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

the relative importance of social and institutional conditions in the planning of wind power projects abstract governments around the world try to stimulate the development and use of renewable energy technologies like wind energy while wind turbines are increasingly being implemented however a lack of social acceptance at the local level remains an important challenge for developers of wind power plants this article aims to explore the relative importance of social and institutional conditions and their interdependencies in the operational process of planning wind power schemes the article not only focuses on how negative local social conditions can frustrate public policy cf nimby syndrome but also on how positive local social conditions can compensate for a negative public policy framework we analyzed the cases of implementing wind power of two actors the regional energy distributor and small private investors in the municipality of zeewolde the netherlands both cases illustrate that the formal institutional framework formal rules procedures and instruments is neutral in a certain sense social conditions management styles interests and informal contacts put meaning in this framework the way stakeholders deal with the prevailing institutional structure clarifies social acceptance and therewith implementation

a step toward understanding wind power development policy barriers in advanced economies abstract a widely accepted premise regarding wind power development policy is that implementation of economic policy instruments which are designed to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched fossil fuel power generation technologies will significantly catalyze enhanced levels of wind power development activity this paper contests this premise by arguing that non economic barriers to wind power development have the capacity to significantly inhibit wind power development in industrialized nations despite the implementation of economic policy instruments forces which deter wind power development in four economically advanced economies that exhibit phlegmatic progress in wind power development australia canada japan and taiwan are identified and amalgamated into a step framework describing social technical economic and political forces that inhibit wind power development the conclusions of this analysis are twofold first failure to mitigate these step forces may undermine the efficacy of any given economic policy instrument that aims to close the cost gap between wind power and entrenched generation technologies second attempts to mitigate these impediments might represent a way to achieve better policy results with less government financial commitment

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

environmental and socio economic feasibility assessment of rice straw conversion to power and ethanol in thailand abstract technically 26 32 of rice straw residues accounting for about 5 6 mt year can be used for energy in thailand the quantified environmental and socio economic benefits of this potential renewable energy source could be a driving force noted by the decision makers and communities converting rice straw residues to electricity or ethanol would directly increase the standard of living of regional households in terms of expenditure fulfillments direct contributions to the housing healthcare education and necessities as well as the share of straw logistics on regional wise basis are estimated furthermore one environmental and four socio economic indicators are quantified for 1 mj of dry rice straw delivered and used in assumed commercial 10 mwe and 24 ml ethanol conversion facilities using the same yearly quantity of 116 000 t rice straw all the indicators show favor in the ethanol option comparison ratios of value added of straw to energy life cycle ghg reductions net currency savings direct value added gdp and employment direct indirect unemployed beneficiaries for ethanol and power options would be respectively 1 0 07 1 0 89 1 0 96 1 0 11 and 1 0 35 total yearly employment beneficiaries of 15 000 18 000 and 41 000 51 000 are expected for power and ethanol options respectively

uncertainty in the theory of renewable resource markets the natural growth rate of most renewable resource stocks is in part stochastic this paper examines the implications of such ecological uncertainty for competitive equilibrium in a market with property rights we show that stochastic fluctuations add a risk premium to the rate of return required to keep a unit of stock in situ and we examine the effects of fluctuations on resource rent examples are used to show that extraction can increase decrease or be left unchanged as the variance of the fluctuations increases depending on the extent of market self correction regulatory implications are also discussed renewable resource economics has traditionally been concerned with the study of dynamically optimal harvesting policies given a deterministic function for the natural growth of the resource stock issues have included the existence and characteristics of steady state equilibria for the optimally managed resource the need for and design of regulatory policies to prevent over exploitation and conditions under which as a social optimum or otherwise the resource will be exploited to extinction 1 much of this work has been based on the assumption of a fixed and exogenous price for the harvested resource typically resulting in bang bang solutions for the harvesting policy however some recent papers make price endogenous and thereby describe how the extraction rate and the rate of return and asset value of the resource behave in a competitive market with property rights 2

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

on the dynamics of renewable resource harvesting and pollution control the paper presents a dynamic partial equilibrium model which combines optimal renewable resource harvesting and optimal pollution control pollution accumulates as a slowly decaying stock and is assumed to affect the growth and the quality of the renewable resource stock the aim is to maximize a social welfare functional which gives the present value of the difference between natural resource benefits and pollution control costs the existence uniqueness and the dynamic properties of the steady states are investigated the analysis also gives a general result concerning the steady state of any two state variable optimal control problems

difficulty is critical the importance of social factors in modeling diffusion of green products and practices abstract despite the very positive as measured by market surveys attitude towards eco innovations and sustainability in general the actual market penetration of green products and practices generally falls behind the expectations in this paper we argue that considering difficulty of engagement as used in the campbell paradigm is of critical importance when modeling diffusion of eco innovations such a notion of difficulty possesses three desired properties i parsimony it is represented by a single value ii interpretability it can be regarded as an estimator of the otherwise complex notion of behavioral cost and iii applicability it can be easily measured through market surveys in an extensive simulation and analytical study involving empirically measured difficulty and an agent based model spanned on different social network structures we show that innovation adoption may exhibit abrupt changes in market penetration as a result of even small changes in difficulty the latter may be of particular interest to policy makers who have to make strategic decisions when introducing socially but not necessarily individually desired products and practices like dynamic or green electricity tariffs

assessment and optimization of forest biomass supply chains from economic social and environmental perspectives a review of literature abstract forest biomass is a renewable source that has the potential to substitute fossil fuels in many applications from the generation of bioenergy heat electricity or transportation fuels to the production of bioproducts chemicals and other materials the increased use of forest biomass could support the reduction of anthropogenic carbon emissions to the environment and could help forest dependent communities achieve energy independence while generating jobs the viability and feasibility of generating valuable products from forest biomass depend on ensuring the long term availability of biomass supply with the required quality at a competitive cost this calls for a cost efficient design of the forest biomass supply chain social and environmental aspects have to be considered in the design as well to guarantee sustainable use of this renewable resource in this paper we present a review of studies that assessed or optimized economic social and environmental aspects of forest biomass supply chains for the production of bioenergy and bioproducts the majority of studies so far considered either economic techno economic and optimization studies or environmental life cycle assessment studies aspects of bioenergy projects nevertheless there is a recent trend to integrate economic environmental and social aspects in the assessment and optimization of forest biomass supply chains combined approaches integrating multi objective optimization and life cycle assessment have started to flourish in these studies ghg emissions are the most frequently used environmental indicator production and capital costs are the preferred economic measures and the number of created jobs is the most considered social criterion further research has to be done to study and assess the potential social impacts of using forest biomass there is a need for further development of decision support tools that consider economic environmental and social criteria to aid the design and planning of forest biomass supply chains

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

the trade balance and real exchange rate under currency substitution abstract it is demonstrated that the calvo and rodriguez 1977 results hold up in a utility maximizing model contrary to the claim of liviatan 1981 it is argued that liviatan s conclusions are based on a mistaken assumption having rescued calvo rodriguez from liviatan it is then shown that the calvo rodriguez results are dependent on two special assumptions that there is only one foreign asset traded and its real return is zero the paper also shows that there is an avenue for foreign inflation transmission under perfectly floating exchange rates even when goods prices are perfectly flexible however the direction of response of real variables is in general ambiguous

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

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

patterns of acceptance and non acceptance within energy landscapes a case study on wind energy expansion in austria abstract wind energy is a key technology in the transition toward a low carbon society but acceptance is considered to be a constraining factor in achieving ambitious wind deployment targets based on an austrian case study this paper investigates eight decisive patterns of acceptance and non acceptance of wind energy we apply qualitative research methods such as interviews focus groups and worldcafe discussions with stakeholders on the national level and with citizens and local decision makers at potential wind power expansion sites the results show that local opposition to wind energy cannot be explained by single factors but is caused by a complex set of individual and collective preferences rooted in institutional and socio political arrangements the problem concerning these conflicting patterns is that they are trapped in often opposing or confronting policy core beliefs which are unlikely to change hence it is necessary to appeal to overarching targets like the claims of environmental justice to counterbalance the impacts of wind energy we conclude that there is a strong demand for fair decision making processes and an equal distribution of environmental and economic gains and losses this article is part of a virtual special issue entitled the collaborative making of energy landscapes

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

forecasting job creation from renewable energy deployment through a value chain approach abstract this paper introduces a new approach to the study of the socioeconomic impact of renewable technologies through the analysis of the reinforcing effects of the expansion of this industry and the specific characteristics of the employment along the value chain the method proposed is based on the collection critical analysis and presentation of the results obtained using primary information sources the model design includes contributions extracted from a prior analysis of the existing assessment methods to lessen the uncertainty of the job ratios often used in these types of analysis one factor to be taken into account is the high degree of development in the sector and above all the maturity of the technology considered from the point of view of the industry fabric the economy of scale and technological development actually influences the human resources needs sometimes increasing the demand for professionals within the scope of r d and sometimes reducing jobs in the manufacturing industry which is gradually applying processes with a greater degree of automation the influence of these experience curves is different for every single stage of the value chain trade balance of technologies is also crucial for local employment generation an analytical model was developed based on the above assumptions and applied to the spanish pv industry this industry has been playing a leading role in the expansion of renewable energy and offers a high potential towards the short term development of the smart grids in this country this model represents very well the history of the spanish pv industry reflected through the evolution of the jobs and is shown to be the foundation of a methodology for prospective studies in the social and economic impacts of renewables

shale gas policy in the united kingdom an argumentative discourse analysis shale gas has become an energy policy priority in the united kingdom in light of profitable extraction activities in the united states since 2012 the coalition government has created key economic drivers to encourage shale exploration whilst growing activism in affected site communities has stirred significant media and academic commentary this study examines the growing national debate as a matter of discourse adopting an argumentative discourse analytic approach to assess data collected from stakeholder interviews n 21 and key policy actor statements quoted in broadsheet newspapers we explore three dominant storylines emerging in relation to shale gas policy 1 cleanliness and dirt concerns the relative framing of the environmental benefits and harms of shale gas 2 energy transitions pathways and diversions concerns geographic metaphors of transitions to carbon intensive and low carbon energy systems and 3 geographies of environmental justice concerns divisions of economic benefit distribution environmental impact and procedural fairness we find that central government policy rhetoric emphasises economic development regulatory oversight and distribution of benefits to site communities whilst minimising discussion of the implications of shale gas for anthropogenic climate change the role of these discourses in influencing shale gas policy is discussed

analysis of the effectiveness of national renewable energy policies a case of photovoltaic policies abstract although fossil fuels are the main sources of power generation they are losing their advantages because of their limitations and environmental and economic concerns as an alternative the development of renewable energy technologies is one of the important strategies therefore governments have been encouraging the deployment of renewable energy resources however there are gaps between achievements and targets as most of the national renewable energy development policies are formulated in the entire country equally the outputs and achievements are different depending on the geographical characteristics social and economic capabilities of the regions the purpose of the present study is the analysis and the evaluation of the effectiveness of the equal national renewable energy policy in the different regions of a country this research focuses on the idea that whether the codification of energy policies according to the local circumstances of each region can result in a greater efficiency of such policies an innovative framework is presented to categorize the government policies based on the geographical technical and socio economic indicators to examine the presented framework it is implemented as a case study

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

institutional factors influencing strategic decision making in energy policy a case study of wind energy in france and quebec canada abstract this article studies the different institutional factors that influence a strategic wind energy decision making process through a comparative transnational study of quebec canada and france research confirms that political choices are dynamic and vary with a change in the wind energy context the balance of power between pressure groups supranational influences energy evaluation approaches and social acceptance until the 90 s an initially unfavorable national energy context combined with a neocorporatist culture as defined by szarka 2004 1 limited the place of wind energy in both jurisdictions in the 2000 s a political window opened when the private sector penetrated the market with the deregulation of the electricity sector exogenous pressure from the european union in france endogenous pressure from social actions in quebec and a more favorable energy context in both cases however this political window was short lived due to social acceptance issues in quebec political will was stronger until 2013 now the social controversy surrounding wind energy has shifted from the local to the national level projects are better accepted locally because of local financial involvement but an anticipated electricity surplus questions the relevance of new energy projects in france political support depends on the government in power between 2005 and 2013 the reduction in annual wind power installations from 1246 mw to 621 mw was due to the major influence of the anti wind lobby on a right wing government after 2013 the left wing government s arrival coincided with a phasing out of several regulatory and financial uncertainties today both jurisdictions are at a crossroads and the future energy mix will depend on the relative influence of the institutional components identified in our opinion key solutions to more sustainable political choices are conditioned by an improvement in the way projects and policies plans and programs are assessed

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

exploring participatory energy budgeting as a policy instrument to foster energy justice abstract the ethical and sustainable production and consumption of energy are becoming increasingly important with the ongoing transformation and decentralization of the energy system for other kinds of goods and commodities ethical consumption have direct implications for and the participation of informed citizens due to its intangibility energy lacks the same levels of reflection and intervention by citizens and those aspects are yet to be fully explored in practice this paper contributes to the understanding of how energy justice might be approached we reflect on an empirical experience of participatory energy budgeting a process aimed at determining how to redistribute a share of energy linked to collective virtuous consumption behaviors we analyze through a qualitative thematic analysis how participants make sense of the participatory energy budgeting process and the emerged dynamics within the local communities and how this process can strive to reconfigure the relationship among civil society the energy sector and politics in order to remediate injustices we highlight how the construction in practice of energy justice in a local community might be closely linked to issues such as the form of energy governance that allows for the participation of citizens and the accountability of the process policies and technological limitations

community renewable energy at a crossroads a think piece on degrowth technology and the democratization of the german energy system abstract degrowth activists and scholars have questioned society s current levels of material throughput and energy use the energy sector is at the core of any modern economy and germany serves as an international showcase for the transition of a large industrialized economy to a low carbon energy system diverse actors organizational models and technologies have contributed to the initiation of germany s energy transition through a wide range of community renewable energy projects the think piece investigates how far these diverse actors embrace the aims of the degrowth movement it also provides a critical account of on the ground realities through six hypotheses and contrasts them with claims made by the degrowth movement it is suggested that community renewable energy projects are at a crossroads while many projects have familiarized thousands of people with alternative economic models there is little evidence of a general change in attitudes towards technology consumption or equity in conclusion a major effort is needed to open initiatives to less affluent actors oppose recent trends of commodification and prevent community renewable energy projects from being engrossed by the dominant political and economic system

currency substitution and the real exchange rate the utility maximization approach abstract this paper studies the currency substitution hypothesis with rational expectations in terms of a sidrauski type model where domestic and foreign money enter the utility function it shows that contrary to liviatan 1981 the approach does not necessarily contradict calvo and rodriguez 1977 furthermore the impact of monetary stabilization policy is fully characterized with flexible and pre fixed rates for an extension of dornbusch and mussa 1975 a brief analysis of the optimal quantity of money is also provided

improving australia s renewable energy project policy and planning a multiple stakeholder analysis abstract renewable energy re is part of australia s and the world s energy supply matrix with over a 100 billion spent annually on re projects since 2007 businesses seeking to invest in re projects particularly in the wind and solar energy sectors may face an onerous collection of planning approvals and permitting processes that impede investment and implementation in this study we draw on international and domestic stakeholder inputs to a governmental inquiry in australia to show how re projects might be approved in shortened timeframes with reduced associated costs the process mapping and stakeholder analysis demonstrates that re supply projects can benefit from standardized approval processes and documentation a 360 deep engagement with stakeholders and expanded electricity grid access in resource areas augmented through supportive public policy and planning frameworks in addition stakeholder objections to project approval and implementation streamlining were used to contrast the efficacy of the proposed changes in policy

currency substitution inflation and welfare abstract currency substitution affects the mapping between social welfare and inflation by altering the underlying money demand function and influencing interest rates in order to explore the essence of this effect i build a model with working capital under which foreign currency is substituted with the less liquid components of domestic money the framework closely mimics the actual pattern of currency substitution across varying rates of inflation and enables the study of an additional channel that works through the impact of currency substitution on interest rates it is found that there is a threshold inflation rate which turns out to be 44 under baseline calibration below which currency substitution decreases welfare and vice versa a practical implication is that at inflation rates lower greater than the threshold the potential welfare gains from disinflation to a near zero inflation rate are higher lower if there is currency substitution than otherwise

currency substitution the recent experience of bolivia abstract one of the more puzzling aspects of bolivia s economic performance since 1986 has been the rapid increase in the share of foreign currency deposits in the domestic banking system that has occurred notwithstanding low inflation rates and a high degree of external stability an analysis of the determinants of currency substitution in bolivia shows that economic variables are statistically significant but have a fairly low explanatory power compared to variables that measure the degree of inertia in the currency substitution process hence conventional fiscal and monetary measures may not be sufficient to reverse the process of currency substitution this points toward an interesting asymmetry where currency substitution increases rapidly with macroeconomic instability but is difficult to reverse even after years of macroeconomic stability

distributional justice in swedish wind power development an odds ratio analysis of windmill localization and local residents socio economic characteristics with a fast rise in large scale wind power development in sweden and other countries in recent years issues related to energy justice generally and distributional justice specifically have become

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

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

the networked minority how a small group prevailed in a local windfarm conflict abstract this paper aims to explain through a qualitative case study how a small protest group prevailed during a local windfarm conflict in south eastern australia a social capital analytical framework was developed to analyse the data the analysis found that two communities inhabited the area for which the windfarm development was proposed the public participation process failed to address the concerns of both communities and led to the emergence of a social network of resistance the network had high stocks of bridging social capital which enabled an effective protest that led to the abandonment of the development their effectiveness was inadvertently aided by the windfarm supporters who were unable to act collectively to defend their interests because socio economic changes in the community among other factors had led to a depletion of their social capital in this context different democratic participatory processes were needed to address the concerns of the two communities guidance and tools for researching and developing the types of participatory processes needed for vulnerable communities with low social capital and those similar to the social network with high social capital are provided these will inform community appropriate public participation processes and participatory planning policy

public estimates of support for offshore wind energy false consensus pluralistic ignorance and partisan effects abstract meeting future energy demands will require large scale implementation of renewable energy projects if one of these energy sources offshore wind becomes a common sight off coastlines consideration of local public opinion and action will be critical previous research from the social sciences has lacked depth in examining the underlying factors that shape public opinion towards offshore wind development the current research brings a new perspective to the literature by showing that how members of the public perceive support among others relates to their own opinions of offshore wind energy we report results from two surveys the first focused on opinion formation relating to offshore wind in general among new england residents while the second focused on a specific offshore wind project in rhode island we find evidence that both supporters and opponents of offshore wind underestimate levels of support among others indicating a pluralistic ignorance effect and false consensus effect respectively we also find distinct patterns of perceived support among self identified republicans and democrats the findings hold important implications for policymakers and developers in understanding the nature of public support and opposition for offshore wind energy particularly with respect to individuals willingness to publicly engage with offshore wind projects

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

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

geothermal energy and the public a case study on deliberative citizens engagement in central italy abstract this paper reports on a case study on the citizens engagement with developments towards the harnessing of geothermal energy in central italy the research has been conducted within the framework of a larger project on the feasibility of further geothermal developments in italy funded by the italian government the aims of the case study research were first to explore the role of public and stakeholder engagement in the processes of innovation in the geothermal energy sector second to design implement and consolidate a methodological framework for comparative analysis of case studies on citizens engagement thus bringing a social scientific perspective into geothermal energy research the results show general support for renewable energy but knowledge and understanding of the potential of geothermal is remarkably low lack of trust in politics and unsure public communication emerged as prominent themes where the common good and community developments are sharply contrasted with corporate and private interests as geothermal energy is included and encouraged under the european strategic energy plan and in the paris agreement on halting climate change the results can make significant input into future policy making by providing concrete guidelines on citizens engagement in processes of culturally sustainable innovation

public attitudes regarding large scale solar energy development in the u s abstract using data collected from both a national sample as well as an oversample in u s southwest we examine public attitudes toward the construction of utility scale solar facilities in the u s as well as development in one s own county our multivariate analyses assess demographic and socio psychological factors as well as context in terms of proximity of proposed project by considering the effect of predictors for respondents living in the southwest versus those from a national sample we find that the predictors and impact of the predictors related to support and opposition to solar development vary in terms of psychological and physical distance overall for respondents living in the u s southwest we find that environmentalism belief that developers receive too many incentives and trust in project developers to be significantly related to support and opposition to solar development in general when southwest respondents consider large scale solar development in their county the influence of these variables changes so that property value race and age only yield influence differential effects occur for respondents of our national sample we believe our findings to be relevant for those outside the u s due to the considerable growth pv solar has experienced in the last decade especially in china japan germany and the u s

a model of industrial pollution in a stochastic environment abstract standard models of pollution abatement assume that pollution accumulation occurs in a deterministic pattern as a by product of the production process governmental intervention often occurs in the form of taxation or mandatory abatement controls to reduce inefficiency caused by incomplete markets in this paper we assume that the accumulation effect of pollution may be stochastic due for instance to the random absorption capacity of the ecosystem furthermore we assume that the level of pollution may vary with input use as well as output level we proceed to analyze properties of a policy for efficient social management of competitive firms which generate pollution

valuation and management of fishing resources under price uncertainty the traditional expected net present value methods cannot properly capture the management flexibility and strategic value aspects of a fishery and may understate its value instead this paper develops a real options model to conceptualize and evaluate fishery exploitation flexibility specifically general models to value the opportunity to either exploit or invest in a fishery are presented they suffice to determine not only these values but also the optimal policy for opening closing delaying and setting its harvest rate the sustainable case in which the harvest rate equals the natural net growth function is also considered concerning the exploitation decision it is found that as could be expected the higher the resource price the higher the value of this opportunity in both models general and sustainable however the resource stock affects both models differently as to the investment opportunity its value is always lower than the exploitation opportunity because of investment costs finally numerical simulations are run in order to illustrate the nature of the solution sensitivity analysis concerning the influence of the tax rate convenience yield risk free interest rate and price volatility on the value of the fishery is also reported

the inclusion of social aspects in power planning a b s t r a c t this paper overviews previous research addressing the inclusion of the social dimension of sustainable development on power systems planning consequences of the recent energy policies and strategies are already being felt in developed countries power systems with the integration of rising quotas in renewable energy technologies however while the tools that aid decision making on power planning show that economic and environmental issues are easily quantifiable and thus modeled social concerns have been addressed in a less extensive and more subjective way implying in most cases expert participation on multi criteria decision aid techniques a survey of recent papers providing public perceptions on electricity generation technologies and projects is presented these papers were chosen and reviewed in order to present a representative array of methodologies that are used to assess social acceptance of technologies according to some of the reviewed papers this issue is suggested to be fundamental to increase project success as a conclusion stands the fact that further discussion is still needed in order to achieve solid agreement among experts over what are the positive and the negative drivers to social sustainability otherwise models will not be able to translate reality and improve it under this point of view

sustainability assessment of electricity production using a logic models approach the topic sustainable development has brought a wide discussion across a number of sectors in our society namely in power systems given the need to address other concerns than the economic ones decision makers must take into account the rationale that lies beneath strategic choices such as investing in generation technologies using renewable energy or rather doing business as usual and installing fossil fuel power plants in this paper logic models were used as a decision aid supporting tool with the aim of contributing to the assessment of the possible impacts of different power plants in terms of sustainable development the analyzed electricity generation technologies were grouped in thermal renewable energy sources ress and nuclear the literature review fed the construction of three relational diagrams to allow the visualization of environmental social and economic causes and effects of the three groups of technologies departing from these initial diagrams a set of interviews with experts was conducted to enrich and validate the logic models the results of the literature review and of these interviews allowed to conclude that the use of res has wider positive social impacts on the long run despite their short term higher costs compared to the traditional groups nuclear and thermal these logic models revealed to be a useful tool providing a valuable starting approach for an impact assessment of the ongoing change that power systems have been going through

lessons learned in france and quebec regarding financial and legal mechanisms to develop renewable energy a hybrid model as an acceptable solution for onshore wind abstract this article shows that the unfavorable context of emergence as well as neo corporatism limited the weight of wind energy in france and quebec and delayed the project development and the wind industry as a whole indeed the level of political will to wind energy development in both jurisdictions is fluctuating and characterized by a lack of continuity in policy or regulatory instruments the efficiency of the pricing mechanisms depends on its political design while the french feed in tariff is inefficient in terms of installed capacity and is deemed too expensive by opponents the first two calls for tenders in quebec fare quite well on that front however they are perceived as unacceptable due to the multinational companies involved and the implantation of large scale wind farms in inhabited areas the third community call for tender while generally better accepted locally is poorly regarded among the cooperative movement and at the national level because of the competition with the municipal sector and higher costs to society in both cases a hybrid pricing model would achieve a better balance between costs to society and local development thus promoting social acceptance through a greater diversity in ownership types and wind farms size

subsidies for residential solar photovoltaic energy systems in western australia distributional procedural and outcome justice governments seek to increase renewable energy capacity by providing subsidies to householders opting to install residential solar energy photovoltaic systems the funds used to pay for these subsidies are sourced from tax revenue or electricity tariffs paid by all community members including those on a low income this sees a redistribution of funds from all community members to installers of residential solar energy systems this research compared community attitudes towards distributional justice or the fairness of this redistribution of funds with outcome justice associated with the environmental benefits of renewable energy a randomised survey distributed in four metropolitan and two regional communities in western australian resulted in 295 responses a response rate of 22 33 of community members prioritised distributional justice 30 prioritised outcome justice and 37 indicated that they were unsure about their preference however support for renewable energy was found with 80 of respondents supportive of renewable energy subsidies and 68 supportive of renewable energy taxation including in electricity tariffs qualitative comments indicate that in spite of the preoccupation with distributional justice in the residential solar energy literature community members are concerned with procedural justice issues in this case procedural justice can be interpreted as government commitment to existing policy the expanded scope of renewable energy policy and enhanced regulations

modeling the bio refinery industry in rural areas a participatory approach for policy options comparison the development of bio refineries has become a relevant topic in the eu s agenda however the promotion of a new industry in rural areas is typically hindered by the scarcity of human capital lack of information infrastructures and competing interests in this context public support is unavoidable to assist promotion of this innovative sector the various policy options reveal some strengths and drawbacks posing the problem of finding the best trade off to public decision makers in this paper we aim at developing a methodology to support policy decision making within the biorefinery framework with the purpose of determining a way to identify the most suitable policy option given the actual uncertainty in developing the bio refinery industry in rural areas the empirical experiment based on a simulation of the enforcement of four identified policy instruments highlights that although subsidies and incentives to profitability of dedicated crops appear to have the greatest effects on the development of bio refinery the best performances are exhibited by technological innovation and information options

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

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

what influences the probability of wind farm planning approval evidence from ireland the purpose of this work is to explore the extent to which wind farm planning approvals in the republic of ireland are influenced by project technology institutional processes and site endowments we use principal components data reduction z score data normalization and probit regression analyses on a unique revealed preference dataset covering 354 wind farm applications and planning authority decisions between 1990 and 2011 notably a unique measure of variable importance is employed that mitigates statistical problems and allows for the ranking of predictors according to their relative influences findings reveal that the duration of the local appeal process decisions of local authorities and inspectors identities of the appellants and projects that conflict with strategic development plans or generate visual externalities emerge as key influences affecting planning approval project technology features such as area rated output capacity and hub height as well as site wind endowments appear to be of less but significant importance alternatively we find that proximity to dwellings towns or protected habitats does not influence planning outcomes

use of multicriteria decision analysis methods for energy planning problems most decision making requires the consideration of several conflicting objectives the term multiple criteria decision analysis mcda describes various methods developed for aiding decision makers in reaching better decisions energy planning problems are complex problems with multiple decision makers and multiple criteria therefore these problems are quite suited to the use of mcda a multitude of mcda methods exists these methods can be divided in three main groups value measurement models goal aspiration and reference level models and outranking models methods from all of these groups have been applied to energy planning problems particularly in the evaluation of alternative electricity supply strategies each of the methods has its advantages and drawbacks however we cannot conclude that one method generally is better suited than the others for energy planning problems a good alternative might be to apply more than one method either in combination to make use of the strengths of both methods or in parallel to get a broader decision basis for the decision maker until now studies of mcda in energy planning have most often considered energy networks with only one energy carrier more advanced energy systems with multiple energy carriers have been neglected even though this field ought to be suitable for use of mcda due to its high complexity many decision makers and many conflicting criteria

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

evaluating the empirical evidence for currency substitution a case study of the demand for sterling in europe currency substitution has important implications for the cost of european monetary union if it is significant it will help to reduce costs of convergence to a single currency this paper informs the policy debate by testing for its existence on a consistent european database making use of cointegration methods the results demonstrate that in the two types of models tested there is no clear evidence of currency substitution in either the short or the long run and that therefore currency substitution between sterling and ec currencies cannot be relied upon as a mechanism or an aid to reduce the costs of monetary convergence copyright 1994 by royal economic society

does green consumerism increase the acceptance of wind power abstract in this paper we discuss what might be termed an action based learning approach to promoting important pro environmental actions such as support for or acceptance of environmental policy such an approach involves promoting simple and easy behaviours as entry points for more radical steps towards sustainability referred to as catalytic or wedge behaviours despite the obvious need for innovative approaches to promote important pro environmental behaviour and sound theoretical backing for such concepts there is a lack of research testing the key propositions of this approach in a survey study based on a random sample of residents of the state of maine usa we find that both everyday green behaviour and the acceptance of an expansion of wind power are rooted in environmental concern and that everyday green behaviour gives a significant contribution to predicting acceptance of wind power when controlling for environmental concern hence the promotion of everyday green behaviours may prepare the grounds for increasing acceptance of more far reaching changes in the population such as an expansion of wind power

social problems of green buildings from the humanistic needs to social acceptance abstract in the past few decades scholars have conducted research and held discussions on green building to highlight their vital significance in addressing environmental economic and social challenges it is recognized that public attitudes and views towards green building may affect its application in daily lives although studies on consumers cognition are rarely carried out the social problems related to green building such as consumers basic understanding purchase intention social and humanistic needs public attitudes and behaviors rebound effects and furthermore social acceptance are therefore studied based on three research methods including literature review questionnaire and inductive analysis through the analysis following results can be obtained i green building s sustainable design has quite important influence over consumers decision making process the general public maintains a high regard for the advantages of green building where better ventilation and lighting is a major benefit saving energy and water are the second rated and then land and construction material saving ii although the general public is not being familiar with the concept of green building the majority of participants would pay more for green buildings over the standard building when they know the environmental impacts of them iii green building should not only be limited to energy performance oriented but also be user oriented the social and humanistic needs model is thus well established based on maslow s hierarchy of needs in the life cycle of green building social and humanistic needs show a trend of dynamics which means social processes with consumer engagement and participation needs to be considered in aspects of conceptual design planning and design operation and maintenance to improve users happiness and productivity iv current user oriented solutions to green building are always based on a hypothesis that consumers are readily motivated or prefer expensive goods for reducing energy use to really reflect preference and influenced actions social acceptance should be analyzed to fully gauge interest and perspective of the people v rebound effects of post occupant building performance including energy performance human comfort indoor environmental quality greenhouse gas emission and workplace productivity can be divided into two stages at present it is necessary to establish appropriate samples methods and parameters for an unbiased and valid post occupant evaluation system in addition the social acceptance of green building framework is established based on wustenhagen et al triangular model for renewable energy innovation all the explorations to social problems of green building in this article are expected to provide a healthy social basis for the development of this green strategy

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

monetary expansion and real exchange rate dynamics this paper examines the effect of a change in the rate of monetary expansion on the dynamics of the real exchange rate under fully flexible domestic prices and a floating exchange rate the model is similar in structure to an ealier paper by calvo and rodriguez the main difference being that in our model consumers have an infinite planning horizon and long run perfect foresight one of the main findings is that an increase in the rate of monetary expansion has the impact effect of creating a real appreciation of the exchange rate and a deterioration of the balance of payments contrary to the results of calvo and rodriguez

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

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

monetary autonomy and exchange rate dynamics under currency substitution abstract this paper uses a two country model to demonstrate that currency substitution is a channel for the international transmission of monetary disturbances under flexible exchange rates in the long run the division of world real wealth and consumption and real exchange rates depend on the growth rates of both monies but inflation of prices denominated in a particular currency depends only on the rate of growth of that money in the short run currency substitution combined with perfect foresight can be responsible for overshooting in the exchange rate in both price levels in real exchange rates and in national levels of real wealth and consumption

balance of trade announcements and asset prices influence on equity prices exchange rates and interest rates abstract this paper examines the informational impact of traded balance announcements on asset prices including equities currrencies long and short term debt instruments and financial futures this study finds that in the 1980s prior to the 1985 plaza agreement for international economic cooperation information in trade balance announcements seem to have influenced only interest rates however in the 1985 1987 period such announcements also influenced stock prices and currency values these influences intensity further in the 1987 1988 period thus asset prices are sensitive to news in trade balance announcements and this sensitivity seems to have increased significantly in recent years with important implications for asset pricing models and economic policy formulation jel f30

five capital impact assessment appraisal framework based on theory of sustainable well being abstract this paper sets out to formulate an appraisal approach in context with sustainable development in conventional project appraisal such as energy undertakings most emphasis is placed on financial flows and rate of return on infrastructure investments although current greenhouse gas emissions are estimated to pose large costs on future generations these emissions are generally not estimated as part of the investment cost other public goods may also be omitted because their value is not recognized we review conventional cost benefit assessment and propose a new broader evaluation this new evaluation approach is based on the theory that five capital value types support long term well being rather than economic growth alone the theory states that humans depend on the size of stocks and flows from natural manufactured human social and financial capital we describe the five capitals to illustrate the value categories and outline an approach to evaluate all these in the context of energy development

modeling of biomass to energy supply chain operations applications challenges and research directions reducing dependency on fossil fuels and mitigating their environmental impacts are among the most promising aspects of utilizing renewable energy sources the availability of various biomass resources has made it an appealing source of renewable energy given the variability of supply and sources of biomass supply chains play an important role in the efficient provisioning of biomass resources for energy production this paper provides a comprehensive review and classification of the excising literature in modeling of biomass supply chain operations while linking them to the wider strategic challenges and issues with the design planning and management of biomass supply chains on that basis we will present an analysis of the existing gaps and the potential future directions for research in modeling of biomass supply chain operations

electric dis connections comparative review of smart grid news coverage in the united states and canada abstract the term smart grid sg has been widely used in both the united states u s and canada to represent multiple visions and configurations of electricity system change in both countries policies programs and initiatives have emerged to promote technological and social changes associated with sg and different patterns of sg implementation and governance are apparent at local regional and national levels this paper reports on a comparative analysis of sg media content in nationally circulating newspapers in the u s and canada to explore patterns of sg conversations in the two countries media reporting about sg provides a valuable lens that reflects public discourse and also contributes to setting the public agenda by shaping public opinion and framing key issues despite similarities in terms of policy program design and sg deployment strategies several prominent differences between the two countries emerge in public conversations firstly canadian sg newspaper content focuses more on implementation and describing people s experiences with smart meters while the u s content focuses more on commercial opportunities with more reference to private sector actors and various technological components beyond smart meters secondly although media coverage in both countries frequently highlights technological and economic benefits of sg positive sg framing is more frequent in the u s newspapers than in the canadian ones negative sg portrayals including cultural political and health and safety risks are more frequently mentioned in the canadian newspapers these differing sg framings could be due to national level cultural differences in the u s considered to be more of an individualistic society there is more emphasis on business opportunities being entrepreneurial and more private sector involvement in the electricity sector by contrast in canada public authorities more prominent in the electricity market than in the u s play a key role in smart grid deployment furthermore in canada considered to have more social support structures for individuals and communities there was more emphasis on the experiences of people this suggests that cultural differences at the national level be a further contextual lens helpful to policy makers and technology proponents as they embark upon energy system change initiatives

sustainable management of fossil fuels a dynamic stochastic optimization approach with jump diffusion abstract this paper deals with a relevant aspect of energy modeling i e fossil fuels management the issue is faced by using purely operational research techniques which are suitable in this context in particular a dynamic stochastic optimization model is developed to optimally determine use and stock of resources to be employed in consumption and investments in a wide economic sense human and physical capital r d etc it is assumed that a sustainability criterion drives the optimality rules i e decisions are also grounded on the well being of future generations the policymaker maximizes an aggregated intergenerational expected utility under the dilemma of present consumption conservation of natural resources for the future in reference to standard environmental economic theory jump diffusion dynamics for the stock of natural resources and infinite time horizon are assumed extensive numerical experiments complete the analysis and contribute to determine fossil fuels management policies showing that long term investments make the difference for the well being of present and future generations

harvesting and conserving a species when numbers are low population viability and gambler s ruin in bioeconomic models abstract in bioeconomic models of renewable resources population viability is either ignored entirely or the minimum viable population mvp is considered a crisp threshold below which a species is driven to extinction neither is consistent with ecological science the purpose in this paper is firstly to enhance ecological realism in economic models by incorporating insights regarding population viability from conservation biology we consider the effects of chance on optimal management and briefly discuss key results regarding population viability as derived by biologists second as a means to balance interests and morality we suggest a fuzzy compromise between the economist s and the biologist s preferred stock sizes

anticipated devaluations currency flight and direct trade controls in a monetary economy mendation for a country facing a balance of payments deficit this advice is often resisted by country governments instead direct trade controls such as tariffs quotas and subsidies are frequently used in this paper i propose an economic explanation for the reluctance to devalue and the use of trade controls namely the currency flight that can be expected to occur if the devaluation is anticipated in an effort to avoid or offset the effects of this currency flight countries may use direct controls i shall analyze the properties of using import tariffs and export subsidies with or without an anticipated devaluation to affect the balance of payments and obtain the social optimum

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

assessment of sustainability indicators for renewable energy technologies the non combustion based renewable electricity generation technologies were assessed against a range of sustainability indicators and using data obtained from the literature the indicators used to assess each technology were price of generated electricity greenhouse gas emissions during full life cycle of the technology availability of renewable sources efficiency of energy conversion land requirements water consumption and social impacts the cost of electricity greenhouse gas emissions and the efficiency of electricity generation were found to have a very wide range for each technology mainly due to variations in technological options as well as geographical dependence of each renewable energy source the social impacts were assessed qualitatively based on the major individual impacts discussed in literature renewable energy technologies were then ranked against each indicator assuming that indicators have equal importance for sustainable development it was found that wind power is the most sustainable followed by hydropower photovoltaic and then geothermal wind power was identified with the lowest relative greenhouse gas emissions the least water consumption demands and with the most favourable social impacts comparing to other technologies but requires larger land and has high relative capital costs

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 optimal control of emissions and renewable resource harvesting under uncertainty a model of a renewable resource is developed where the growth and quality of the resource are reduced by pollution ambient pollution concentrations and the renewable resource stock are modeled as stochastic processes conditions for the optimal harvest plan and the optimal emissions rate are derived the effect of stochastic variations on the optimal management of the resource is analyzed the steady state joint probability distribution of the resource and pollution stocks is shown to exist under certain conditions

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

levelling the playing field the influence of national wind power planning instruments on conflicts of interests in a swedish county slow and complicated wind power planning and permitting procedures have been a large obstacle for wind power diffusion in sweden and other countries this paper complements previous siting oriented literature with a planning perspective on these problems the focus is two national planning instruments implemented in sweden in the early 2000s a national planning target and an appointment of areas of national interest for wind power the paper identifies different types of conflicts of interest related to wind power in addition to the conflict between wind power as a national public interest and various local private interests and analyses the impact of the national planning instruments on the handling of these conflicts in the land use planning process in the county of ostergotland the analysis shows that the planning target actually made local planning officials even more inclined to treat wind power as a private rather than a public interest and that the method used to identify areas of national interest of wind power forced wind power to compete with the combined strengths of all other public interest the planning instruments thus left wind power to fight an uphill battle rather than to meet other interests face to face on a level playing field

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

how to model different socio economic and environmental aspects of biomass utilisation case study in selected regions in slovenia and croatia abstract wood biomass is an important renewable source of energy especially in countries with traditional dependency on forestry resources in these countries wood biomass can have numerous positive socio economical and environmental effects this paper presents a new model score model for estimation of 15 socio economic and environmental aspects of increased use of biomass from the forests the presented model enables selected estimation of different aspects in the whole chain of biomass production preparation and use namely the model enables the estimation of net labour income net profit regional public finance income net direct jobs net indirect jobs net induced jobs total net jobs contribution to forest management impact on wood waste utilisation impact on other woody biomass utilisation avoided costs of landfill saving co2 emissions possible impact on regional unemployment avoided costs of unemployment additional jobs for farmers additional activities on farms from indirect and induced jobs and self sufficiency in electricity production the score model was tested in selected regions in slovenia and croatia and apart from a good understanding of the socio economic and environmental aspects it also enables an overview of the economy of wood biomass production given that it includes the economic analysis of wood biomass production and use the model is not intended for a detailed economic analysis of separate phases of wood biomass production processing and use but particularly to show advantages or disadvantages that can result from planned and existing biomass systems