diffusion of green power products in switzerland abstract as in many other european countries green electricity is an emerging product in switzerland as well although the market is yet to be liberalised more than 100 of the 1200 swiss electric utilities offer some sort of green electricity product to their customers successful companies like the municipal utilities of the cities of zurich and berne have reached customer response rates of up to 4 while still maintaining cost based pricing i e charging their customers price premiums of 400 700 per kwh while most of the products still rely on mainly photovoltaics some utilities have started to introduce mixed green electricity products also including wind power with a share of 60 in the swiss generation mix hydropower s role in the green electricity mix was also an issue to emerge causing controversial debate while being renewable hydropower is not considered environmentally benign by all the stakeholders and unlike new renewables solar wind biomass there is little room for new hydropower generation facilities in switzerland the green electricity labelling scheme naturemade tackles that issue the labelling organisation has evolved from a process with broad stakeholder involvement which included environmental ngos scientific institutions green electricity providers renewable energy advocates government bodies and consumer organisations the analysis in this paper is based on a diffusion theory framework it identifies and characterises different phases of past and future market development and stresses the importance of eco labelling as a tool to facilitate the transition from niche to mass market finally we also discuss conclusions that can be drawn from the swiss case towards market development and labelling on a european level

the behavior of unemployment durations over the cycle this paper examines the relationship between unemployment durations and cyclical movements in unemployment using an employment calendar constructed from recent questions in the panel study of income dynamics we find that unemployment durations increase with the unemployment rate with the strongest effects for individuals with the longest elapsed durations copyright 1990 by mit press

undesired reinforcement of harmful self evident truths concerning the implementation of wind power abstract this viewpoint draws attention to a lingering simplistic and faulty interpretation of the complex phenomenon of acceptance of renewables and their implementation in concrete projects by all relevant actors namely the backyard theory during the last decade research that investigated nimby has provided support to disprove the two prime hypotheses proximity and decreasing property value the current mainstream trend in academic circles is clearly towards abandoning nimby explanations however in practice among developers and policymakers nimby thinking still prevails unfortunately there is also some academic writing that persists in recycling the backyard theory despite ample research to the contrary thus feeding this faulty interpretation of implementation problems a recent review of the state of the art of wind power implementation is taken as an example it presents nimby as a common sense self evident truth while to support this explanation it cites publications that actually refute this view and instead support the mainstream move towards abandoning nimby thinking this shift is important because further academic support for this concept would serve to hinder rapid deployment of wind power and also other renewables

the source of the new canadian job stability patterns this paper explores the causes of the recent change in the canadian job stability patterns using the labour force survey master files 1977 2008 i find that what was previously seen as a cyclical increase in job stability is actually a secular change results indicate that the ageing of the workforce the increased educational attainment and the increased labour force attachment of women play important roles in explaining the aggregate job stability patterns that emerge for education the declining importance of low educated workers is the key and not the rising importance of workers with university degrees with respect to gender the evidence points towards a cohortbased explanation surprisingly the changing industry structure has little explanatory powers finally only the rising educational attainment matters for newer jobs leaving a large part of the increase still unexplained

a consumption based theory of the environmental kuznets curve abstract most theories about the inverted u relationship between pollution and income termed the environmental kuznets curve ekc are production side theories emphasizing pollution and abatement technologies production side theories are implicitly based on the assumption of low factor mobility and the absence of pollution as a variable in the utility function both assumptions are called into question by the empirical evidence of ekcs for i pollutants that are long lived and not easily shiftable and ii regional cross sections with free labor mobility hazardous waste sites are a prime example this paper develops a stylized model of the ekc based on perfect mobility of households and labor it represents the first attempt at developing a consumption side model of the ekc

institutions in european and asian energy markets a methodological overview abstract this article introduces a methodological framework to study institutions in european and asian energy markets with a comparative case study on the eu and east asia a distinction is made between informal and three types of formal institutions and their transaction cost reducing order creating and ecological climatic functions the operation of energy markets is explained through the structure of institutions their types and functions it is found that order creating institutions guarantee enough stability mutual trust and solidarity among eu member states to support the competitive markets institution and supranational formal institutions as the underpinnings of trade in the internal energy market which nevertheless retains some corporatist features in the east asian markets the nature of order creating institutions sovereignty energy diplomacy and great power management prevents the emergence of supranational formal institutions and a shared idea of trade the prevailing structure has a large number of sub regional organisations with overlapping tasks and few powers in both markets the functions of institutions signify more than their number transaction cost reducing institutions are dependent on order creating institutions while both of these functions are better realised on the regional level than ecological climatic functions ultimately informal institutions are most influential

social acceptance of renewable energy innovation an introduction to the concept this paper introduces the special issue on social acceptance of renewable energy innovation it is a collection of best papers presented at an international research conference held in tramelan switzerland in february 2006 while there are ambitious government targets to increase the share of renewable energy in many countries it is increasingly recognized that social acceptance may be a constraining factor in achieving this target this is particularly apparent in the case of wind energy which has become a subject of contested debates in several countries largely due to its visual impact on landscapes this paper introduces three dimensions of social acceptance namely socio political community and market acceptance factors influencing socio political and community acceptance are increasingly recognized as being important for understanding the apparent contradictions between general public support for renewable energy innovation and the difficult realization of specific projects the third dimension market acceptance has received less attention so far and provides opportunities for further research particularly from management scholars

heterogeneity and unemployment dynamics many previous articles have studied the contribution of inflows and outflows to the cyclical variation in unemployment but ignored the critical role of unobserved heterogeneity across workers thi

internal migration and the environmental kuznets curve for us hazardous waste sites abstract in the recent special issue of ecological economics devoted to the environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis rothman speculates that what appear to be improvements in environmental quality may in reality be indicators of increased ability of consumers in wealthy nations to distance themselves from the environmental degradation associated with their consumption rothman d 1998 environmental kuznets curves real progress or passing the buck a case for consumption based approaches ecol econ 25 178 consistent with rothman s general hypothesis of distancing as a possible source of ekc results this empirical study advances and tests a line of argument in which internal migration plays a central explanatory role for an observed ekc for us hazardous waste sites two specific hypotheses tested are i proximity to hazardous waste site build up emerges as a factor in the migration decisions of individuals as per capita income increases beyond a threshold level and ii the level of income at which the ekc turns downwards is equal to the threshold level of income in i results provide evidence that migration is a contributing factor to the observed ekc

keep it local and fish friendly social acceptance of hydropower projects in switzerland hydropower is the largest source of renewable electricity in the world but despite being a mature and clean energy technology it has also been the subject of ecological and social conflict literature suggests that the social acceptance of renewable energy can be increased by respecting procedural justice fair participatory planning processes and distributional justice fairly allocating costs and benefits however empirical evidence about how justice considerations are related to the expansion of hydropower is scarce pre existing studies being mostly qualitative in nature we contribute to filling the gap in the current literature by describing in this paper how choice experiments with 1004 swiss residents were undertaken to explore the influence of procedural and distributional justice on acceptance relative to other attributes of hydropower projects we find that while considerations about justice do play a role in decisions to accept respondents in switzerland care most about ecological impacts and secondly about local ownership

small streams diverse sources who invests in renewable energy in finland during the financial downturn this article addresses the investment gap in renewable energy sources identified by several authors examining the case of a country finland which introduced policy measures to diversify its renewable energy portfolio we analyse the development of investments in renewable heat and power in response to new policy measures and contextual factors during the downturn period 2009 2013 we investigate investor heterogeneity i e the diversity of logics employed by different types of res investors in spite of a severe financial recession we find an emergence of new sources of investment among these new investor types we find diversity in investment drivers and available options these include investors mobilized by the feed in tariff to seek profitable targets and investors such as real estate owners investing in heat pumps for their own use and benefiting from low interest rates we find that the diversification of investors supports the diversification in res sources and brings in new investors undeterred by the financial downturn our findings imply that policy makers should recognize that the responses to distinct incentives and pressures vary by investor types this also means that a mix of policies is required to maximize the contribution of different sectors to filling the renewable energy investment gap

screening and labor market flows in a model with heterogeneous workers we construct a monetary model in which workers are heterogeneous and productivity is worker specific resulting in time varying deviations between the average productivity of employed and unemployed workers we assume the worker specific component of productivity which we label as the worker s efficiency level is unobservable ex ante by firms and job search is nondirected by interviewing an unemployed worker firms can observe the worker s efficiency level workers with low overall productivity may be interviewed but not hired as firms screen these workers out during the interview process we show that screening amplifies the volatility of the exit rate from unemployment capturing the idea that firms become more selective in a recession reducing the vacancy yield relative to a model with homogeneous levels of efficiency following a negative productivity shock the

business cycles and compositional variation in u s unemployment in this article we study u s unemployment dynamics using grouped unemployment data from the current population survey over the period 1968 1992 we estimate a model that traces variation in these unemployment data both over time and between demographic groups back to the underlying variation in the inflow and the outflow in turn we model the outflow as a transition process in which we allow the exit probabilities to depend on calendar time duration and demographic group we use the estimation results to provide a decomposition of aggregate u s unemployment dynamics in various incidence and duration components

evaluating options for the future energy mix of japan after the fukushima nuclear crisis the fukushima nuclear accident in march 2011 has increased social and political reluctance to embrace nuclear power in japan and elsewhere the japanese government has thus been considering four possible future energy mixes including a nuclear free pathway and three others with 10 35 nuclear supply coupled with a larger proportion of renewable energy and fossil fuels to replace nuclear here we use multi criteria decision making analysis mcdma to assess the potential negative economic levelised cost of electricity and energy security environmental greenhouse gas emissions land transformation water consumption heated water discharge air pollution radioactive waste and solid waste and social safety issues impacts of the four proposed pathways to determine which scenario most holistically minimises adverse future outcomes the nuclear free pathway has the highest overall potential for adverse outcomes score 2 49 out of 3 and the 35 nuclear power supply option yielding the lowest negative impact score 0 74 without weightings despite some sensitivity to the choice of criterion weights our analyses demonstrate clearly that from an empirical perspective a nuclear free pathway for japan is the worst option to pursue we recommend that mcdma methodology we used for japan can be applied to other countries to evaluate future electricity generation scenarios

exploring the challenges of energy and resources network governance while a growing amount of literature has recently emerged describing network governance less attention has been paid to evaluating the actual performance of networks our paper looks at the challenges facing network governance for natural resources primarily logging and forestry and energy primarily renewable energy and energy efficiency in asia the paper investigates what network governance is and what types of challenges networks have to tackle it then develops a qualitative analytical framework to evaluate the effectiveness of networks consisting of five criteria 1 clarity of roles and objectives among members 2 having strong independent continual sources of funding 3 institutional formality having a permanent secretariat budget full time staff etc 4 efficacy ability to accomplish its mission and goals at the least possible cost and 5 level of interdependency among members finally we apply this framework to four case studies the association of southeast asian nations asean centre for energy renewable energy and energy efficiency partnership reeep asean regional knowledge network on forests and climate change fcc and asean regional knowledge network on forest law enforcement and governance fleg these cases illustrate effective or ineffective environmental and energy networks and the factors that are associated with network governance

is small beautiful a multicriteria assessment of small scale energy technology applications in local governments in its 2003 white paper the uk government set ambitious renewable energy targets local governments and households have an increasing role in the overall energy system as consumers suppliers of smaller scale applications and citizens discussing energy projects in this paper we consider if small scale or large scale approaches to renewable energy provision can achieve energy targets in the most socially economically and environmentally see effective way we take a local case study of renewable energy provision in the metropolitan borough of kirklees in yorkshire uk and apply a multi criteria decision analysis methodology to compare the small scale schemes implemented in kirklees with large scale alternatives the results indicate that small scale schemes are the most see effective despite large scale schemes being more financially viable the selection of the criteria on which the alternatives are assessed and the assigned weights for each criterion are of crucial importance it is thus very important to include the relevant stakeholders to elicit this information

paying for permanence an economic analysis of epa s cleanup decisions at superfund sites we analyze epa s cleanup decisions at over 100 superfund sites and examine whether and how epa trades off the cost against the permanence of cleanup epa s decisions reveal both a preference for permanent solutions and an aversion to cost for example epa prefers incinerating soils to isolating and containing them in place but not at any price at larger sites epa appears willing to accept additional costs of as much as 40 million to incinerate with regard to environmental equity we find little evidence that epa s cost permanence tradeoff is affected by socioeconomic characteristics in the communities surrounding the sites

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

revealed preferences of an international trade and environment institution international cooperation on environmental problems is examined through the factors influencing anorthamerican free trade agreement nafta institution s decisions over environmental problems along the u s mexico border an econometric study relates the approval by the nafta institution of environmental improvement projects to observed attributes of the proposed projects results show strong preference for projects solving transboundary wastewater pollution and the polluter pays principle the institution does not prefer projects that generate revenues nor minimize costs bi national grants and loans dominate the funding for approved projects implying both countries pay more u s proj

who formulates renewable energy policy a swedish example a broad participation by stakeholders and an extensive reliance on expert advice are often seen as preconditions for a legitimate and successfully implemented renewable energy policy however we have lacked systematic data for testing this argument this article s contribution is to examine the actors who take part in the making of swedish energy policy with the help of data on the composition of various committees of inquiry over the last twenty years 1988 2009 swedish renewable energy policy is often characterised with words like pioneering and forerunner suggesting that the policy making process in this area engages many different experts and stakeholders our data give only some support to this argument results point to a noteworthy predominance of politicians civil servants and representatives of state agencies within the policy process producers of uranium and fossils based energy have been engaged more often than producers of renewable energy experts have played a prominent role but this is mostly due to the participation of expert bureaucrats rather than of scientists the study suggests that a better understanding of the making of energy policy both in sweden and elsewhere requires greater attention to the networks and role of various state employees

household energy and climate mitigation policies investigating energy practices in the housing sector abstract one central aim of climate change mitigation in the european union is to reduce energy consumption in the housing sector in order to ensure effectiveness of policies targeting household energy conservation it is important to investigate existing energy practices of different social groups this article describes and explains energy practices in three leading states in environmental politics technological innovation and support for renewable energy production denmark austria and the united kingdom based on a longitudinal analysis of housing utility costs from the european community statistics on income and living conditions we show that income plays a central role in households energy practices while high income households have higher overall energy consumption low income groups spend a larger share of their income on utility costs the variation of energy consumption across income groups is related to household characteristics characteristics of the dwellings and cross national differences in the housing sector

the ins and outs of unemployment in canada 1976 2008 this paper studies the flows into and out of unemployment in canada at an aggregate and a number of disaggregated levels i find that inflows into unemployment are countercyclical and outflows are procyclical at an aggregate level changes in the rate at which individuals leave unemployment account for most of the changes in unemployment rates in canada between 1976 and 2008 however flows into unemployment matter more at some disaggregated levels there are also some differences in the contributions of flows into and out of unemployment to changes in unemployment rates across the 1981 82 and 1990 92 recessions ce texte etudie les entrees et sorties du chomage au canada au niveau agrege et a un certain nombre de niveaux de desagregation on decouvre que les entrees en chomage sont contre cycliques et les sorties pro cycliques au niveau agrege les changements dans le taux de sorties du chomage expliquent le gros des changements dans les taux de chomage au canada entre 1976 et 2008 cependant les flux a l entree sont plus importants a certains niveaux de desagregation on note aussi des differences dans la contribution des flux a l entree et a la sortie du chomage aux changements dans les taux de chomage au cours des recessions de 1981 82 et de 1990 92

going beyond best technology and lowest price on renewable energy investors preference for service driven business models abstract renewable energy is becoming increasingly important for economies in many countries but still in an emerging industry renewable energy requires supportive energy policy helping firms to develop and protect competitive advantages in global competition as a guideline for designing such policy we consult well informed stakeholders within the renewable energy industry investors their preferences serve as explorative indicator for assessing which business models might succeed in competition to contribute to only limited research on renewable energy investors preferences we ask which business models investment managers for renewable energy prefer to invest in we report from an explorative study of 380 choices of renewable energy investment managers based on the stated preferences we modelled three generic business models to calculate the share of investors preferences we find exiting evidence a customer intimacy business model that proposes best services is much more preferred by investors than business models that propose lowest price or best technology policy makers can use those insights for designing policy that supports service driven business models for renewable energy with a scope on customer needs rather than technology or price additionally we state important implications for renewable energy entrepreneurs managers and research

measuring the duration of unemployment spells an understanding of the duration of unemployment spells is important for at least two reasons first the length of time spent unemployed has a direct bearing on individual welfare few people would feel so threatened by unemployment if they were certain it would only last a few weeks second changes in the duration of unemployment spells are an important influence on the aggregate unemployment rate the persistence of high unemployment after a recession and well into recovery and expansion is a puzzle to many one that requires an appreciation of changes in the incidence and duration of unemployment if it is to be solved the research summarized in this paper derives a measure of the complete length of unemployment spells in canada and analyzes how it changes over the business cycle the cyclical movement of the average complete duration of unemployment contrasts sharply with that of the average incomplete duration which is regularly published by statistics canada the first section of the paper discusses these differences by highlighting aggregate developments during the last two recessions while the second section outlines the methodology used and some of the results of comparing the experience during the recession of the early 1990s with that during the early 1980s

estimating labour market transitions and continuations using repeated cross sectional data abstract this paper proposes a population cohort approach for estimating labour market continuations or transitions using repeated cross sectional data this approach allows for the construction of consistent standard errors that account for the full variability of cross sectional data

community perspectives of wind energy in australia the application of a justice and community fairness framework to increase social acceptance decisions concerning the siting of infrastructure developments or the use of natural resources have the potential to damage a community s social well being if the outcomes are perceived to be unfair justice is accepted as central to the well functioning of society with fairness being an expectation in day to day interactions outcomes that are perceived to be unfair can result in protests damaged relationships and divided communities particularly when decisions are made which benefit some sections of the community at the perceived expense of others through empirical research using a wind farm pilot study community perceptions of a community consultation process are explored using procedural justice principles to evaluate fairness findings from the pilot study indicate that perceptions of fairness do influence how people perceive the legitimacy of the outcome and that a fairer process will increase acceptance of the outcome a key research finding was that different sections of a community are likely to be influenced by different aspects of justice namely by outcome fairness outcome favourability and process fairness based on this finding a community fairness framework was developed which has potential application in community consultation to increase social acceptance of the outcome

does hazardous waste matter evidence from the housing market and the superfund program this paper uses the housing market to develop estimates of the local welfare impacts of superfund sponsored cleanups of hazardous waste sites we show that if consumers value the cleanups then the hedonic model predicts that they will lead to increases in local housing prices and new home construction as well as the migration of individuals that place a high value on environmental quality to the areas near the improved sites we compare housing market outcomes in the areas surrounding the first 400 hazardous waste sites chosen for superfund cleanups to the areas surrounding the 290 sites that narrowly missed qualifying for these cleanups we find that superfund cleanups are associated with economically small and statistically insignificant changes in residential property values property rental rates housing supply total population and types of individuals living near the sites these findings are robust to a series of specification checks including the application of a regression discontinuity design based on knowledge of the selection rule overall the preferred estimates suggest that the local benefits of superfund cleanups are small and appear to be substantially lower than the 43 million mean cost of superfund cleanups

bureaucratic discretion or congressional control regulatory policymaking by the federal trade commission this paper extends stigler and peltzman s approach to regulation by incorporating a legislature the model yields comparative statics results and hence testable implications the paper then tests between two opposing approaches about regulatory agency behavior the first assumes agencies operate independently of the legislature and hence exercise discretion the second assumes that congress controls agency decisions the recent behavior of the federal trade commission provides the empirical setting substantial evidence is found for the specific predictions of the model including the hypothesis of systematic congressional influence over ftc decisions

a participatory approach to sustainable energy strategy development in a carbon intensive jurisdiction the case of nova scotia the need for governments to reduce the exposure of energy consumers to future increases in fossil fuel prices places urgent pressure on policy makers to deliver fundamental transformations in energy strategies particularly in jurisdictions with high dependency on fossil fuel sources dorian et al 2006 this transformation is unlikely without a high level of stakeholder engagement in the policy development process this paper describes two policy development processes recently undertaken in nova scotia in which the inclusion of stakeholder views was central to the approach the first delivered a new institutional framework for electricity energy efficiency involving the inception of an independent performance based administrator the second required the delivery of a strategy to significantly increase renewable energy generation in the province it involved recommendations for changes in institutional arrangements financial incentives and technological options this process was followed by new commitments to renewable energy developments new infrastructure for the importation of hydro electricity and the announcement of fits for ocean energy in both cases recommendations were made by an independent academic institution and the government responded directly to a majority of recommendations the paper concludes with a discussion of lessons learned and the implications for future energy policy making in carbon intensive jurisdictions

a review of international green power markets recent experience trends and market drivers green power marketing the act of differentially selling electricity generated wholly or in part from renewable sources has emerged in more than a dozen countries around the world almost two million customers worldwide buy green power today this paper reviews green power marketing activity in australia canada japan the us and in a number of countries in europe to gain an understanding of consumer demand for electricity generated from renewable sources it also examines key factors that influence market penetration of green power products such as product designs pricing incentives marketing strategies policies and product certification 2002 elsevier science ltd all rights reserved

public attitudes to biofuel use in aviation evidence from an emerging tourist market abstract aviation generates substantial carbon footprint which is projected to increase due to the continuous growth in international tourism especially in emerging markets this carbon footprint should be mitigated to bring the tourism industry towards its sustainability goals within a portfolio of prospective carbon mitigation measures biofuels represent a technological innovation which holds substantial potential to reduce the carbon significance of aviation the success of technological innovations often depends on public opinion the role of public opinion is particularly relevant in the aviation context where safety considerations of technological innovations may determine consumer choice focusing on poland an emerging tourist market in europe this study explored public opinion on biofuel use in aviation it found that public understanding of the perspectives of aviation biofuel technology including its safety is limited and needs to be reinforced public distrust in the national institutions of power and the industry sector representatives in poland calls for educational and public awareness raising campaigns to be delivered by the third sector organisations

environmental policy convergence the impact of international harmonization transnational communication and regulatory competition in recent years there is growing interest in the study of cross national policy convergence yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon do we observe convergence of policies at all under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart in this article we address this research deficit from a theoretical perspective we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors namely international harmonization transnational communication and regulatory competition in empirical terms we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000 we find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation this development is mainly caused by international harmonization and to a considerable degree also by transnational communication whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role

unemployment insurance and unemployment spells this paper tests the effects of the level and length of unemployment insurance benefits on unemployment durations the paper particularly studies individual behavior during the weeks just prior to when benefits lapse higher unemployment insurance benefits are found to have a strong negative effect on the probability of leaving unemployment however the probability of leaving unemployment rises dramatically just prior to when benefits lapse individual data are used with accurate information of spell durations and the level and length of benefits the semiparametric estimation techniques used in the paper yield more plausible estimates than conventional approaches and provide useful diagnostics copyright 1990 by the econometric society

duration dependence in the exit rate out of unemployment in belgium is it true or spurious on the basis of aggregate data for the early 1990s we analyse the determinants of unemployment duration for laid off male workers in wallonia belgium our results indicate that if ranking in recruitment occurs the standard mixed proportional hazard specification can be too restrictive leading to an overstatement of the extent of true negative duration dependence we conclude that negative duration dependence is largely spurious we also decompose the time variation of the hazard in unobserved compositional and direct cyclical and seasonal effects we find counter cyclical variation in the quality of young workers but none for the prime aged copyright c 2004 john wiley sons ltd

carbon market risks and rewards firm perceptions of cdm investment decisions in brazil and india the carbon market experiences of brazil and india represent policy success stories under several criteria a careful evaluation however reveals challenges to market development that should be addressed in order to make the rollout of a post 2012 cdm more effective we conducted firm level interviews covering 82 cdm plants in the sugar and cement sectors in brazil and india focusing on how individual managers understood the potential benefits and risks of undertaking clean development mechanism cdm investments our results indicate that the cdm operates in a far more complex way in practice than that of simply adding a marginal increment to a project s internal rate of return our results indicate the following first although anticipated revenue played a central role in most managers decisions to pursue cdm investments there was no standard practice to account for financial benefits of cdm investments second some managers identified non financial reputational factors as their primary motivation for pursuing cdm projects and third under fluctuating regulatory regimes with real immediate costs and uncertain cdm revenue managers favored projects that often did not require carbon revenue to be viable the post 2012 cdm architecture can benefit from incorporating these insights and in particular reassess goals for strict additionality and mechanisms for achieving it

analysis of factors affecting a shift in a local energy system towards 100 renewable energy community abstract we explore what factors play a critical role in a shift of a local energy system towards 100 renewable energy community by examining the case using a framework that highlights the role of key state and non state actors investors local officials citizens and policy entrepreneurs and the role of governance mode horizontal self steering partnership participation inclusiveness of energy decision making co ownership of the process for the actual outcome the framework is based on recent transition literature that has focused on the dynamics of change the case study provides the evidence of the important role of participation of local community in the open decision making process from the onset their partnership in the local energy system solutions sense of ownership as well as the role of mayor as a policy entrepreneur

really a front runner really a straggler of environmental leaders and laggards in the european union and beyond a quantitative policy perspective abstract as it has long been debated who is a front runner and who is a laggard state in terms of environmental protection it is rather surprising that the topic has received rather scant attention as far as quantitative large n research endeavours are concerned of course there is a broad literature on the topic however existing studies have shortcomings the criteria on which the assessments rely are often neither equivalent cross nationally nor are they communicated clearly enough i e not transparent although ambitious efforts have been invested to rank countries in terms of their environmental performance little systematic research exists that clearly determines leaders and laggards in terms of their policies policy performance and states ranking accordingly to the best of our knowledge no empirical study has so far conducted a comprehensive and quantitative leader laggard assessment policy analysis against this backdrop we aim to provide such a paper we especially strive to test the validity of common knowledge classifications or rankings derived from assessments in the literature we demonstrate that while some known frontrunner states are indeed leaders if assessed from a broader policy data perspective other countries commonly assigned a leader role find themselves in a lower position instead in addition some nations commonly excluded from the frontrunners are located unexpectedly high in the rankings even leader laggard reversals occur if our results would be compared to existing classifications most importantly the analyses show a considerable temporal dynamic while often claimed or assumed this has not been proven as clearly until now

individual acceptance of the biogas innovation a structural equation model abstract the rapid spread of biogas production in germany has resulted in an increased public debate over this new business branch today the production of biogas is much more controversially debated than several years ago at the same time it could be proven that even among farmers themselves the acceptance of biogas production in some regions is somewhat dampened due to accompanying collateral damages therefore the goal of this paper is to identify relevant influencing factors that determine the acceptance of the innovation biogas among farmers by applying a causal analysis initial results among the five investigated determinants show that not only an individual attitude toward biogas but also the farmers personal innovativeness strongly and significantly influences an individual s acceptance of the innovation biogas

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

planning of renewables schemes deliberative and fair decision making on landscape issues instead of reproachful accusations of non cooperation abstract the main issues related to successful implementation policies concern the socio economic institutions that are conditional to planning in the energy policy domain but also in the domain of spatial planning successful investments and the siting of renewable power plants eventually determine the success rate of national efforts in establishing renewable capacity central planning usually has several objectives and these often have a detrimental effect on the goal of renewable energy application current problems related to implementation decisions concerning wind power schemes are an example to those who will be faced by other renewable power plants notably biomass regarding community acceptance of wind power schemes the visual evaluation of the impact of wind power on the values of the landscape is by far the most dominant factor in explaining opposition or support type of landscape fully overshadows other attitudinal attributes as well as other visual and scenic factors such as the design of wind turbines and wind farms and the number and the size of turbines planning regimes and decision making practices that really enhance the implementation processes of renewable energy require strong ecological modernization this means institutional changes that create involvement and trust of actors at the actual implementation level local opposition cannot be explained by the egotistical motives of local residents when the inclination to behave according to supposed backyard motives is investigated the scale to measure this phenomenon appears to indicate commitment to equity issues and fairness of decision making hence for wind power local involvement to represent the local values of site specific landscapes is crucial for other renewables the source specific features are different but conflicts can be expected as well because the fairness of implementation decisions will be equally significant

private values of risk tradeoffs at superfund sites housing market evidence on learning about risk this paper incorporates a bayesian learning model into a hedonic framework to estimate the value that residents place on avoiding cancer risks from hazardous waste sites we show that residents are

the coal question that emissions trading has not answered abstract can emissions trading assist with the task of placing a limit on coal production and consumption in australia this paper outlines a critical political economy perspective on coal and a flagship market mechanism for emissions reduction the prospects for an effective emissions trading scheme in coal dominated economies are considered in light of its theoretical justifications as well as recent attempts to price carbon in australia emissions trading is a weak instrument that does not address real world failures of coal governance at their theoretical best carbon prices produce marginal changes to the cost structure of production in practice the australian case demonstrates emissions trading is an attempt to displace the emissions reduction task away from coal through compensation arrangements and offsetting in light of the urgent need to rapidly reduce global emissions direct regulation and democratisation of coal production and consumption should be flagship climate policy

revealed bureaucratic preference priorities of the consumer product safety commission in june 1977 the u s consumer product safety commission announced priorities for those projects to be executed during subsequent fiscal years i use conditional logit techniques to analyze random orderings to estimate the commission s preference functions among projects i show that the commission overselects both projects with large safety benefits but even larger consumer costs and projects that require mandatory standards

on the importance of the participation margin for labor market fluctuations abstract conventional analyses of labor market fluctuations ascribe a minor role to labor force participation we show by contrast that flows based analyses imply that the participation margin accounts for around one third of unemployment fluctuations a novel stock flow apparatus establishes these facts delivering three further contributions first the role of the participation margin appears robust to adjustments for spurious transitions induced by reporting error second conventional stocks based analyses are subject to a stock flow fallacy neglecting offsetting forces of worker flows on the participation rate third increases in labor force attachment among the unemployed during recessions are a leading explanation for the role of the participation margin

what drives people s opinions of electricity infrastructure empirical evidence from ireland abstract across the eu significant infrastructure investment is needed in both generation from renewable energy sources res and the electricity grid to meet the european targets on emission reduction and res expansion experiences show however that citizens may object to new energy infrastructure in their localities which may cause delays in achieving the targets to avoid delays it is crucial to understand what drives people s opinions to explore people s opinions of different electricity generation and transmission technologies in ireland we conducted a nationally representative survey concerning the drivers we distinguish between socio demographics technology specific perceptions and energy policy preferences our results show that people generally have positive views of res technologies while this indicates that irish citizens agree to move towards cleaner electricity sources we find reluctance amongst people to have these technologies located close to their places of residence we find that across most technologies the tradeoff people make between economic and environmental policy objectives drives their opinions of and their tendencies to oppose technology developments the significance of most socio demographic variables however is largely technology dependent this highlights that policy makers need to understand how people make tradeoffs between policy objectives and how these tradeoffs relate to their opinions of different technologies

renewable energy support mechanisms in the gulf cooperation council states analyzing the feasibility of feed in tariffs and auction mechanisms renewable energy will be a crucial ingredient in the transition to a more sustainable future the renewable energy sector requires a variety of financial support mechanisms in order to further consolidate and expand currently the most prominent renewable energy support mechanisms are feed in tariffs and renewable energy auctions although these mechanisms have been used and analyzed extensively in western countries and more recently economies in transition they have rarely been examined in the arab gulf region yet particularly the gulf cooperation council gcc states have undertaken important steps towards renewable energy adoption which could be greatly facilitated with the use of financial support mechanisms this paper analyzes the feasibility of feed in tariffs and renewable energy auctions adoption in gcc based on an extensive meta analysis of the literature on these two mechanisms in both developed and developing countries the paper identifies a set of conditions necessary for success and evaluates the presence of favorable these conditions in the gcc context our findings reveal that while conditions that would ensure political feasibility are largely absent for both types of mechanisms auctions could be a more successful strategy at the moment

the governance of sustainable socio technical transitions a quasi evolutionary model of socio technical transitions is described in which regimes face selection pressures continuously differentiated transition contexts determine the form and direction of regime change in response to these pressures the articulation of pressures and the degree to which responses are coordinated and based on resources available within the regime define the transition context four alternative contexts are described endogenous renewal re orientation of trajectories emergent transformation and purposive transitions agency and power in the governance of regime transformation are analysed power to affect change depends on regime membership the distribution of resources for change and expectations

nimby or not exploring the relevance of location and the politics of voiced opinions in renewable energy siting controversies local protests against renewable energy facilities have added fuel to the debate about the so called nimby not in my back yard effect this paper identifies six variables that can hamper the comparison between different public perception studies and offers two broad conclusions on aggregate proximity does have strong influence on public attitudes to proposed projects but the nature strength and spatial scale of this effect may vary according to local context and value of the land residents of stigmatised places are more likely to welcome facilities that are relatively green while people who derive a more positive sense of identity from particular rural landscapes are likely to resist such potential developments especially if they also live there secondly the fear of being branded a nimby and the positive ethics associated with the notion of renewable are both likely to colour the responses of many interviewees these aspects need to be clarified and accounted for in analyses of elicited responses both quantitative and qualitative if we are to improve our understanding of the social construction of individual attitudes in siting conflicts

wind farm externalities and public preferences for community consultation in ireland a discrete choice experiments approach abstract in ireland the deployment of onshore wind turbines has become progressively more difficult in some areas because of the potential negative externalities associated with their operation using a discrete choice experiment dce we employ a willingness to accept framework to estimate the external effects of wind turbines on local residents with the inclusion of community consultation and to quantify the compensation required to permit wind farms to be built in ireland our findings reveal that the majority of respondents are willing to make monetary tradeoffs to allow for wind power initiatives and we find that respondents require less compensation if provision is made for a community representative and setback distance is increased

attributing responsibility for energy justice a case study of the hinkley point nuclear complex since 2006 as part of the transition to low carbon technologies uk energy policy has moved towards incentivising new nuclear power production as a result the uk has developed a now delayed strategy to deliver around 16gw of new nuclear power by 2030 this policy context provides an opportunity to reflect not only on the material infrastructure needed to meet transition targets but also on who is responsible for the energy justice implications of these decisions using data collected from 26 semi structured interviews with ngo and policy representatives this paper presents a case study of energy justice concerns surrounding the hinkley point nuclear complex in somerset focusing particularly on the highly controversial hinkley point c developments the results emphasise the importance of considering not only instances of energy justice or injustice but of attributing responsibility for them a concept that has been largely overlooked in the energy justice literature ngos government and business allocate responsibility differently in nuclear energy decision making we find that perceptions of responsibility are highly dependent upon the level of transparency in decision making this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled exploring the energy justice nexus

bioenergy transition in rural china policy options and co benefits abstract this paper reviews the current situation of bioenergy development in china particularly on its relationship to sustainable rural development it argues that the current government strategy investment policy and industrial interest are over emphasized on biomass burning power generation as part of the clean energy development trajectories which may not lead to the most cost effective outcomes in terms of investments resource use and social development objectives it points out that there are large potentials in developing and disseminating household based biomass technologies in rural areas especially with energy efficient modern biomass stoves which can produce far more economic social and environmental benefits than biomass power plants it is a decentralized solution to use renewable energy resources for meeting multi objectives it is suggested that key incentive policies be provided by the government to encourage this technological transition or the leapfrogging from using traditional household stoves towards modern biomass stoves which will lead to a win win situation in global regional and local environmental protection sustainable resource management and related social benefits particularly for the poor in remote communities six policy recommendations are made 1 financial schemes development 2 preferable tax and carbon tax 3 regulatory policy reform 4 service industry support 5 market research training and capacity building for key stakeholders 6 development of methodologies and standards for cdm projects the potential co benefits brought up by this massive biomass technology transition will bring new perspectives to realizing millennium development goals mdgs and global co2 emissions reduction targets in china and also set an example to other developing countries

the german energy transition as a regime shift abstract in this paper i use the resilience framework to interpret the project of transforming the german energy system into a renewable energy sources res based system the so called energiewende as a regime shift this regime shift comprises several transformations which are currently altering the technological political and economic system structure to build my argument i first sketch how technological political and economic developments reduced the resilience of the conventional fossil nuclear energy regime and created a new res regime second i depict recent changes in german public discourse and energy policy as the shift to the res regime third i highlight the challenges involved with increasing the resilience of the res regime in particular sufficient resilience of the electricity transmission grid appears to be crucial for facilitating the transformation of the whole energy system

comparative advantage and unemployment worker heterogeneity in productivity and labor supply is introduced into a matching model workers who earn high wages and work high hours are identified as those with strong market comparative advantage high rents from being employed the model is calibrated to match separation job finding and employment in the sipp data the model predicts a big drop in employment for workers with weak comparative advantage during recessions but the data show that workers with strong comparative advantage also display sizable employment fluctuations implying that aggregate employment fluctuations are not explained by the responses of workers with small rents to employment

accidents waiting to happen liability policy and toxic pollution releases proponents of environmental policies based on liability assert that strict liability imposed on polluters induces firms to handle hazardous wastes properly we examine unintended pollution releases relating them to the liability imposed on polluters by state mini superfund laws we find that strict liability reduces the frequency and severity of pollution releases but that its effects vary with firm size smaller firms are associated with more pollution releases in states with strict liability suggesting that in these states smaller firms may have specialized in riskier production processes their number however has not necessarily grown in response to the state s liability policy

the anatomy of unemployment dynamics abstract this paper examines the relation between individual unemployment durations and incidence inflow size on the one hand and the time varying macroeconomic conditions in the economy on the other we develop a model for the analysis of aggregate unemployment incidence and duration data and estimate this model on quarterly french data over the period 1982 1994 stratified by sex we find upward trends in both incidence and durations the former is relatively important for females the latter for males male incidence and durations are countercyclical with only a minor role for cohort effects on durations in contrast female cohorts entering at the top of the cycle have relatively short unemployment spells and the female incidence is if anything procyclical there is strong seasonal variation in particular in the incidence finally we find relatively small non monotonic individual duration dependence in the first six quarters of unemployment unobserved heterogeneity explains the observed negative duration dependence at these durations we provide some evidence that negative individual duration dependence and not heterogeneity is important at higher durations

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

politicizing energy justice and energy system transitions fossil fuel divestment and a just transition the burgeoning energy justice scholarship highlights the importance of justice and equity concerns in the context of global decarbonization and the transition to a green economy this paper seeks to extend current conceptualizations of energy justice across entire energy lifecycles from extraction to final use to offer an analytically richer and more accurate picture of the in justice impacts of energy policy decisions we identify two key areas that require greater attention and scrutiny in order to enact energy justice within a more democratized energy system first we call for greater recognition of the politics power dynamics and political economy of socio technical energy transitions we use the example of the fossil fuel divestment movement as a way to shift energy justice policy attention upstream to focus on the under researched injustices relating to supply side climate policy analysis and decisions second the idea of a just transition and the distributional impacts on and the role of labor in low carbon transitions must be addressed more systematically this focus produces a more directly political and politicizing framing of energy in justice and a just energy transition

planning siting and the local acceptance of wind power some lessons from the french case abstract after some years of trifling development under a system of public tenders 1995 2000 french politicians progressively changed the national policy framework for feed in tariffs december 2000 and wind power development zones july 2005 the new policy framework has triggered a beginning of takeoff in wind power capacity the paper examines french wind power development in the light of two key dimensions and concepts related to wind power policy planning and siting part 1 we particularly focus on the recent french legislative debate which led to the adoption of the new policy framework part 2 the french case shows that the recourse to planning tools was not tailor made for siting issues but resulted from a political fight over the decentralization of energy policy the policy outcome which we call flexible decentralized planning is both interesting and ambiguous it is interesting in that it develops interfaces between planning tools and siting institutions it is ambiguous in that it is potentially very hierarchical the final decision power is left in state planners hands making it unpredictable the extent to which room will genuinely be provided for siting processes to take place

coherence causality and effectiveness of the eu environmental policy system results of complementary statistical and econometric analyses this paper presents the first empirical test of coherence i e consistency of policies within a framework causality i e logical priority of objectives over policies and effectiveness i e ability of policies to tackle challenges as defined by objectives of the overall eu environmental policy system to do so i applied complementary statistical cross sectional and time series and econometric dynamic tri probit analyses to an original panel dataset based on addressed issues i e pollution vs resource trans boundary vs domestic flow vs stock rather than on implemented policies i e eu legislation aiming at optimal pollution production optimal resource use and market competition it would be impossible to perform similar analyses by referring to realized policies rather than tackled issues due to the unbalanced sample characterizing the former with respect to the latter as well as due to overlapping objectives interrelated policies and non univocal relationships between objectives and policies in contrast with previous studies of single eu environmental policies characteristics of the eu environmental policy or eu environmental objectives i found that the overall eu environmental policy system is internally coherent dynamically causal and ex ante effective moreover the evidence suggests that many issues are correlated trans boundary issues became more relevant in 2012 pollution production was more significant than resource use and flow issues were more important than stock issues from 1995 to 2010 finally i show that few objectives overlapped a safe environment objective 1987 1997 was preferred to a greenhouse gas ghg reduction objective 2003 2012 but pursued with a 2 year lag although the latter has recently become preferred to the former in addition a ghg reduction objective was preferred to a sustainable development objective 1998 2002

who governs energy the challenges facing global energy governance this article conceptualizes the energy problems facing society from a global governance perspective it argues that a notion of global energy governance taken to mean international collective action efforts undertaken to manage and distribute energy resources and provide energy services offers a meaningful and useful framework for assessing energy related challenges the article begins by exploring the concepts of governance global governance and global energy governance it then examines some of the existing institutions in place to establish and carry out rules and norms governing global energy problems and describes the range of institutional design options available to policymakers it briefly traces the role of a selection of these institutions from inter governmental organizations to summit processes to multilateral development banks to global action networks in responding to energy issues and points out their strengths and weaknesses the article concludes by analyzing how the various approaches to global governance differ in their applicability to addressing the conundrums of global energy problems

financial incentives to mobilise local citizens as investors in low carbon technologies a systematic literature review abstract mobilising greater levels of private finance through local citizen investment in low carbon technologies can help bridge the capital shortfall to meeting climate objectives while also building societal support for the low carbon transition within this context we undertake a systematic review of literature assessing the impact of technology specific economic and financial incentives promoting greater levels of investment in low carbon technologies from local citizen investors both individuals and community groups we focus in particular on the impact of feed in tariffs compared to quota schemes grants tax incentives and soft loans the analysis suggests that local citizen investors do not necessarily act in an economically rational manner in response to these incentives it underscores the importance of understanding the preferences of target demographics the local context as well as the characteristics of the technologies in question and suggests interventions should be considered as part of wider policy packages while identifying challenges to be overcome through instrument design we find that feed in tariffs grants and tax incentives can be successful in mobilising greater levels of investment from local citizen investors but that soft loans tend to be less effective as a stand alone instrument the review identifies areas meriting further exploration in this emerging field of research

digit preference in cps unemployment data abstract in analyses of cps unemployment duration data it is necessary to smooth the observed responses prior to inference to accommodate the effects of digit preference in this note i show that popular methods of smoothing have significant effects on estimates of expected duration the time series properties of this statistic are less severely affected

the benefits of spatially differentiated regulation the response to acid rain by u s states prior to the acid rain program location is a crucial driver of both the marginal abatement and damage costs of sulfur dioxide emissions by u s coal fired power plants before the start of the acid rain program in 1995 old boilers were subject to emission rate standards set by individual states we investigate how individual states adjusted their sulfur regulation laws in response to acid rain and whether they accounted for differences in marginal abatement costs vulnerability to agricultural damages special industry interests or inter state externalities the welfare gain compared to a uniform reduction in emission rate standards is estimated to be 21 million in 1995 dollars annually

separations sorting and cyclical unemployment abstract this paper establishes a new fact about the compositional changes in the pool of unemployed over the us business cycle using microdata from the current population survey for the years 1962 2012 it documents that in recessions the pool of unemployed shifts toward workers with high wages in their previous job and that these shifts are driven by the high cyclicality of separations for high wage workers the paper finds that standard theories of wage setting and unemployment have difficulty in explaining these patterns and evaluates a number of alternative theories that do better in accounting for the new fact jel e24 e32 j31 j63 j64

complex biofuels related scenarios generated by qualitative reasoning under severe information shortages a review abstract there is a broad spectrum of br biofuel related models however the models are highly specific such models cannot flexibly support complex decision making activities to identify feasible trade offs among many objective functions they represent just one point of view e g engineering company economics therefore cbrms complex biofuel related model are studied in this paper cbrms must cover additional aspects e g macroeconomic ecology sociology and politics such models are inevitably unique partially subjective inconsistent vague and multidimensional ai artificial intelligence has developed a number of tools to solve such problems qualitative reasoning is one of them it is based on the least information intensive quantifiers i e trends there are just three trend qualitative values plus increasing zero constant negative decreasing there are many cbrm items related to soft aspects e g politics taxation etc which cannot be quantified by numbers they are too vague for example if the political sociological sensitivity of land ownership is increasing then the cost of biofuels is increasing such verbal knowledge item cannot be incorporated into a traditional numerical model the paper describes developments of cbrms based on expert knowledge and common sense a consensus among experts is often not reached because of substantial subjectivity of experts knowledge a qualitative intersection of cbrms developed by several experts is simple the case study presents a model based on integration of 10 heuristics using 9 variables e g refinery capacity cost of biofuel production and biofuel demand the result is represented by 13 scenarios the paper is self contained no a prior knowledge of qualitative models is required

a comparative analysis of urban energy governance in four european cities abstract cities are at the forefront of efforts to combat climate change and in this paper we examine the influence of urban energy governance on these policy goals an innovative framework for quantifying the combined governance of cities and energy systems is presented before focusing on a detailed study of london paris berlin and copenhagen by applying an optimization model to assess the lowest cost technology pathways to achieve emission reduction targets the links between the governance of urban energy systems and the cost of achieving carbon targets are shown additionally a novel metric of scenario similarity is introduced in order to evaluate the difficulty of hypothesized energy system transitions the results indicate that these tools can be valuable in identifying similar cities for the sharing of best practice for performing comparative evaluations of energy transitions and for reinforcing the need to complement quantitative assessments with a more holistic appreciation of local context

energy consumption in china and underlying factors in a changing landscape empirical evidence since the reform period abstract in recent decades the phenomenal growth in the chinese economy has created increasing energy consumption this is the first study analysing energy consumption in china considering economic social and political dimensions of globalisation along with the effects from trade and financial sectors the time period covers the full trajectory since the start of economic reform until recent times in this respect we use the konjunkturforschungsstelle kof globalisation index to explore the dynamic link between economic growth financial development trade and various dimensions of globalisation and energy consumption modern time series econometric techniques are used in establishing stationarity long run dynamics and causality of the series the findings suggest that globalisation decreases energy consumption in the short run but increases it in the long run however the effect of financial development on energy consumption in china is opposite to the globalisation effect on energy consumption granger causality reveals a feedback effect between economic globalisation and financial development globalisation in china can only reduce energy consumption if china develops its financial sector to a greater extent in future china should invest in its financial sector and low carbon energy alternatives to achieve sustainable development prevention of energy shortfalls and cleaner environment would assist in bridging the gap both from social and political aspects to ensure china benefits significantly with high economic growth in this asian century

the uniqueness of the energy security justice and governance problem this article argues that among all policy fields exhibiting externalities of a global scale energy stands out on four dimensions vertical complexity horizontal complexity higher entailed costs and stronger path dependency these structural attributes are at odds with contemporary key challenges of energy security energy justice and low carbon energy transition with regard to the latter energy governance challenges occur related to unclear levels of authority and weak resilience this has implications for energy scholarship specifically relating to the political economy of energy transitions discussions about common pool resources systems analysis and other neighboring disciplines

monetary or environmental appeals for saving electricity potentials for spillover on low carbon policy acceptability abstract the acceptability of low carbon policies is an important precondition for energy system transitions such as the german energiewende this long term experimental study examines the potential for behavioural spillover on the acceptability of low carbon policies caused by a framed intervention to promote electricity saving behaviour clients of a german energy provider were randomly assigned to continuously receive electricity saving tips with either monetary framing saving potential in or environmental framing saving potential in co2 the control group did not receive any information in two follow up surveys four n 333 and nine months n 258 later participants rated the acceptability of several low carbon policies a pre survey assessed the personal ecological norm for saving electricity participants with strong personal ecological norms reported generally higher policy acceptability after environmental framing they also indicated higher acceptability compared to the monetary framing or control group these results indicate that information campaigns should be designed carefully in order to promote positive spillover effects environmental framing of private sphere behaviour can increase the disposition for further pro environmental behaviour in the public sphere e g policy acceptability when appealing to monetary benefits in pro environmental behaviour there is a risk of inhibiting positive spillover effects

policy making and energy infrastructure change a nigerian case study of energy governance in the electricity sector abstract this paper focusses on investigating the underlying mechanisms and influences of the policy decision making process and how it affects and impacts the governance of the nigerian energy industry and energy infrastructure provisions in depth semi structured interviews were used all interviewees had been involved directly or indirectly in energy infrastructure policy decisions in nigeria five key themes subsequently emerged as salient intra country induced influences that were affecting the governance and performance of the nigerian energy sector 1 competencies i e practical knowledge of energy policy making 2 expectations i e past present and forecasted future expectations from the energy industry 3 legislation i e institutionalized and unwritten rules procedures 4 future visions i e future vision of the energy industry energy market 5 recruiting experts i e recruiting new energy and public policy makers in addition three major inter country induced influences were also identified 1 the changing dynamics of international and foreign aid 2 the united nations sustainable development goals and 3 the paris agreements on climate change the paper concludes by highlighting the policy implications of these influences and the consequences for policy makers in the governance of the energy industry in ensuring a secured energy future

managing the energy trilemma the case of indonesia abstract this article argues that a central challenge for energy governance is how to manage a complex energy trilemma involving the sometimes competing demands of energy security climate change mitigation and particularly in developing countries energy poverty it suggests that tensions between the horns of the trilemma in large part explain indonesia s current profoundly suboptimal energy policy while these tensions are not inherently incapable of resolution such resolution would require good governance at both state and global levels the possibilities for and obstacles confronting such governance are explored and provisional solutions canvassed

why did the average duration of unemployment become so much longer there has been a substantial increase in the average duration of unemployment relative to the unemployment rate in the u s over the last 30 years we evaluate the performance of a standard job search model in explaining this phenomenon in particular we examine whether the increase in within group wage inequality and the decline in the incidence of unemployment can account for the increase in unemployment duration the results indicate that these two changes can explain a significant part of the increase over the last 30 years although the model fails to match the behavior of unemployment duration during 1980s

a cost benefit analysis for the economic growth in china abstract currently traditional development issues such as income inequality depletion of natural resources environmental pollution as well as retardation of infrastructure have occurred in china in the future more pressures would be imposed on china by the continuous fast development of industrialization and with transfer of the world manufacture center to china sustainable development including its economic environmental and social elements is a key goal of decisionmakers this paper develops a methodology on cost benefit analysis of economic growth at macroscopic level to identify issues of china s sustainability in order to address some important issues on how to make policies to improve the quality of economic growth the cba framework developed in this study analyses economic ecological social interaction building three accounts that reflect three dimensions of sustainable development that includes 26 sub models in all and finally is integrated into an index as net progress proceeds npp the estimation methods of these submodels such as cost of environmental pollution depletion of natural resources and defensive expenditures are described in detail based on the framework and methods this paper examines the costs and benefits of economic growth in three aspects of economy ecology and society the results illustrate that npr of china s economic growth had been negative for a long time and has just became positive since year 2000 but was quite low even the best was only 1 6 in 2002 the worst was 24 2 in 1982 based on the comparison between three accounts we can draw a conclusion that ecological cost is the dominant factor that affects china s npr the empirical results show that if no other innovative measures or policies are taken in the future the costs of growth would outweigh its benefits resulting in un sustainability basically the long term economic growth would be unsustainable due to increasing environmental damage and depletion of natural resources there are a few limitations that we consider need to be improved in our cba framework and method nevertheless they have many options that can be explored by policy makers to make the development path more sustainable

an international assessment of energy security performance energy security has in recent years grown as a salient policy and political issue to better understand energy security and sustainability concerns this study s main objective is to present an energy security index which measures national performance on energy security over time based on three years of research involving interviews surveys and an international workshop this study conceptualizes energy security as consisting of the interconnected factors of availability affordability efficiency sustainability and governance it then matches these factors with 20 metrics comprising an energy security index measuring international performance across 18 countries from 1990 to 2010 it offers three case studies of japan top performer laos middle performer and myanmar w orst performer to provide context to the index s results it then presents four conclusions first a majority of countries analyzed have regressed in terms of their energy security second despite the near total deterioration of energy security a great disparity exists between countries with some clear leaders such as japan third tradeoffs exist within different components of energy security fourth creating energy security is as much a matter of domestic policy from within as it is from foreign policy without

are risk regulators rational evidence from hazardous waste cleanup decisions a large literature in economics and social science focuses on how people reason about risks reactions of individuals to risk frequently depart from behavior predicted by full information variants of expected utility theory risk regulators are human and are subject to political pressures that are reflective of people s attitudes toward risk as a result the public policies they espouse may reflect errors in judgment about risk many biases stem from misperceptions of risk individuals overestimate small probabilities overestimate the risks associated with highly publicized dangers and have preferences over the manner not just the magnitude in which risks arise environmental risks associated with hazardous waste sites may be particularly prone to such errors since they involve small risks that are highly publicized indeed the general public ranks hazardous waste sites as the leading environmental risk a growing literature also analyzes how the decisions of risk regulators depart from choices predicted in a standard benefit cost framework as roger g noll and james e krier 1990 point out since regulators are both human and political their decisions may reflect risk biases regulators may exhibit these biases as individuals and because their constituents will express regulatory demands based on risk perceptions risk regulators may take into account the identity of the parties exposed to risk the level of scrutiny by interest groups the nature of congressional representation of affected constituents and the degree of political activity by potentially exposed individuals 3 errors in risk perceptions and risk decisions cause individuals to diverge from expected utility maximization similar errors by policy makers and the influence of risk politics cause regulators to diverge from social welfare maximization this paper examines decisions made by federal and state regulators at hazardous waste sites addressed by the superfund program to determine how their decisions diverge from those predicted by expected utility theory and benefitcost analysis we analyze whether risk perceptions and politics influence two decisions central to the how clean is clean debate at superfund sites the selection of chemical cleanup targets and the expenditure of remediation funds at these contaminated sites we also explore the interactive influence of risk perception factors and political demands previous research on the regulation of chemical risks in standard setting indicates that decisions reflect evidence of risk biases and responsiveness to political factors in assessing the determinants of the epa s decision to cancel pesticide registration maureen l cropper et al 1992 found that the epa was more likely to cancel a pesticide in instances featuring higher risks to the maximally exposed individual user lower benefits associated with continued use of the pesticide higher values of intervention by environmental groups mea viscusi harvard law school harvard university cambridge ma 02138 hamilton sanford institute of public policy duke university durham nc 27708 we have benefited from the comments from two referees and the excellent research assistance of jason bell kristen blann jahn hakes and robert malme research support was provided under cooperative agreement no cr 823604 01 from the u s environmental protection agency office of policy planning and evaluation dr alan carlin and dr suzanne giannini spohn served as contract officers all views and errors expressed are our own l see u s environmental protection agency epa 1987 for a report on this survey evidence 2 this theme is also articulated in richard j zeckhauser and viscusi 1990 noll 1989 provides a more general assessment of the interaction between political concerns and regulatory policy which is a central theme of this paper 3political factors have long played a prominent role in local hazardous waste policies see among others linda cohen 1981 howard kunreuther and douglas easterling 1990 1992 and kunreuther and rajeev gowda 1990

hazardous waste hits hollywood superfund and housing prices in los angeles this paper contributes to the ongoing debate concerning the effect of various actions taken by the u s environmental protection agency under cercla commonly known as the superfund program on housing prices this study uses a housing transaction panel dataset encompassing the five major counties of the los angeles combined statistical area to estimate the program s influence on the local housing market using house and time varying census tract fixed effects i am able to avoid many of the endogeneity problems seen in previous research attempting to measure the superfund treatment effect an estimate of the effect on housing prices is given for each of the major events that occur under a typical superfund remediation after controlling for confounding correlated unobservables i find a 7 3 increase in sales price for houses within 3 km of a site that moves through the complete superfund program the analysis gives evidence of positive price appreciation for housing markets and serves as a lower bound for measuring remediation benefits

unemployment dynamics and duration dependence a major issue in the analysis of unemployment durations concerns distinguishing genuine duration dependence of the exit rate out of unemployment from unobserved heterogeneity we present a method for the nonparametric estimation of both phenomena designed to be applicable to time series data on aggregate outflows from different duration classes the model explicitly takes into account that individual exit rates are affected by the business cycle and by seasonal effects the method is applied to u s data we find diverging duration effects among black and white individuals however except for white males duration dependence is dominated by unobserved heterogeneity

why is the oil price not about equilibrium an economic sociology account of petroleum markets abstract this opinion paper seeks to initiate discussion of the institutional and societal causes of oil price on this basis the social embeddedness concept is proposed instead of the frequently used producer consumer juxtaposition observation shows no linearity between resource distribution imbalances and supply dynamics on the one hand and price on the other as a socially endogenous factor oil price generates practices and norms comprising benchmarks for resource valuation stock market dynamics and risk aversion practices a high oil price incentivises investments and inter fuel competition whereas a low oil price increases both political and market risks beyond the consumer producer conceptualisation hence it is argued that the notion of oil price affordability in energy security should be revised