structural changes and sustainability a selected review of the empirical evidence abstract the paper offers a review of selected topics in the empirical literature on structural change and sustainability we focus on aspects of structural change that directly affect emissions and energy intensity changes of the sectoral composition of economies trade and international fragmentation of production technological change and innovation and demand we identify several empirical facts first only a few countries have experienced a decoupling between growth and emissions due to proportionately faster growth rather than greater energy efficiency second the long term shift from manufacturing to services has not led in all cases to the de materialisation of economies and a lower environmental burden exploitation of energy efficiency increases depends on the ability of the service sectors to incorporate technical changes to reduce energy intensity third global trade and energy and emissions intensity trends support the pollution haven hypothesis which predicts displacement of the environmental burden from developed to emerging countries the pursuit by developing countries of a long term strategy of trading jobs for emissions is likely to exacerbate the asymmetry related to emissions intensities between developed and less developed economies the review should inform debate on environmental policy within the broader context of innovation and development policies

a note on the role of energy in production abstract energy plays no role in the standard cobb douglas production function cdpf and a trivial role in a three factor cdpf where it is treated as a third input independent of labour and capital starting from an epistemological perspective we treat energy as an input to both labour and capital without which production is impossible we then derive an energy based cpdf ebcdpf in which energy plays a critical role we argue for the redefinition and measurement of real gdp in terms of exergy we conclude that the solow residual measures the contribution of exergy to growth and that the exponents in the ebcdpf should be based on cross country comparative data as suggested by mankiw 1995 rather than the cost share theorem

fuel poverty in the uk is there a difference between rural and urban areas abstract fuel poverty is a significant policy issue an argument often made is that rural households are more likely to be fuel poor due to the nature of rural housing stock and the more limited choice of energy sources in rural areas this paper uses panel data to compare the level and dynamics of fuel poverty in rural and urban areas of the uk in addition to descriptive analysis discrete hazard models of fuel poverty exit and re entry are estimated and used to assess the influence of housing and personal characteristics on the time spent in fuel poverty the results indicate that on average the experience of fuel poverty in urban areas is longer with a higher probability of fuel poverty persistence however on average the rural fuel poor appear more vulnerable to energy price increases while living in private accommodation or a flat increases their probability of remaining fuel poor relative to their urban counterparts these results indicate policy effectiveness may differ across rural and urban space however they also emphasise the limits of spatial targeting monitoring the dynamics of fuel poverty is important for ensuring that policy targets are effective and reaching those most in need

building synergies between climate change mitigation and energy poverty alleviation abstract even though energy poverty alleviation and climate change mitigation are inextricably linked policy goals they have remained as relatively disconnected fields of research inquiry and policy development acknowledging this gap this paper explores the mainstream academic and policy literatures to provide a taxonomy of interactions and identify synergies and trade offs between them the most important trade off identified is the potential increase in energy poverty levels as a result of strong climate change action if the internalisation of the external costs of carbon emissions is not offset by efficiency gains the most significant synergy was found in deep energy efficiency in buildings the paper argues that neither of the two problems deep reductions in ghg emissions by mid century and energy poverty eradication is likely to be solved fully on their own merit while joining the two policy goals may provide a very solid case for deep efficiency improvements thus the paper calls for a strong integration of these two policy goals plus other key related benefits like energy security or employment in order to provide sufficient policy motivation to mobilise a wide scale implementation of deep energy efficiency standards

objective vs subjective fuel poverty and self assessed health abstract identification of fuel poverty and its impact on individuals is a growing social issue classifying households using subjective measures of fuel poverty yields different results than when objective measures are used moreover there are assessment related difficulties in establishing the effects on health and wellbeing which hinders policy design to tackle this problem in this paper we propose a latent class ordered probit model to control for subjectivity when analysing the influence of fuel poverty on self reported health this methodology is applied to a sample of 25 000 individuals in 11 000 households for the 2011 2014 period in spain where 5 1 million people 11 of the population could not afford to heat their homes to an adequate temperature in 2014 the results show that poor housing conditions low income material deprivation and fuel poverty have a negative impact on health we also find that the effect of objective fuel poverty and other poverty related factors on health are stronger when we control for unobserved heterogeneity among individuals since objective measures alone may not fully capture the adverse effect of fuel poverty on health we advocate policy approaches that combine both objective and subjective measures and its application by policymakers

a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy this paper proposes a coevolutionary framework for analysing a transition to a sustainable low carbon economy based on the coevolution of ecosystems technologies institutions business strategies and user practices within a multi level micro meso macro perspective this builds on and develops previous coevolutionary analyses of long term technological and industrial change and recent renewed interest within ecological economics on coevolutionary approaches previous work has analysed how the coevolution of technologies and institutions has led to the lock in of current high carbon energy systems and how the coevolution of physical and social technologies and business strategies has brought significant material and welfare benefits to the minority of the world s population living in industrialised countries the coevolutionary framework proposed here may be used to undertake 1 detailed empirical analyses at a micro meso level of the challenges relating to the innovation and adoption of particularly low carbon technologies 2 as a framework for analysing the multi level interaction of social and technological elements within potential transition pathways to a low carbon energy system 3 to assess the implications for economic growth and prosperity of a transition to a low carbon economy and 4 to assist in the development of more formal multi level evolutionary economic models

climate change policy what do the models tell us very little a plethora of integrated assessment models iams have been constructed and used to estimate the social cost of carbon scc and evaluate alternative abatement policies these models have crucial flaws that make them close to useless as tools for policy analysis certain inputs e g the discount rate are arbitrary but have huge effects on the scc estimates the models produce the models descriptions of the impact of climate change are completely ad hoc with no theoretical or empirical foundation and the models can tell us nothing about the most important driver of the scc the possibility of a catastrophic climate outcome iam based analyses of climate policy create a perception of knowledge and precision but that perception is illusory and misleading jel c51 q54 q58

climate change financial stability and monetary policy using a stock flow fund ecological macroeconomic model we analyse i the effects of climate change on financial stability and ii the financial and global warming implications of a green qe programme emphasis is placed on the impact of climate change damages on the price of financial assets and the financial position of firms and banks the model is estimated and calibrated using global data and simulations are conducted for the period 2015 2115 four key results arise first by destroying the capital of firms and reducing their profitability climate change is likely to gradually deteriorate the liquidity of firms leading to a higher rate of default that could harm both the financial and the non financial corporate sector second climate change damages can lead to a portfolio reallocation that can cause a gradual decline in the price of corporate bonds third financial instability might adversely affect credit expansion and the investment in green capital with adverse feedback effects on climate change fourth the implementation of a green qe programme can reduce climate induced financial instability and restrict global warming the effectiveness of this programme depends positively on the responsiveness of green investment to changes in bond yields

investing in a green transition abstract at the rio 20 conference the world s governments affirmed a need to transition toward green economies and background reports in preparation for the event emphasized the role of investment subsequent authors noted that private investment flows overwhelm public ones arguing that private investment must be mobilized for a transition however the role of private investment in a major economic transition is poorly understood particularly when the investment is not inherently attractive to investors and must be made attractive through policy we present a model representing investment macroeconomic interactions with classical features among its novel features is a distinction between affected sectors which are sensitive to the amount of green capital in the economy because of network effects and forward backward linkages and unaffected sectors which are relatively insensitive we argue that affected sectors are both harder to change and nearer to the base of the economy in model runs we observe that in a green transition the affected sector lags the unaffected sector with possible implications for a transition strategy thus in the model firm and investor behavior postpones deeper and more systemic changes until late in the transition

giving voice to the future in sustainability retrospective assessment to learn prospective stakeholder engagement abstract there is a broad understanding that intergenerational equity is a necessary if not sufficient condition for sustainability likewise there is a growing consensus that sustainability science requires stakeholder engagement to be successful these two ideas demand some meaningful way of engaging the future as a stakeholder if sustainability is to be operationalized rawls theory of justice provides a model for how this might be accomplished yet there are both conceptual and practical problems with a rawlsian approach we propose using retrospective assessment as a means of learning how to approach future stakeholder engagement in sustainability

economics of sustainability or the sustainability of economics different paradigms this article reviews different views of neo classical and ecological economics on the sustainability of economic growth and welfare neo classical economics concludes that due to substitution and technical progress consumption can be sustained even if production depends on a natural resource that is being depleted if production depends on an essential renewable resource there is a level of consumption that can be sustained forever pollution lowers the level of consumption that can be sustained if production depends on an exhaustible resource recycling of waste is insufficient for sustaining consumption unless 100 recycling is possible sustainable economic development is possible if the resource growth potential exceeds the sum of the discount rate minus the rate of exogenous technical progress and if resource productivity is sufficiently high in addition intial levels of environmental quality a composite of pollution and natural resources and man made capital influence the possibilities for sustainable economic development if the resource stock itself affects utility or if irreversibilities occur optimal consumption and extraction are lowered ecological economics states that substitution possibilities are restricted full recycling of waste is impossible and the limited influx of solar energy poses an additional constraint on the level of production that can be sustained since the functions of the environment production factor consumer good and waste sink are intertwined this life support function poses a restriction on economic growth as well in ecological economics development is viewed as an evolutionary process with continuous feedbacks between a changing economy and environment welfare is not merely the sum of discounted individual preferences but requires environmental compatibility and the explicit collective formulation of policies regarding the conservation of species ecosystems and natural resources

in defense of health based standards abstract this paper explores the utilitarian ethical foundations underlying two standards for pollution control an efficiency standard and a health based standard the main point is that a health based standard can be defended quite easily on utilitarian grounds safety proponents need not be self serving irrational nor ignorant criticism of health based standards as too costly is not always persuasive since material consumption is not the only component of social welfare nor do consumption increases necessarily increase social welfare

a financial macro network approach to climate policy evaluation abstract existing approaches to assess the economic impact of climate policies tend to overlook the financial sector and to focus only on direct effects of policies on the specific institutional sector they target neglecting possible feedbacks between sectors thus underestimating the overall policy effect to fill in this gap we develop a methodology based on financial networks which allows for analyzing the transmission throughout the economy of positive or negative shocks induced by the introduction of specific climate policies we apply the methodology to empirical data of the euro area to identify the feedback loops between the financial sector and the real economy both through direct and indirect chains of financial exposures across multiple financial instruments by focusing on climate policy induced shocks that affect directly either the banking sector or non financial firms we analyze the reinforcing feedback loops that could amplify the effects of shocks on the financial sector and then cascade on the real economy our analysis helps to understand the conditions for virtuous or vicious cycles to arise in the climate finance nexus and to provide a comprehensive assessment of the economic impact of climate policies

energy affordability in the eu the risks of metric driven policies abstract this paper provides a pan eu mapping of energy affordability using energy expenditure shares large variations in energy expenditure shares are identified with the shares being significantly higher in new member states than the eu15 first these variations indicate that a single expenditure based pan eu fuel poverty metric is problematic there is a trade off between a metric identifying households in most need within individual member states and one identifying households in a similar position across member states second household level data from the uk france and the republic of ireland are used to simulate the impact of policy interventions involving energy expenditure reductions or income increases on the recorded rate of fuel poverty these simulations highlight that emphasising high level fuel poverty metrics may distort policymakers choices towards improving the picture of fuel poverty rather than maximising welfare improvements robust impact assessments identifying the fuel poverty interventions which deliver the greatest welfare increases for a given cost offer a better means of policy evaluation

niche diversification in environmental ecological economics abstract this paper is devoted to the identification and comparison of the niches of neoclassical environmental economics nee and ecological economics eco it is presented in four sections section 1 argues that the existing literature does not make the differences and relations between the sister disciplines neatly transparent section 2 critically examines the antecedents of the subjects with reference to three structural dimensions such as scarcity perception problem solving orientation and range of integration section 3 collates the elements and reformulates the definitions section 4 is coda on the essay the divide between the paradigms which came to the surface during the 1960s became prominent through the growth controversy of the subsequent decade the controversy over the need for change of economic theory to cope with the growing intensity of environmental uncertainty makes the disciplines sore about each other the neoclassical paradigm comprising of elements like relative scarcity allocative approach market correction and technological optimism characterises nee the distinguishing characteristics of eco include thermodynamic irreversibility absolute scarcity economy ecosystem symbiosis biophysical approach ecological stewardship and prudent pessimism the niches are competitive and complementary in some respects and thus provide a unique example of fruitful niche diversification within environmental ecological economics we have a feeling that the economics profession can trace out the interface of the disciplines in some policy areas and raise the effectiveness of prescriptions so that this academic species diversity can serve humankind to its full potential

the environment and the ethics of discounting an empirical analysis abstract this paper examines the application of discount rates by individuals and by governments when they make decisions about environmental resource use the paper is presented in the context of ethics as determined by what is good and also by what is right for society since in this instance there appears to be no conflict between the two perspectives in addition the paper assesses whether ethical considerations are included in decision making frameworks at the individual and community levels consistency of discount rate applications between individuals and governments is also investigated since consistency is an element of ethical arguments empirical data from a study of soil conservation adoption by philippines upland farmers are used in the analysis individual discount rates are assessed in relation to income and poverty interest rates paid on debt purpose of borrowings land tenure income inequality and soil conservation adoption some of the results appear to be counter intuitive and reasons for this phenomenon are sought the overall results have policy implications and suggestions are made about how an ethical perspective might be developed by governments to help ensure that decision making criteria are more consistent with the practices of individuals within the communities they serve it is suggested that this approach would lead to greater intergenerational and intragenerational equity and better environmental quality

measuring fuel poverty in france which households are the most fuel vulnerable fuel poverty is a growing concern in france following the hike in energy prices that started in 2004 the problem of energy affordability for low income households entered the political debate with the grenelle de l environnement in 2007 according to the standard uk definition 10 ratio 3 8 million households were subject to fuel poverty in france in 2006 we question the way fuel poverty is currently measured and compare the impact of alternative measurement approaches on the extent and composition of fuel poverty in france then we identify and characterize vulnerable households that are not ordinarily poor but can be pushed into poverty because of their fuel bills a logit a clog log and a mixed effect logit model are used to analyze which factors influence the probability of vulnerable households to fall into poverty the study indicates that the proportion of fuel poor people and their characteristics differ significantly depending on the fuel poverty measure chosen the econometric results show that the probability of falling into poverty is higher for those who are retired living alone rent their home use an individual boiler for heating cook with butane or propane and have poor roof insulation current french fuel poverty reduction policies appear to be inappropriate given our conclusions

discounting and distributional considerations in the context of global warming the economics of global warming is reviewed with special emphasis on how the cost depends on the discount rate and on how costs in poor and rich regions are aggregated into a global cost estimate both of these factors depend on the assumptions made concerning the underlying utility and welfare functions it is common to aggregate welfare gains and losses across generations and countries as if the utility of money were constant but it is not if we assume that a e co2 equivalent dlubling implies costs equal to 1 5 of the income in both high and low income countries a pure rate of time preference equal to zero and a utility function which is logarithmic in income then the marginal cost of co2 emissions is estimated at 260 590 usd ton c for a time horizon in the range 300 1000 years an estimate which is large enough to justify significant reductions of co2 emissions on purely economic grounds the estimate is approximately 50 100 times larger than the estimate made by nordhaus in his dice model and the difference is almost completely due to the choice of discount rate and the weight given to the costs in the developing world as well as a more accurate model of the carbon cycle finally the sensitivity of the marginal cost estimate with respect to several parameters is analyzed

the agnostic s response to climate deniers price carbon with the election of president trump climate deniers feel emboldened and moved from the fringes to the centre of global policy making we study how an agnostic approach to policy based on pascal s wager and allowing for subjective prior probability beliefs about whether climate deniers are right prices carbon using the dice integrated assessment model we find that assigning a 10 chance of climate deniers being correct lowers the global price on carbon in 2020 only marginally from 21 to 19 per ton of carbon dioxide if policymakers apply nordhaus discounting and from 91 to 84 per ton of carbon dioxide if they apply stern discounting agnostics reflection of remaining scientific uncertainty leaves climate policy essentially unchanged the robustness of an ambitious climate policy also follows from using the max min or the min max regret principle letting the coefficient of relative ambiguity aversion vary from zero corresponding to expected utility analysis to infinity corresponding to the max min principle we show how policy makers deal with fundamental climate model uncertainty if they are prepared to assign prior probabilities to different views of the world being correct allowing for an ethical discount rate and a higher market discount rate and for a wide range of sensitivity exercises including damage uncertainty we show that pricing carbon is the robust response under rising climate scepticism

knowledge and recognition of ecosystem services among the general public in a drainage basin in scania southern sweden human preferences are likely to depend on such things as knowledge and information propaganda and advertising and formal laws and informal norms institutions we focus on knowledge about how nature works and how this may be manifested in recognition of ecosystem services among the general public participants and non participants in a plant nutrient abatement programme with detention ponds in a river drainage area in scania southern sweden were asked to rank some selected ecosystem services classified as visible services invisible services and services involving human activities in nature three studied groups of local actors were originally not familiar with the concept of ecosystem services but the concept was easily grasped the results of the study include the following findings 1 the groups of local actors were consistent in ranking the groups of visible and invisible services higher than the group of services involving human activities but there were considerable differences in their ranking of individual services 2 the generally high priority given to invisible services can partly but not fully be explained by the existence of the abatement programme 3 there was uncertainty regarding relationships among and the relative importance of different ecosystem services 4 some informants had multiple preferences in fact the role people chose to play may have larger impact on preferences than the level of information 5 several interviewees objected to the idea of ranking services and preferred to view nature as a whole the results are discussed from a knowledge perspective and we conclude that a widespread recognition of ecosystem services in policy and economics cannot be expected until the general public has gained some critical level of basic knowledge about functions in nature

measuring energy poverty in greece a comprehensive research in the field of energy poverty is undertaken in this paper in an attempt to highlight the great vulnerability of greek households on energy poverty in the middle of a severe economic crisis till now greek energy policy has been considered insufficient to tackle energy poverty issues as focusing mainly on short term rather than permanent solutions a primary survey has been conducted recording objective data of energy expenses as well as subjective perceptions about housing conditions the findings showed that under the objective expenditure based method 58 of greek households are energy poor among households under the poverty threshold the energy poverty rate exceeds 90 existing and new subjective indicators shed light on other aspects of energy poverty such as the level of thermal comfort at home damp problems detected restriction of other essential needs in order to manage energy payments etc some interesting conclusions are also drawn by exploring the relationship between various indicators it appears that households considered energy poor are not identical when examined by objective and subjective indicators however different indicators complement each other by capturing different aspects of the problem and provide a broader overview of the issue

a new approach to measuring the rebound effect associated to energy efficiency improvements an application to the us residential energy demand this paper brings attention to the fact that the energy demand frontier model introduced by filippini and hunt 2011 2012 is closely connected to the measurement of the so called rebound effect associated with improvements in energy efficiency in particular we show that their model implicitly imposes a zero rebound effect which contradicts most of the available empirical evidence on this issue we relax this restrictive assumption through the modelling of a rebound effect function that mitigates or intensifies the effect of an efficiency improvement on energy consumption we illustrate our model with an empirical application that aims to estimate a us frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 states over the period 1995 to 2011 average values of the rebound effect in the range of 56 80 are found therefore policymakers should be aware that most of the expected energy reduction from efficiency improvements may not be achieved

quantifying the prevalence of fuel poverty across the european union abstract the literature and policy base for fuel poverty in the uk and ireland is well established and there is a growing body of single country studies beyond these two eu member states for example brunner et al 2012 dubois 2012 robine et al 2008 however on a european level the last analysis of fuel poverty was conducted in 2004 prior to the enlargement of the eu using survey data this paper presents an updated overview of the prevalence of european fuel poverty in the context of the accession of numerous former social states and rising fuel prices analysis reveals the phenomenon of fuel poverty is occurring across the eu with particularly high levels of fuel poverty found in eastern and southern european states it is argued that there are both eu and national policy frameworks in place that address climate change and these could be used as a starting point for countries to address fuel poverty through improved domestic energy efficiency measures this paper reflects research undertaken in 2011 supported by eaga charitable trust within the umbrella of work examining issues of poverty and social exclusion across the eu which has enabled access to the eu silc dataset

sustainable development looking for new strategies abstract many strategies have been proposed to reach sustainable development a great many of these strategies aim at one type of problem preventing environmental deterioration while ignoring the importance of economic or social goals in addition while political decisions are at the heart of the choices to be made most researchers seem to consider sustainable development as a mere technical problem in this paper we describe a more complete strategy for sustainable development we use the outlines of this strategy to find out what knowledge and skills are still needed the strategy is based on the idea that it is necessary to find consensus on the development of a socio environmental system as a whole and between all people involved it leaves us with at least two main areas that need further study the supply of information and the management of consensus building a formal procedure for consensus building might be developed based on the literature and on experiences with environmental impact assessments special attention is paid to the information needed it can be summarized as information about 1 delimiting a socio environmental system 2 the needs and wants to be satisfied via that system and 3 the physical ecological economic social and cultural constraints of satisfying those needs and wants

the structure of economic modeling of the potential impacts of climate change grafting gross underestimation of risk onto already narrow science models scientists describe the scale of the risks from unmanaged climate change as potentially immense however the scientific models because they omit key factors that are hard to capture precisely appear to substantially underestimate these risks many economic models add further gross underassessment of risk because the assumptions built into the economic modeling on growth damages and risks come close to assuming directly that the impacts and costs will be modest and close to excluding the possibility of catastrophic outcomes a new generation of models is needed in all three of climate science impact and economics with a still stronger focus on lives and livelihoods including the risks of large scale migration and conflicts

objective and subjective measures of fuel poverty as energy prices continue to rise to reflect the real cost of carbon the numbers of households in fuel poverty is increasing rapidly this paper uses a unique data set to explore one alternative measure of fuel poverty based on whether consumers feel able to afford their energy similar to one introduced by the government a few years ago we explore the links between an expenditure based and our subjective measure of fuel poverty and compare these differences with those between official measures amongst low income households 28 spent more than a tenth of their income on energy in the home and so would be likely to qualify as fuel poor under the most usual definition but only 16 felt unable to afford sufficient energy to keep their homes warm amongst this group who felt they had difficulty in affording sufficient energy less than half were expenditure fuel poor the paper argues that reintroduction of a self reported measure by the government would be a valuable aid to policy development

toward consilience between biology and economics the contribution of ecological economics abstract during its ten year history ecological economics has made a real difference in the way economists look at the natural world and in the way biologists look at the economy in this survey article we examine the contributions to the journal in terms of e o wilson s concept of consilience that is his argument that the methods and assumptions of any field of study should be consistent with the known and accepted facts in other disciplines in particular we examine the contributions of ecological economics to reconciling the economic theory of the consumer and producer with biophysical reality

choices without prices without apologies valuing is usually regarded as a process of compressing information about attributes into a single metric armed with this reduced form of compact information the consumer can consider a particular object with a particular price attached or implied and make an informed decision but the process of valuing is less straightforward than we ordinarily suppose when environmental goods and services become the object of information compaction it is possible that important information is lost we comment on the choice problem germane to environmental goods and services and challenge the presumption that environmental choices made without explicit pricing are inferior to those in which hypothetical valuation studies are undertaken

the eirin flow of funds behavioural model of green fiscal policies and green sovereign bonds abstract fiscal and monetary policies as well as new financial instruments could play a key role to meet the paris agreement however deep uncertainty characterizes their design and their potential effects on growth financial and credit market stability and inequality we develop the eirin flow of funds behavioural model to simulate the introduction of green fiscal policies and green sovereign bonds and we display their effects on firms investments in the brown and green sector on unemployment on the credit and bonds market eirin is stock flow consistent and is rooted on a balance sheet approach it adopts a leontief production function with no substitution of the production factors i e labour capital and raw materials its sectors are endowed with adaptive behaviours and expectations and interact with the others and the foreign sector through a set of markets simulations show that green public policies can promote green growth by influencing firms expectations and the credit market green sovereign bonds represent a short term win win solution while green fiscal measures have higher immediate distributive effects that induce negative feedbacks on the economy these results are influenced by the conditions fiscal budgetary and public debt gdp in which both measures are implemented

towards an ecologically based society a rawlsian perspective abstract this paper evaluates several contemporary environmental issues using the standard of john rawls theory of justice rawls has systematically criticized the kind of utilitarian thought that has dominated recent discussions about natural resources and the environment some environmental analysis of late has made use of rawls ideas by focusing on a single aspect of rawls philosophy the difference principle governing treatment of the disadvantaged to the exclusion of other important rawlsian principles selected strands of rawls thought of particular relevance to environmental concerns are reviewed and assessed here particularly the concepts of time preference public goods and social savings as well as the difference principle these ideas are then employed as yardsticks to assess contemporary environmental concerns in three areas 1 water use in the sub humid american west 2 u s federal timber policy and 3 energy and the international economy it is concluded that although rawls clarifies a number of difficult issues his ethical framework needs to incorporate explicit concern for the biophysical basis of society it is suggested that a next step is the recognition that each generation needs to transmit to the following generation a healthy sustainable and aesthetically pleasing natural world

allocation distribution and scale towards an economics that is efficient just and sustainable abstract the practical policy of issuing tradeable permits for depletion and pollution requires for its implementation the clear separation of the three basic economic goals of efficient allocation equitable distribution and sustainable scale economic theory needs to catch up with policy in recognizing that scale issues cannot be reduced to either allocation or distribution

the virtual aquarium commodity fiction and cod fishing abstract this article deals with the commoditization and pricing of environmental goods in particular the practice and social theory of individual transferable quotas itqs in fisheries emphasizing ethnographic material related to the management system introduced in iceland in 1984 icelandic fisheries discourse i argue is increasingly textual and hegemonic dominated by marine scientists resource economists and state officials at the same time the allocation and exchange of quotas are matters of an ongoing moral debate this debate i suggest reflects the politics of independence and equity in icelandic history as well as a deeper concern in western society with the status of money and monetary exchange a concern that has a number of parallels in other parts of the world

a stochastic model for energy poverty analysis abstract so far the lack of a common effective way of measuring energy poverty has been detected as a major weakness in handling the energy poverty problem one of the main causes has been the complexity of modeling the required energy consumption of households as demanded by the official 10 indicator and its replacement in calculations by the actual energy consumption which as is well known underestimates the real needs of households this weakness is addressed in this paper through the development of the stochastic model of energy poverty smep the development of the model includes firstly the modeling of energy consumption at household level and subsequently the transition from household level to country level through stochastic analysis monte carlo simulation through sensitivity analysis the impact of various parameters on energy poverty is quantified for the first time by determining their weighting factors applied to the case of greece it is found that energy poverty reaches 70 4 with income being the decisive factor affecting energy poverty at 63 while other variables htot etc follow at significantly lower percentages the findings can be used in order to assess in advance the effectiveness of energy poverty measures making the model a valuable policy tool

coping with low incomes and cold homes abstract this paper presents findings from a study of low income households in great britain which explored households strategies for coping both with limited financial resources in the winter months when demand for domestic energy increases and in some cases with cold homes the study combined a national survey of 699 households with an income below 60 per cent of national median income with in depth interviews with a subsample of 50 households the primary strategy adopted by low income households to cope with financial constraint was to reduce spending including spending on essentials such as food and fuel and thereby keep up with core financial commitments while spending on food was usually reduced by cutting the range and quality of food purchased spending on energy was usually reduced by cutting consumption sixty three per cent of low income households had cut their energy consumption in the previous winter and 47 per cent had experienced cold homes improvements to the thermal performance of homes reduced but did not eliminate the risk of going cold as any heating cost could be a burden to households on the lowest incomes householders attitudes were central to their coping strategies with most expressing a determination to get by come what may

ethics and the limits of environmental economics abstract the purpose of this paper is to establish the limits of the cost benefit framework used by environmental economists given the acceptance of an ethic of environmental concern two approaches to environmental ethics will be considered one based on the view that human beings are the focus of moral concern and another based on the notion that moral concern can be extended to the non human natural world as well if human beings are morally considerable cost benefit analysis can be legitimately applied to environmental issues involving the pursuit of human well being so long as those who suffer losses from environmental damage are adequately compensated however the application of cost benefit analysis to environmental issues is inconsistent with the moral considerability of human beings in cases where environmental damage is harmful to human health and in cases where the natural environment is so highly valued that the compensation of damaged parties is infeasible moreover cost benefit analysis cannot be legitimately applied where non human natural entities are viewed as morally considerable

uncertainty of climate policies and implications for economics and finance an evolutionary economics approach the assessment of the socio economic and financial impacts of climate change represents a main source of uncertainty for policy makers and investors however traditional climate economics and financial risk models are not properly equipped to consider the characteristics of climate risks and the opportunities from climate alignment being constrained by equilibrium conditions and linearity of impacts as well as by representative agents and intertemporal optimization given the closing window of opportunity to achieve the 2 c target there is an urgent need for a new wave of models able to embrace uncertainty and complexity deriving not only from climate impacts on socio economic systems but also from their reaction in this regard approaches rooted on evolutionary economics and complexity science could provide complementary insights to traditional climate economics models this special issue contributes to fill in this knowledge gap by collecting nine papers applying evolutionary and complex systems approaches and agent based and network models to climate change economics presented at the special session of the research area environment economics interactions of the european association of evolutionary political economy eaepe s conference 2016 by introducing conceptual and methodological innovations in climate economics and finance the nine articles analyse the conditions for effective climate policies and financial instruments to align countries to the global climate targets compared to the costs of inaction this information is crucial to support decision makers in the analysis of climate finance policies and instruments to foster the transition to a sustainable and inclusive low carbon economy

fuel poverty and well being a consumer theory and stochastic frontier approach abstract evidence and conventional wisdom suggest that general poverty has a negative effect on the well being of individuals however the mechanisms through which this effect occurs are not well understood through economic approach in this paper we analyse the influence of general and fuel poverty as well as the social dimension through peer comparison on the subjective well being of households we develop a novel approach to analyse fuel poverty and well being based on consumer theory individual preferences are modelled using indifference curves and a distance function where the preferences of individuals are affected by their poverty status we use the survey data from the official spanish life condition survey for 2013 which contains over 16 608 observations on household members the results show that both general and fuel poverty influence the reference indifference curve but that individuals also compare themselves with their peers the proposed model also allows us to corroborate how general and fuel poverty affect well being and how effective policies can be designed to improve social welfare

from targeting to implementation the role of identification of fuel poor households this paper proposes to evaluate the efficiency of fuel poverty policies by looking at them as a three step process these steps are policy targeting identification of households and implementation of measures each of these steps are costly and can face feasibility problems this is particularly true in the case of fuel poverty policies because of the multidimensional aspect of fuel poverty therefore public policies in that field are necessarily imperfect and this should be taken into account in the analysis of policies this three step framework is applied to the french fuel poverty policy which has been developed in 2010 as its practical modalities of implementation are still under discussion we mainly discuss the choices made in terms of targeting and highlight the role of identification of fuel poor households as a key factor for the success of that policy the general idea behind this discussion is that the efficiency of such policies has to be viewed in a comprehensive way which includes the three policy steps

faraway so close coupled climate and economic dynamics in an agent based integrated assessment model abstract in this work we develop an agent based model that offers an alternative to standard computable general equilibrium integrated assessment models iams the dystopian schumpeter meeting keynes dsk model is composed of heterogeneous firms belonging to capital good consumption good and energy sectors production and energy generation lead to greenhouse gas emissions which affect temperature dynamics climate damages are modelled at the individual level as stochastic shocks hitting workers labour productivity energy efficiency capital stock and inventories of firms in that aggregate damages emerge from the aggregation of losses suffered by heterogeneous interacting and boundedly rational agents the model is run focusing on a business as usual carbon intensive scenario consistent with a representative concentration pathway 8 5 we find that the dsk model is able to account for a wide ensemble of micro and macro empirical regularities concerning both economic and climate dynamics simulation experiments show a substantial lack of isomorphism between the effects of micro and macro level shocks as it is typical in complex system models in particular different types of shocks have heterogeneous impact on output growth unemployment rate and the likelihood of economic crises pointing to the importance of the different economic channel affected by the shock overall we report much larger climate damages than those projected by standard iams under comparable scenarios suggesting possible shifts in the growth dynamics from a self sustained pattern to stagnation and high volatility and the need of urgent policy interventions

analysis of energy poverty intensity from the perspective of the regional administration empirical evidence from households in southern europe abstract the current economic situation has increased the number of households in europe experiencing restrictions and or limitations of affordability of energy services demonstrating the urgent need to intervene in those extreme cases in which households suffer the daily consequences of what is internationally defined as energy poverty in such a context this paper presents the results obtained in a case study characterising a sample of 615 households with demonstrated energy poverty in the region of aragon spain in parallel the intensity of energy poverty in the studied cases is examined by measuring the percentage of energy expenditures with respect to income in the households that suffer it and a descriptive analysis of the main determinants of energy poverty in the homes studied is presented as well as the policy implication at regional level

definitions of fuel poverty implications for policy abstract this paper outlines why the definition of fuel poverty is important in policy formulation and describes how the government s current definitions evolved from the original concept it discusses the determination of income and fuel costs and the possibilities for a relative and common european measure it examines problems inherent in assessing fuel costs as a percentage of income and puts forward the arguments for a budget standard approach the paper illustrates how the size of the problem depends on the definition and chosen threshold and suggests advantages for a rating scale it illustrates how the income composition and thresholds also govern the distribution of the target populations and the relative importance of the main causal factors and examines the consequent policy implications it explores the definition of vulnerable households and the importance of severity and questions whether the uk fuel poverty strategy is targeted at households least able to afford their fuel costs as the name implies or primarily those at risk from excess winter and summer mortality and morbidity finally after examining the role of supplementary indicators it looks at the opportunities for changing the definition and comments on the government review of the definition and targets

women nature and the social construction of economic man abstract this paper argues that the social construction economic man is the product of a hierarchical dualism in western society that has also created rational man and scientific man women and the natural world form the subordinated half of these dualisms central to this paper is the claim that this dualism is not only a cultural theoretical one but also a material one the social construction of economic man is the product of a bifurcated knowledge system and a materially divided society economic man reflects a society in which the embeddedness and embodiedness of humanity is hidden by the division of mind from body and science culture from the natural world for this reason it is not possible to incorporate women and nature into the economy through the commodity form by according them a value as price it is argued that the economic system can only exist if women and nature remain externalised as women form the bridge between an autonomous individualised man and the biological ecological underpinning of his existence central to this analysis is the distinction between social and natural biological time economic man lives in social time clock time while women are responsible for biological time this is not because women are closer to nature biology in an essential sense rather this relationship is imposed upon them by a male dominated society

sustainable development an institutional approach abstract our common future documented that the prevailing patterns of economic growth are ecologically not viable a new economic policy is likely to be needed this new policy might not be compatible with predominent neoclassical economic views the notion of sustainable development will have to be adequately incorporated into economic theory with repercussions for among other things i the treatment of natural resources as factors of production as well as welfare determinants ii valuation theory iii the evaluation of market forces the dutch abatement policy regarding acid rain is analysed in this respect it proved that the dutch government gave more attention to the growth of industrial production including the polluting ones than to sound protection of the environment it is argued that the integration of natural resources into the framework of economic theory is a prerequisite for environmental policy

energy affordability and the benefits system in italy abstract in this paper we discuss a number of ways to define and measure the affordability of energy consumption and we examine the emergence of energy poverty in italy in the period from 1998 to 2011 the paper examines the eligibility criteria for claiming the benefits available to support energy consumption for vulnerable families and it identifies the potential beneficiaries the study assesses the appropriateness of the eligibility criteria by comparing the population targeted by the policy with the population actually facing affordability problems a simulation exercise using the hypothetical scenario most likely to result in energy benefits being made available shows that regardless of the affordability index adopted the provision of state energy benefits has little impact on fuel poverty

limits to environmental bonds abstract bonds have recently been promoted as an alternative tool to control environmental damages particularly in those instances when the innovative activities of a firm have uncertain future impacts under this mechanism a firm would post a bond ex ante forfeiting all or a portion of the bond if its activities harmed environmental resources while the benefits of bonds have been developed there has been little systematic effort to explore their limitations in contrast the labor literature has extensively studied the limits of bonds as a mechanism to prevent worker shirking using insights from this parallel problem this paper explores the limits to environmental bonds focusing on the problems of moral hazard liquidity constraints and legal restrictions each limit offers a challenge to the success of environmental bonds we explore the use of bonds in surface mining and agricultural nonpoint pollution as motivating examples we also consider how other incentive schemes suggested by the labor literature might prove useful in the context of environmental management we consider the labor mechanisms of efficiency wages increasing wage profiles trust funds and rank order tournaments

the usury debate the sustainability debate and the call for a moral economy abstract this article attempts to contribute ethical to perspectives on sustainability initiatives by comparing the relationship between economy and society in the usury debate in early modern england and the sustainability debate in the late 20th century this comparison highlights is the changing relationship between economy and society has been a self conscious and hotly debated struggle among various groups at various times in history the article concludes that if sustainability is going to be a viable ethical project it may have to reclaim access to social and political relations which have been increasingly privatized in market economy throughout the modern period

contrasting approaches to fuel poverty in new zealand we contrast two measures of fuel poverty in new zealand the first is based on estimated expenditure of over 10 of household income on fuel the second is self reported deprivation of fuel because of an inability to afford it households denoted as fuel poor on the two measures are mostly different and the findings suggest that research is needed to investigate if different households make different trade offs between expenditure on fuel and other necessities

from the ground up ecofeminism and ecological economics abstract speaking from the margins ecofeminist analysis exposes many of the assumptions of neoclassical economics as gender biased and as anti ecological it identifies the abstract individual of neoclassical economics as a privileged male individual whose apparent autonomy is predicated on the oppression of women marginal people and nature thus ecofeminists tell a different story about economic man from the grounds of others experience up ecofeminism points to the limits of models of sustainability built on extending market rationality to non market spheres of life ecofeminist economics contains a creative tension between a commitment to social justice and a determination not to colonize the wild

measurement of spatial socioeconomic impact of energy poverty abstract this article presents a spatial analysis of the evolution of energy poverty in spanish households and aims to measure the socioeconomic impact of energy poverty the economic financial measurement of palliative measures implemented and social perceptions of energy poverty are also dimensioned in order to analyse holistically the economic financial and social impact of energy poverty at a territorial level a statistical analysis of the financial aids has been conducted and the perception of technicians employed by both the public and the private sectors who work with affected households has been compiled in addition this paper explores the relationship between media coverage and the economic financial impact at territorial level to this goal 259 newspaper articles about energy poverty were classified and analysed to examine the socio genesis of the problem of energy poverty the measurement of the socio economics impact of energy poverty in households in a territory represents the spatial dimension of the problem for the definition of local energy policies taking into consideration the evolution of different measures implemented over time their limitations scope and flexibility

environmental sustainability as the first principle of distributive justice towards an ecological communitarian normative foundation for ecological economics abstract the ecological economic concern with environmental sustainability embodies the normative orientations of the field this concern is foremost a matter of distributive justice the definition of which determines the relevance of the appropriate scale and efficient allocation criteria yet it would appear that the discipline lacks a shared internally consistent set of ethical premises by which this concern might be legitimized various authors have embraced a rawlsian conception of liberal justice as the appropriate banner for ecological economics in place of the consequentialist libertarian foundations of neoclassical economics including environmental economics it is argued here that this is insufficient in so far as it is premised on a vision of a discrete self sufficient economic actor instead it is posited that an ecological economic ethic must proceed from an understanding of the economic actor as community member a recognition implicit in recent ecological economic contributions focused on discourse ethics and deliberative democracy an ecological communitarian conception of distributive justice which views the well being of the individual as inseparable from the integrity of its implicate mutually constituting human and non human natural communities is advanced as the appropriate basis for the ecological economic world view in this light the thermodynamic foundations of ecological economics are seen to provide the necessary departure point for normative decision making oriented towards ensuring sustainability in economic organization

the paretian liberal paradox and ecological economics abstract two of the most basic considerations in collective choice are the pareto principle and some minimal protection of individual rights in his impossibility theorem sen 1970 shows that there is a potential inconsistency between preference sovereignty as expressed by the pareto condition and the protection of minimal rights a liberal or liberty condition the paretian liberal paradox plp and the extensive debate surrounding it prompts serious reconsideration of the traditional welfare economics approach the critique of welfarism made by the plp is of central importance for environmental issues given pervasive externalities missing markets uncertainty and potential irreversibilities making collective choice decisions on these issues may require using explicit non utility information and restricting individual preference sovereignty we explore the implications of the plp for long term environmental policy and the transdisciplinary field of ecological economics as a simple pedagogical device relying on sparse principles the plp stimulates an increased awareness of the potential conflict between preferences and rights recognition of the plp focuses attention on what counts as admissible information in collective choice rules for example consideration of the plp illuminates differences in the informational requirements of alternative sustainability concepts

on modeling and interpreting the economics of catastrophic climate change with climate change as prototype example this paper analyzes the implications of structural uncertainty for the economics of low probability high impact catastrophes even when updated by bayesian learning uncertain structural parameters induce a critical tail fattening of posterior predictive distributions such fattened tails have strong im plications for situations like climate change where a catastrophe is theoretically possible because prior knowledge cannot place sufficiently narrow bounds on overall damages this paper shows that the economic consequences of fat tailed structural uncertainty along with unsureness about high temperature damages can readily outweigh the effects of discounting in climate change policy analysis

intergenerational equity and environmental decisions a model using rawls veil of ignorance abstract four general strategies for resource use exploitationism conservationism naturalist preservationism and extensionist preservationism are sketched and a two step model for deciding resource policy issues is proposed the model based on a modification of rawls hypothetical rational decision model posits a self interested chooser who decides the rules constituting a fair society in the first stage the chooser places pre emptive constraints on each generation s use of resources these constraints embodying leopold s conception of whole ecosystem health limit the options available to individuals of any generation in the pursuit of economic welfare in the second stage each generation may choose a strategy of resource use from those possibilities fulfilling the first stage constraints it is argued that a exploitationism is not in general an acceptable strategy because it violates constraints that would be imposed on all generations by a chooser who is ignorant regarding the generation he will inhabit b extensionist preservation which recognizes values inherent in wild species and natural ecosystems provides no operationalizable guide for environmental policy c conservationism fails to protect the biotic heritage of future generations because applications of the sustainable yield criterion can cause simplification and eventual breakdowns of natural ecosystems and therefore d a broadly naturalist preservationist strategy which imposes constraints on the pervasive exploitation of ecological systems and thereby protects biological diversity in the long run would be chosen by the rational chooser who is ignorant of the generation he will inhabit