consumption offsets the energy savings that may otherwise be achieved if the rebound effect is sufficiently large it may undermine the rationale for policy measures to encourage energy efficiency the nature and magnitude of the rebound effect is the focus of long running dispute with energy economics this paper brings together previous theoretical work to provide a rigorous definition of the rebound effect to clarify key conceptual issues and to highlight the potential consequences of various assumptions for empirical estimates of the effect the focus is on the direct rebound effect for a single energy service indirect and economy wide rebound effects are not discussed beginning with khazzoom s original definition of the rebound effect we expose the limitations of three simplifying assumptions on which this definition is based first we argue that capital costs form an important part of the total cost of providing energy services and that empirical studies that estimate rebound effects from variations in energy prices are prone to bias second we argue that energy efficiency should be treated as an endogenous variable and that empirical estimates of the rebound effect may need to apply a simultaneous equation model to capture the joint determination of key variables third we explore the implications of the opportunity costs of time in the production of energy services and highlight the consequences for energy use of improved time efficiency the influence of time costs on the rebound effect and the existence of a parallel rebound effect with respect to time each of these considerations serves to highlight the difficulties in obtaining reliable estimates of the rebound effect and the different factors that need to be controlled for we discuss the implications of these findings for econometric studies and argue that several existing studies may overestimate the magnitude of the effect

a practitioners guide to gravity models of international migration the use of bilateral data for the analysis of international migration is at the same time a blessing and a curse it is a blessing because the dyadic dimension of the data allows researchers to address a number of previously unanswered questions but it is also a curse for the various analytical challenges it gives rise to this paper presents the theoretical foundations of the estimation of gravity models of international migration and the main difficulties that have to be tackled in the econometric analysis such as the nature of migration data how to account for multilateral resistance to migration or endogeneity we also review some empirical evidence that has considered these issues

economic and welfare influences of an energy excise tax in jiangsu province of china a computable general equilibrium approach abstract in recent years although china s energy intensity has gradually decreased the total consumption of energy commodities has increased sharply levying an excise tax on energy commodities is one of the keys to control energy consumption this paper constructed a computable general equilibrium model to simulate levying an energy excise tax in jiangsu province which is one of china s strong economic provinces with lower endowments of energy resources the results show that the energy excise tax is beneficial for energy saving while levying energy will cause economic and welfare declines when at a level tax rate of 5 10 and 15 the loss of gdp will reach 0 27 0 66 and 1 13 respectively and the incomes of inhabitants and enterprises alike will decrease when the energy tax revenue used to compensate for the welfare losses suffered by inhabitants or enterprises there is a double dividend effect energy saving and increasing income moreover the simulation indicated that a 5 improvement of energy efficiency brings about a backfire phenomenon with an increase of 142 in energy consumption however when considering the cost of energy efficiency improvements the rebound effect will be significantly decreased policy suggestions are further recommended to help improve the energy policy in regard to reducing energy consumption

environmental kuznets curve in an open economy a bounds testing and causality analysis for tunisia the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis posits that in the early stages of economic growth environmental degradation and pollution increase however as a nation reaches a certain level of incom

a carbon saving multiplier as an alternative to rebound in considering reduced energy supply chain requirements from energy efficiency abstract a growing area of research into rebound effects from increased energy efficiency involves application of demand driven input output models to consider indirect energy consumption effects associated with re spending decisions by households with reduced energy spending requirements however there is often a lack of clarity in applied studies as to how indirect effects involving energy use and or carbon emissions in supply chains of both energy and non energy goods and services have been calculated we propose that more transparency for policymakers may be introduced by replacing consideration of what are often referred to as indirect rebound effects with a simple carbon saving multiplier metric we illustrate using results from a demand driven input output model that tracks supply chain activity at national and or global level we argue that this captures and conveys the same information on quantity adjustments in energy used in supply chain activity but does so in a manner that is more positive transparent understandable and useful for a policy audience this is achieved by focusing here via carbon emissions on the net benefits of changes in different types of energy use at both household and supply chain levels when energy efficiency improves in households

a gravity model of immigration this paper develops a gravity model of immigration tests of the model using panel data for 16 oecd countries for 1991 2000 confirm the model s high explanatory power and examples illustrate its usefulness for testing other hypothesized determinants of immigration

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

factors shaping aggregate energy intensity trend for industry energy intensity versus product mix understanding the mechanisms of change of energy consumption in industry has attracted much attention since the 1973 world oil crisis a popular line of research has been to decompose changes in the aggregate energy intensity of industry to give the relative impacts arising from energy intensity change and product mix change using a decomposition technique many empirical studies covering a large number of countries have been reported the main objective of this paper is to put together the empirical results reported in these studies in a coherent framework and identify possible systematic features of particular interest are the basic trends in this line of research the relative importance of energy intensity change and product mix change possible variations over time and between country groups in the energy impacts of these changes and inconsistencies in findings among studies an overview of the decomposition technique including its strengths weaknesses and role in industrial energy consumption studies is also presented

determinants of international student migration this paper considers what factors determine the migration of overseas students when students cross borders for higher education we utilise a gravity model for international student mobility and derive estimates for a sample of 18 countries of destination and 38 countries of origin over the period 2005 11 our results confirm that geographical distance and the presence of a common language are powerful in explaining bilateral student flows our most interesting finding is that time zone differences have a statistically significant and economically large effect in determining international student flows

empirical evidence of direct rebound effect in catalonia this paper reviews the empirical literature concerning the direct rebound effect in households it briefly analyzes the main theoretical and methodological aspects and finally estimates the magnitude of direct rebound effect for all energy services using electricity in households of catalonia spain using econometric techniques the main results show an estimated direct rebound effect of 35 in the short term and 49 in the long term the existence of a rebound effect reduces the effectiveness of energy efficiency policies

a general equilibrium view of global rebound effects abstract how do energy efficiency gains affect energy consumption the effects are generally called rebound effects in the literature previous studies have extensively focused on only part of the global economy to study rebound effects e g energy consumption by households one industry or one country however since the global economy is highly connected among countries these studies may lead to misleading conclusions if the rebound effects in the rest of the economy are significant recently saunders 2008 analyzes the demand side by taking the global economy as a whole wei 2007 also provides a general analysis by using cobb douglas production functions for the global economy the present article expands wei 2007 general analysis to explore the rebound effects from an economist s viewpoint by taking the global economy as a whole and applying general forms of production functions the analysis provides new insights related to rebound effects we highlight the role of energy supply as a determinant of rebound we show that the substitution between energy resources and other productive resources is more relevant to long term rebound we predict that long term rebound may be lower than short term rebound and we also discover that super conservation can happen in both the short term and the long term

social impacts of community renewable energy projects findings from a woodfuel case study there is much current interest in the potential of community based renewable energy projects to contribute to transition towards low carbon energy systems as well as displacing fossil fuel consumption by increasing renewable energy generation projects are expected to have a range of social impacts which may result in additional positive sustainability outcomes these include potential to increase acceptance of renewable energy developments awareness of renewable and sustainable energy technologies and issues uptake of low carbon technologies and sustainable pro environmental behaviours to date however there has been little investigation of whether and how these impacts occur this paper presents results from qualitative research investigating the social impacts of a community woodfuel project as experienced by project participants and other local stakeholders findings show projects can raise awareness of renewable energy technologies and increase uptake of renewables overall the case study project successfully changed the local social context for development of woodfuel heating reducing risk for all involved in the future development of this sector particularly in the immediate locality there was some evidence of increased engagement with wider sustainability issues but this was limited to direct participants suggesting local projects need to be supported by wider systemic change to maximise impacts

in search of environmental spillovers there is an extensive literature that examines the relationship between foreign direct investment fdi and the productivity and competitiveness of domestic firms using estimation techniques from the productivity spillover literature this paper tests for the presence of environmental spillovers from foreign firms on the basis that foreign owned firms may encourage firms in their extended supply chain to improve their environment related management practices evidence for the existence of environmental spillovers should be easier to find than productivity spillovers where firms naturally attempt to minimise intra industry knowledge leakage in this paper we show that first foreign owned firms are more likely to implement environmental management systems ems and second that the presence of foreign owned firms in those sectors that a firm supplies can encourage good environmental practice this is especially true if a firm is foreign has high absorptive capacity and operates in the presence of formal and informal networks

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

the environmental consequences of domestic and foreign investment evidence from china abstract fixed asset investment fai and foreign indirect investment fdi have important influences on economic development and environmental quality because environmental performance is related with economic development fai and fdi may affect environment indirectly through their impacts on economic growth in this study the direct and indirect effects of both fai and fdi on china s environmental quality are distinguished and separately estimated for the first time with a carefully designed framework of a two equation model because most economic activities and environmental pollutions occur in the urban areas a panel data of 112 chinese cities for the period 2002 2015 is utilized several spatial factors are also introduced to control for the potential spatial correlations in economic development and pollutant emissions the estimation results indicate that there exist apparent differences in the environmental effects of fai and fdi the direct effects of fai on so 2 emissions are significant positive and dominate the negative indirect effects by contrast the direct indirect and total effects of fdi on pollutant emissions are all negative therefore overall speaking well designed and targeted policies should be formulated to reduce the negative environmental impacts of fai and to increase the positive influences of fdi on environment

rethinking economy wide rebound measures an unbiased proposal in spite of having been first introduced in the last half of the ninetieth century the debate about the possible rebound effects from energy efficiency improvements is still an open question in the economic literature this paper contributes to the existing research on this issue proposing an unbiased measure for economy wide rebound effects the novelty of this economy wide rebound measure stems from the fact that not only actual energy savings but also potential energy savings are quantified under general equilibrium conditions our findings indicate that the use of engineering savings instead of general equilibrium potential savings downward biases economy wide rebound effects and upward biases backfire effects the discrepancies between the traditional indicator and our proposed measure are analysed in the context of the spanish economy

self selection and the earnings of immigrants this paper analyzes the way in which the earnings of the immigrant population may be expected to differ from the earnings of the native population because of the endogeneity of the decision to migrate the empirical study shows that differences in the u s earnings of immigrants with the same measured skills but from different home countries are attributable to variations in political and economic conditions in the countries of origin at the time of migration excerpt

changes in automobile energy consumption during urbanization evidence from 279 cities in china abstract automobile sector is one of the important parts of the transportation industry china s booming auto sector has also brought huge energy consumption and energy consumption in the automobile sector will continue to increase with the further development of china s economy urbanization is a complex process of modernization and it may be an important reason for the change in automobile energy consumption according to the current literature the impact of urbanization may exist as a positive or negative mechanism based on the sample of 279 cities in 31 provinces of china from 2003 to 2015 this paper analyzes how urbanization affects automobile energy consumption in the disparity of income and then it also further explores the heterogeneity of automobile energy consumption in different regions the conclusion of this paper shows that considering the income disparity the effect of urbanization on automobile energy consumption increased first and then decreased the regions with relatively low automobile energy consumption will gradually catch up with the high energy consumption regions and automobile energy consumption in each region will not converge to its own steady state

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

social responses to wind energy development in ontario the influence of health risk perceptions and associated concerns this study documents and analyzes the role of health risk perceptions and other associated concerns of wind energy development henceforth wed in ontario drawing on the risk society framework we conduct a longitudinal media content analysis to document and analyze perceptions of and responses to wed over a nine year period attention is paid to temporal variations in responses relative to ontario s green energy act 2009 henceforth gea legislation aimed at the rapid expansion of renewable energy the study reveals that the most radical forms of resistance to wed on health grounds are driven by perceived injustices in the treatment of potential at risk citizens and citizens with health concerns the gea is fuelling these perceptions of injustices in subtle and nuanced ways particularly by acting as a major confounder to health risk concerns contrary to several existing studies we problematize the use of financial incentives to foster the development of wind energy we also provide policy recommendations which include the need for increased public engagement in the wed process the importance of using third party health and environmental assessments to inform developments as well as the need for post development strategies to address ongoing community concerns

has distance died evidence from a panel gravity model the estimated coefficient of distance on the volume of trade is generally found to increase rather than decrease through time using the traditional gravity model of trade this distance puzzle proved robust to several ad hoc versions of the model using data for 1962 96 for a large sample of 130 countries the introduction of an augmented barrier to trade function removes the paradox yielding a decline in the estimate of the elasticity of trade to distance of about 11 percent over the 35 year period for the whole sample however the death of distance is shown to be largely confined to bilateral trade between rich countries with poor countries becoming marginalized

effects of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution evidence from china abstract technological progress plays an important role in combating haze pollution in the long run however existing studies often ignore the inconsistent effects on the reduction of haze brought by different types of technological progress considering the potential heterogeneity among technological progress this paper constructs a theoretical framework to analyse the impact of heterogeneous technological progress on haze pollution using annual data from 30 provinces and cities in china for the period of 2003 to 2016 a systematic gmm method is applied to empirically test the effects of neutral technological progress and biased technological progress on haze pollution the results show that first due to cost reduction effect and income effect neutral technological progress and labour saving technological progress are conducive to haze reduction while the impact of capital saving technological progress on haze pollution is insignificant second because of the energy rebound effect energy saving technological progress cannot effectively reduce haze pollution third the haze reduction effects of different types of technological progress show significant regional heterogeneity in china last in terms of the control variables strengthening environmental regulation is the only factor that can be helpful in haze reduction others intensify haze pollution

innovation and inter firm linkages new implications for policy abstract this article discusses the implications for competition innovation and learning of different forms of inter firm linkage ways to govern them different generic systems of innovation and government policy it employs a transformed theory of transactions that can deal with innovation and learning and brings in trust next to opportunism nooteboom b 1996a trust opportunism and governance a process and control model organization studies 17 6 985 1010 nooteboom b 1996b towards a learning based model of transactions in groenewegen j ed tce and beyond kluwer deventer pp 327 349 nooteboom b 1999a inter firm alliances analysis and design routledge london while trust has its limits and should not be blind it can lower transaction costs for learning and innovation it takes the resource competence perspective supported by a theory of knowledge developed in earlier publications according to this theory people perceive interpret and evaluate the world according to cognitive categories that have developed in interaction with the physical and social environment as a result people will perceive understand and evaluate differently to the extent that they have developed in different environments without interaction nooteboom b 1992 towards a dynamic theory of transactions journal of evolutionary economics 2 281 299 nooteboom 1999a this theory yields the notion of external economy of cognitive scope people and firms need outside sources of cognition and competence to complement their own that is the fundamental reason why inter firm linkages are important especially for innovation in order to produce high added value and novelty by utilizing the opportunities of complementary competencies firms need to make relation specific investments which creates risks of hold up and spill over building on earlier work the article identifies different instruments for the control of those risks nooteboom 1996a nooteboom 1996b nooteboom et al 1997 effects of trust and governance on relational risk academy of management journal 40 2 308 338 nooteboom 1999a it identifies two generic kinds of innovation systems in terms of the mix of instruments for relational governance and discusses their merits and flaws with respect to quality of products diffusion incremental and radical innovation one is close to practices in continental europe and japan another is close to anglo american practice there is a certain tendency for the first to gravitate to the second the article warns about the dangers involved and explores a possible third way

the effect of foreign direct investment and stock market growth on clean energy use across a panel of emerging market economies this study investigates the impact of both fdi inflows and stock market developments on clean energy use across 20 emerging market economies spanning the period 1991 2012 it accounts for cross sectional dependence and heterogeneity in the analysis and employs robust panel econometric techniques the empirical results on long run elasticities display that economic output fdi inflows and stock market developments have all a significant positive impact on clean energy consumption finally the results on heterogeneous panel non causality tests indicate the presence of unidirectional causality running from fdi to clean energy consumption in the short run for robustness purposes the paper also estimates long run elasticities for individual countries with the findings documenting that both fdi inflows and stock market developments have a considerable positive impact on clean energy uses the findings urge that both policy makers and governments in these emerging market economies should initiate effective public private partnership investments in clean energy projects by providing lucrative incentives which in turn will encourage both domestic and foreign investors to invest more in clean energy projects and eventually moving these economies towards sustainable economic growth

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

how robust are estimates of the rebound effect of energy efficiency improvements a sensitivity analysis of consumer heterogeneity and elasticities abstract economy wide rebound effects may undermine climate policies relying on energy efficiency improvements however available rebound estimates diverge widely we illustrate the crucial role of model assumptions of household heterogeneity and elasticities a computable general equilibrium model of the austrian economy incorporates multiple household groups with heterogeneous preferences and analyzes how improving efficiency by 10 affects household fossil fuel consumption in the base model economy wide rebound is 65 different household groups show direct rebound of 8 12 thus economy wide rebound is mainly advanced by indirect rebound a sensitivity analysis using monte carlo simulation varies elasticities between household groups namely substitutability between material and energy goods and between different energy goods in 160 simulation runs the economy wide rebound emerges as rather robust by contrast direct rebound varies widely among household groups and attains 30 where reciprocal feedback between groups builds up in the base model a fossil fuel tax rate of 43 neutralizes the economy wide rebound when elasticities in 180 simulation runs are varied this tax rate spans from 15 to 80 thus rebound estimates and derived policy advice such as specific rates and numbers should be treated with great caution unless elasticity parameters are reliable and account for heterogeneous consumer preferences

co2 emissions energy consumption economic and population growth in malaysia abstract this study investigates the dynamic impacts of gdp growth energy consumption and population growth on co2 emissions using econometric approaches for malaysia empirical results from ardl bounds testing approach show that over the period of 1970 1980 per capita co2 emissions decreased with increasing per capita gdp economic growth however from 1980 to 2009 per capita co2 emissions increased sharply with a further increase of per capita gdp this is also supported by the dynamic ordinary least squared dols and the sasabuchi lind mehlum u slm u test tests consequently the hypothesis of the ekc is not valid in malaysia during the study period the results also demonstrate that both per capita energy consumption and per capita gdp has a long term positive impacts with per capita carbon emissions but population growth rate has no significant impacts on per capita co2 emission however the study suggests that in the long run economic growth may have an adverse effect on the co2 emissions in malaysia thus significant transformation of low carbon technologies such as renewable energy and energy efficiency could contribute to reduce the emissions and sustain the long run economic growth

a review of optimal energy policy instruments on industrial energy efficiency programs rebound effects and government policies abstract industrial energy efficiency programs ieeps are defined as one of the most popular government policies that aim to reduce energy consumption in industrial energy intensive sectors in this paper we review and classify the most important academic studies that have addressed the environmental and economic aspects of ieeps using a systematic review the classification of energy policy instruments has been developed based on an analytical approach we discuss also the outputs benefits and barriers of ieeps besides a comprehensive argument about the restrictive policies on the rebound effects made after the implementation of these programs the results disclose that china usa and sweden are the most addressed countries on ieeps and their applications in this regard incentive energy policies e g voluntary agreements and subsidies have been applied more than others in the last decade furthermore most of the reviewed studies emphasize energy price reform as an effective practical policy while a few analytical methods can be seen to help policy makers determine the optimal levels of decision variables finally according to the state of the art analysis the authors provide some novel recommendations to improve the performance of ieeps using some restrictive policies on the negative impacts of rebound effects

is technological change biased toward energy a multi sectoral analysis for the french economy abstract since the adoption and implementation of new technologies has an important influence on the structure and performance of the economy in both developed and developing countries many research papers are devoted to the technology economy nexus motivated by the fact that the impact of technical progress on the demand for different production factors may vary depending on the bias of the technological change in this paper by estimating a translog cost share system and using state space modeling technique we investigate to what extent the direction of technical change is biased toward energy and away from other factors by applying this methodology to the french economy for the period 1978 2006 the obtained results suggest that first technical change has a non neutral impact on factor demands second capital saving technical progress is present in the majority of the sectors studied third energy demand has increased in all sectors but electricity and gas these findings may have important policy implications for environmental and energy issues in france

trade technology and the environment does access to technology promote environmental regulation abstract focusing specifically on regulation of coal fired power plants we examine how technological innovation by early adopters influences the timing of new environmental regulation in non innovating countries we build a general equilibrium model of an open economy to identify the political economy determinants of regulation with a newly created dataset of so 2 and no x regulations for coal fired power plants and a patent based measure of the technology frontier we estimate the determinants of environmental regulation diffusion our findings support the hypothesis that international economic integration eases access to environmentally friendly technologies and leads to earlier adoption ceteris paribus of regulation in non innovating countries however we also find evidence that domestic trade protection promotes earlier adoption allowing shifts of regulatory costs to domestic consumers furthermore international market power permits large countries to shift costs to foreign consumers other political economy factors such as the quality of domestic coal are also important determinants

water use and economic growth reconsidering the environmental kuznets curve relationship abstract predictions of national and global water use have been criticized for being inaccurate and for not taking into consideration economic development of the little research that does address water use as a function of economic development results are inconsistent but much claims to find clear evidence of an environmental kuznets curves ekc or inverted u type relationship this research attempts to elucidate the relationship between income growth and freshwater use by a evaluating a variety of cross sectional and panel datasets on water withdrawals and consumptive use b employing both traditional least squares and non parametric regression analysis the latter of which offers the advantage of not assuming a given functional form c testing both per capita and total water use and d comparing water withdrawals to consumptive use the research finds some support for the existence of an ekc but results are highly dependent on choice of datasets and statistical technique results are also sector specific and ekc curves prove to be poor indicators of individual country behavior as such the study points to limitations of ekcs in terms of water use policy and planning

issues of social acceptance on biofuel development alongside with biofuel development social acceptance issues have been underestimated while social acceptance can emerge as powerful barrier for biofuel development this article provides discussion on social acceptance in biofuel context an acceptance framework based on life cycle biofuel production had been referred for a better understanding on social acceptance issues malaysia has been referred for the discussion as the country has faced with acceptance issue in their biofuel program the discussion point out different societal groups will demand specific consideration for either support or oppose biofuel this paper concludes that biofuel development will be constraint if social acceptance issues remain neglect

the spillovers of foreign direct investment and the convergence of energy intensity abstract the imbalance and insufficiency of china s regional economic development has led to huge differences in regional energy efficiency reducing the differences in regional energy efficiency has become an urgent energy issue in china the constant absorption of foreign direct investment fdi has brought advanced technologies to china which has an important impact on china s energy efficiency to explore whether fdi can reduce regional energy efficiency differences this paper investigates the existence of energy intensity convergence while incorporating foreign direct investment fdi since existing research on regional energy intensity convergence lacks of consideration of the data spatial dependence we focus on spatial econometric model to test energy intensity convergence we use panel data of 30 provinces in china over the period of 2005 2014 to test energy intensity convergence by convergence model the empirical results show that considering the spatial dependence of the data fdi can promote the formation of conditional energy intensity convergence further analysis found that the spillover effect of fdi plays an important role in this formation in addition the convergence speed accelerates after considering the spatial dependence finally the spillover effect of fdi which is global inhibits the declining speed of energy intensity during the research period the scale effect of fdi and energy rebound effect plays an important role in the effect of fdi on energy intensity these results show that guiding foreign investment more reasonably in each province in china can make contributions to the reduction of energy efficiency differences

factor substitution and factor augmenting technical progress in the united states a normalized supply side system approach abstract using a normalized ces function with factor augmenting technical progress we estimate a supply side system of the u s economy from 1953 to 1998 avoiding potential estimation biases that

what are community energy companies trying to accomplish an empirical investigation of investment motives in the german case community energy has become an increasingly important issue in academia and in energy policy circles worldwide citizens jointly investing in and operating renewable energy installations have played an essential role in countries such as germany or denmark building on and extending previous studies we collect survey data on investment motives for a stratified random sample of german community energy companies structural variables are selected using a socio ecological technical systems framework this study aims to identify differences within the community energy sector to better understand investment behaviour and the effects of policy changes despite the small sample coverage at the individual member level the preliminary results of this study suggest that first community energy forms a specific type of social investment and that second there are significant differences between community energy companies especially regarding the assessment of the return motive this motive plays a more prominent role in limited partnerships than in cooperatives and for community wind than for companies focusing on solar or biomass while these and other factors are highly interrelated our data indicate that the social setting and geographical and climatic conditions are the critical ones here these findings may guide further research

factorial decomposition of co2 emissions a generalized divisia index approach abstract this paper introduces a novel approach to estimating the impact of the major factors driving co 2 emissions gdp energy consumption population their carbon intensities and other related indicators that may be chosen arbitrarily the suggested approach is based on the generalization of the divisia index to interconnected factors the approach also extends the kaya identity by explicitly including gross domestic product and energy consumption a computer program in r language aimed at automating the calculations is supplied factorial analysis of the united states and china s co 2 emissions is provided as an example of application

the impact of foreign direct investment on environmental quality a bounds testing and causality analysis for turkey abstract this study aims to investigate the impact of foreign direct investment fdi together with gross domestic product gdp the square of gdp and energy consumption on carbon dioxide co2 emissions in turkey over the period 1974 2010 we employ both the bounds test approach which has superior properties especially in small samples and the hatemi j test which takes structural breaks into consideration in the co integration analysis due to the co integration relationship between co2 emissions and other variables the autoregressive distributed lag ardl model is used in order to investigate short and long run elasticity between the variables the long run coefficients of the ardl model indicate that the effect of fdi on co2 emissions is positive but relatively small while the effects of the gdp and energy consumption on co2 emissions are quite considerable moreover the short run coefficients obtained by the error correction model ecm are found to be similar to those of the long run model the findings support the validity of the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis in both time horizons the vector ecm based granger causality test is also applied to investigate the causal link the causality test results indicate the existence of a causality running from all explanatory variables to co2 emissions in the long run overall the findings suggest that turkey should promote energy efficiency with sustainable growth and encourage more fdi inflows particularly in technology intensive and environment friendly industries to improve environmental quality

estimating energy augmenting technological change in developing country industries assumptions regarding the magnitude and direction of energy related technological change have long been recognized as critical determinants of the outputs and policy conclusions derived from integrated assessment models particularly in the case of developing countries however empirical analysis of technological change has lagged behind simulation modeling this paper presents estimates of sectoral productivity trends and energy augmenting technological change for several energy intensive industries in india and south korea and for comparison the united states the key findings are substantial heterogeneity among both industries and countries and a number of cases of declining energy efficiency the results are subject to certain technical qualifications both in regards to the methodology and to the direct comparison to integrated assessment parameterizations nevertheless they highlight the importance of closer attention to the empirical basis for common modeling assumptions

what drives the energy saving role of fdi and industrialization in east africa abstract analysis of the unconditional impacts of foreign direct inflows fdis and industrialization on energy intensity does not show the hidden roles of some economic conditions such as income and trade openness in this study we focused on the conditional impacts of fdis and industrialization on energy productivity using a panel data consisting of thirteen 13 east african countries covering 1980 2011 the baseline result shows that higher income and a well integrated economy are pro energy productive but fdis and intense industrialization are anti energy productive in the sub region this result remains robust even when we exclude the high income group and control for income group effects income significantly promotes energy productivity more in low income group than middle income group intense industrialization and fdis significantly decreases energy productivity only in low income countries trade openness significantly promotes energy productivity only in middle income group we have shown that fdis and income intense industrialization and fdis and intense industrialization and globalization are complementary forces that promote energy productivity in east africa but this is more evident for the middle income group than the low income group in the sub region based on the result we recommend a quadruplet programme called the growth industrial foreign investment and trade programme giftp last our result suggests that unconditional analysis of energy productivity should not be seen as an end in itself but a basis for further analysis