co benefit of carbon mitigation on resource use in china abstract on one hand natural resources and energy provide the basis for life on earth but waste and emissions are produced during their throughput on the other hand china as the most populous country and an emerging economic powerhouse has taken on the challenge of hitting peak carbon dioxide co2 emissions by 2030 pursuing resource co benefits from carbon mitigation is an effective approach for china on the road to achieving the 2030 goal in this study we combine the computable general equilibrium cge model and the economy wide material flow accounts or analysis ew mfa method to estimate china s future co2 emissions and resource consumption and their co benefit effect three scenarios are analyzed business as usual bau nationally determined contributions ndc and the scenario of achieving the 2 degree target 2deg we find that both the ndc and 2deg targets can be achieved by 2030 without a significant compromise in economic growth with the effect of carbon mitigation china s resource consumption would rise by a factor of 1 7 bau 1 6 ndc and 1 5 2deg during 2012 2030 and the reduction in co benefits of metal ores nonmetallic minerals and fossil fuels would be 0 6 billion tons and 1 4 billion tons 0 8 billion tons and 2 0 billion tons and 2 6 billion tons and 4 6 billion tons for ndc and 2deg respectively sectoral disparity indicates that sectors with high emissions and resource consumption include traditional heavy industrial sectors and energy related sectors for which additional mitigation policies should be employed not only because they offer the most co benefit effects but they also have the least cost

forward looking assessment of the ghg abatement cost application to china abstract evaluation of abatement costs is critical in setting reduction goals and devising climate policy however reliable forward looking assessment of the short term effects of climate policy remains a major challenge using panel data of 30 chinese provinces during 1997 2015 we first estimate the marginal co2 abatement costs using a novel data driven approach convex quantile regression based on the marginal abatement cost estimates and china s plans regarding carbon intensity reduction and economic growth we present a forward looking assessment of the abatement costs for chinese provinces for 2016 2020 our main finding is that all the chinese provinces have a negative abatement cost which means these provinces can benefit from an increase in the absolute level of co2 emissions despite the constraint on carbon intensity the magnitudes of economic benefits exhibit a significant regional disparity because some provinces can increase more co2 emissions than others however there is still costly carbon intensity abatement relative to a counterfactual where the provinces meet their economic growth targets but in the absence of the intensity reduction constraints policy implications have been proposed to enhance the efficiency and fairness of climate policy in china

questioning the empirical basis of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 new evidence from a panel stationarity test robust to multiple breaks and cross dependence abstract this paper investigates the time series properties of per capita co2 emissions and per capita gdp levels for a sample of 86 countries over the period 1960 2000 for that purpose we employ a state of the art panel stationarity test which incorporates multiple shifts in level and slope thereby controlling for cross sectional dependence through bootstrap methods our analysis renders clear cut evidence that per capita gdp levels are nonstationary for the world as a whole while per capita co2 is found to be regime wise trend stationary the analysis of country groups shows that for africa and asia per capita co2 is best described as nonstationary while per capita gdp appears stationary around a broken trend in addition we find evidence of regime wise trend stationarity in both variables for the country groups consisting of america europe and oceania the results of our analysis carry important implications for the statistical modelling of the environmental kuznets curve for co2 since the differing order of integration in both variables for the world as a whole and for africa and asia calls into question the validity of panel cointegration techniques which assume that both variables are nonstationary and cointegrated with one another cointegration techniques would not be appropriate either for the case of america europe and oceania which are characterised by per capita gdp and co2 emissions being stationary around a broken trend similar conclusions are reached when we analyse country groups based on levels of development failure to properly characterise the time series properties of the data by not controlling for an unknown number of structural breaks and for cross sectional dependence could be responsible for the fragility and lack of robustness surrounding the estimation of environmental kuznets curves

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

assessing regional environmental efficiency in china with distinguishing weak and strong disposability of undesirable outputs abstract china has developed a remarkable economic growth in the past 30 years by accompanying with undesirable outputs the assumptions of weak and strong of undesirable outputs have become the focus discussion in data envelopment analysis dea models to have a comprehensive environmental efficiency measurement this paper proposes three dea models considering weak disposability strong disposability and distinguishing weak and strong disposability of undesirable outputs respectively we further combine with the malmquist luenberger productivity index to assess the environmental efficiency and the dynamic change trend of 30 provinces in china from 2005 to 2014 the results show that distinguishing technical features of undesirable outputs makes a significant difference to final environmental efficiency score at different regions the environmental efficiency of the whole nation however does not show any increasing trend during the ten years enhancing environmental efficiency of central and west area is an urgent task for chinese government the change trend of malmquist luenberger productivity index and technological change shows a similar shape technical progress is the main driving force to enhance the environmental efficiency relevant suggestions are presented for improving the regional environmental efficiency in china in the future

the toxic intensity of industrial production global patterns trends and trade policy this paper exploits a newly developed data set to investigate recent changes in the international distribution of industrial pollution in particular the authors examine three issues 1 the relationship between the toxic intensity of industrial production and the level of economic development 2 the impact of oecd environmental regulation on global changes in toxic intensity and 3 the relationship between trade policy and the toxic intensity of industrial production in ldc s 10 refs

the role of emissions trading mechanisms and technological progress in achieving china s regional clean air target a cge analysis in this article a multi regional dynamic computable general equilibrium model is built to study the impacts of so2 emissions trading and technological progress on the economy under the premise of

the impact of economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan abstract this paper investigates the relationship between the economic growth and co2 emissions in azerbaijan a cointegration analysis is conducted over the period 1992 2013 for getting more robust results johansen ardlbt dols fmols and ccr methods are employed to explore cointegration and estimate long run coefficients we use cubic quadratic and linear specifications and conclude that the last one is an adequate representation for the impact of the economic growth on co2 emissions in azerbaijan the results from the different cointegration methods are consistent with each other and show that the economic growth has a positive and statistically significant impact on the emissions in the long run implying that the ekc hypothesis does not hold for azerbaijan the income elasticity of co2 emissions using different methods is found to be between 0 7 and 0 8 moreover we find that any short run imbalance can be adjusted towards the long run equilibrium path within less than one year the paper concludes that measures to increase energy efficiency carbon pricing instruments in production and international domestic trade activities and nationwide social awareness programs to instruct about the negative consequences of pollution can be considered as relevant environmental policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions

environmental and social degradation as the engine of economic growth abstract in this paper a commonly owned resource an environmental or social asset and a private good are substitutes in consumption the households can buy the private good on the market while the resource is available for free the resource is renewable but its ability to regenerate declines with the level of aggregate production each single firm producing the private good has only a negligible impact on the resource but the impact caused by the entire population of firms is considerable in the face of a decrease in the stock of the resource households are induced to increase their participation in market activities in order to raise their income and buy more private goods hence each household contributes to a further increase in aggregate production thus causing additional damage to the resource s ability to regenerate and feeding the growth process given the presence of negative externalities multiple equilibrium paths are possible in this situation social conventions may guide individuals to coordinate expectations and behavior toward a particular steady state one can speculate that the dominance of cultural values favorable to a lifestyle based on a mix of high consumption and hard work leads the economy to converge on a pareto inferior steady state

ecological total factor energy efficiency of regions in china most existing energy efficiency indices are computed without taking into account undesirable outputs such as co2 and so2 emissions this paper computes the ecological total factor energy efficiency etfee of 30 regions in china for the period 2005 2009 through the slack based model sbm with undesirable outputs we calculate the etfee index by comparing the target energy input obtained from sbm with undesirable outputs to the actual energy input findings show that china s regional etfee still remains a low level of around 0 600 and regional energy efficiency is overestimated by more than 0 100 when not looking at environmental impacts china s regional energy efficiency is extremely unbalanced the east area ranks first with the highest etfee of above 0 700 the northeast and central areas follow and the west area has the lowest etfee of less than 0 500 a monotone increasing relation exists between the area s etfee and china s per capita gdp the truncated regression model shows that the ratio of r d expenditure to gdp and the degree of foreign dependence have positive impacts whereas the ratio of the secondary industry to gdp and the ratio of government subsidies for industrial pollution treatment to gdp have negative effects on the etfee

revealing the political decision toward chinese carbon abatement based on equity and efficiency criteria abstract china s economic reform over the past 30 years has allowed the free market to drive economic development however government still plays a key role in the energy sector by allocating energy conservation and emissions abatement how does the government make an equity decision as a tradeoff to market efficiency this is an unanswered question the purpose of this paper is to illustrate the government s preference toward equity and efficiency using the provincial level co 2 intensity allocation data we investigate the political decision that the government made based on the equity and efficiency criteria we find that the equity index plays a more important role than the efficiency index in determining the co 2 intensity target in addition political factors such as social stability are found to be important factors

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

environmental kuznets curve for co2 in canada abstract according to the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis the relationship between per capita gdp and per capita pollutant emissions has an inverted u shape this implies that past a certain point economic growth may actually be profitable for environmental quality most studies on this subject are based on estimating fully parametric quadratic or cubic regression models while this is not technically wrong such an approach somewhat lacks flexibility since it may fail to detect the true shape of the relationship if it happens not to be of the specified form we use semiparametric and flexible nonlinear parametric modeling methods in an attempt to provide more robust inferences we find little evidence in favour of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis our main results could be interpreted as indicating that the oil shock of the 1970s has had an important impact on progress towards less polluting technology and production

the cost of climate policy in the united states abstract we re evaluate prospects for us economic growth and the likely costs of advanced technologies given recent developments and then apply the mit emissions prediction and policy analysis eppa model to evaluate three core ghg policy scenarios for the us that cap emissions at different levels the three policy scenarios involve allowance allocations that through 2050 are 1 constant at present emissions levels 2 linearly reduced to 50 below present 3 linearly reduce emissions to 80 below present the cumulative allowance allocations over the horizon of the policy are 287 203 and 167 gt of co 2 equivalent respectively we compare the results to previous analysis of these same policy scenarios to evaluate how the changed growth and technology prospects affect the results we focus on 203 and 167 gt scenarios because current proposals envision deep cuts in emissions from present the 167 gt scenario is closest to proposals currently being considered by congress and supported by the us administration however we do not attempt to model specific details of actual proposals we test results to alternative assumptions about program coverage and banking behavior measured in terms of changes in economic welfare the economic cost of 203 and 167 gt cases is in the range of 2 to 3 by 2050 with co 2 prices between 48 and 67 in 2015 rising to between 190 and 266 by 2050 implementation details matter when an idealized economy wide cap and trade is replaced by coverage omitting some sectors or if the credibility of long term target is weak limiting banking behavior prices and welfare costs change substantially

is there an environmental kuznets curve for sulfur abstract most existing estimates of the environmental kuznets curve ekc for sulfur which use samples of mainly high income countries indicate a maximum emissions turning point at middle to lower high income levels of gdp per capita we use a larger and more globally representative sample than previous sulfur ekc studies we find that sulfur emissions per capita are a monotonic function of income per capita when we use a global sample and an inverted u shape function of income when we use a sample of high income countries a model estimated in first differences results in a monotonic ekc when estimated with both high income and global samples reductions in emissions are time related rather than income related

quantifying regional economic impacts of co2 intensity targets in china we acknowledge the support of the ministry of science and technology of china through the institute for energy environment and economy at tsinghua university and the support from graduate school of tsinghua university which is supporting zhang da s doctoral research as a 22 visiting scholar at the massachusetts institute of technology we are also grateful for the support provided by rio tinto china and social science key research program from national social science foundation china of grant no 09 zd029 we further acknowledge the support of eni s p a icf international and shell founding sponsors of the china energy and climate project for supporting this model development work we would further like to thank dr john reilly dr sergey paltsev dr kyung min nam dr henry chen paul kishimoto and tianyu qi at joint program on the science and policy of global change and participants in the annual meeting of china energy and climate project and ecomod 2012 conference for helpful comments and discussion 23

privatization of the esi broadening the debate abstract the debate over the privatization of electricity in the uk has been conducted across too narrow a terrain being primarily concerned with regulation for optimality in the context of static if uncertain conditions of supply and demand insufficient account has been taken of dynamic agencies in formulating and bringing about progressive industrial change something of great importance in the light of their weakness in the uk context consequently a number of deficiencies in the uk esi have been neglected in the debate over privatization and are not liable to be rectified by it in practice

towards a national ets in china cap setting and model mechanisms abstract china is moving from regional emissions trading schemes etss to a nation wide ets although a larger ets will be more efficient the literature warns that it could make net permit selling regions worse off we use a cge model to simulate the linking of two provincial etss namely those of hubei and guangdong our simulations suggest a trade off between efficiency and equity as the richer regions typified by guangdong will benefit from linking but the poorer regions typified by hubei may lose this is because poorer provinces in china tend to be more emissions intensive and therefore likely to face a carbon price rise upon linking the costs of which may be only partially offset by trading if indeed trading is permitted we show this and explain why it is the case by improving on the stylized model suggested by adams and parmenter 2013 following atkinson 1970 we find that worsened equity from linking may dominate improved efficiency thus reducing aggregated welfare we advise more generous caps to be given to more emissions intensive and less developed regions if so as suggest our simulation results a pareto improvement could be attainable

an energy efficient future a strategy for the uk abstract this article examines the national and international energy context within which a uk energy efficiency strategy would need to be formulated and also highlights the broader macroeconomic rationale for a more concerted approach it focuses particular attention upon the crucial role of the public sector including both the energy demand and supply sides and the need to review investment appraisal criteria in the energy sector

the middle class collapse and the environment abstract the thesis that unequal societies are harmful to the planet was defended by boyce 1994 in a framework based on the unequal bargaining power between rich and poor our study reinvestigates this theory by removing any reference to power in order to study the conditions under which it can still occur we show that a middle class collapse can aggravate or alleviate the burden on the planet depending on income disparities and weight of upward vs downward mobility moreover the paper shows how an appropriate environmental policy can increase the political acceptability of a social one designed for mitigating the deleterious effects of a middle class collapse through the reduction of ex post income disparities

a general equilibrium analysis on the impacts of regional and sectoral emission allowance allocation at carbon trading market abstract it is critical to adapt to climate change and reduce the overall carbon emissions china announced its nationally determined contributions ndc at the paris climate conference in 2015 the carbon cap and trade scheme which plays a key role in carbon emissions abatement is an effective policy for china to achieve its ndc this study focuses on the allocation of regional and sectoral initial carbon emission allowances in shanghai an impact evaluation on the macro economy carbon trading markets and participating sectors for the year 2030 was conducted by applying a computable general equilibrium cge model the results show that the carbon cap and trade scheme would cause a 3 4 gdp loss and an 8 9 welfare loss in 2030 the carbon price would be 161 2 usd t and 147 2 usd t under the two representative scenarios the allocation of initial allowances would have a significant impact on both carbon market scale and sectoral trading behaviors the power generation sector and the petrol oil sector would undertake the greatest output loss while the metal smelting sector would become the main seller furthermore the initial allowances allocation under a certain abatement target would hardly affect sectoral production but remarkably affect trade behaviors at the carbon trading markets

interrelationships between income health and the environment extending the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis abstract this paper examines the link between the health indicators and the environmental variables for a cross section of countries widely dispersed on the economic development spectrum while environment and income are seen to have an inverted u shaped relationship environmental kuznets curve ekc hypothesis it is also well established that environment and health are positively related our study focuses on the implications of this for the relationship between health and income in the early phases of income growth the gains in health and the losses in environmental quality could cancel each other out and this challenges the idea that as incomes increase health would always improve to empirically analyse these issues we estimate a two stage least squares model that focuses on the impact of income and the environment on health status with environment being an endogenous variable our results show that the environmental stress variable has a significant negative effect on health status at the same time gross national product gnp levels are shown to vary positively with health status variables we find that the health gains obtained through improved incomes can be negated to a significant extent if the indirect effect of income acting via the environment is ignored research findings in this regard would be a useful policy instrument towards maximising both the environmental and health gains that come with economic growth and development

some models for estimating technical and scale inefficiencies in data envelopment analysis in management contexts mathematical programming is usually used to evaluate a collection of possible alternative courses of action en route to selecting one which is best in this capacity mathematical programming serves as a planning aid to management data envelopment analysis reverses this role and employs mathematical programming to obtain ex post facto evaluations of the relative efficiency of management accomplishments however they may have been planned or executed mathematical programming is thereby extended for use as a tool for control and evaluation of past accomplishments as well as a tool to aid in planning future activities the ccr ratio form introduced by charnes cooper and rhodes as part of their data envelopment analysis approach comprehends both technical and scale inefficiencies via the optimal value of the ratio form as obtained directly from the data without requiring a priori specification of weights and or explicit delineation of assumed functional forms of relations between inputs and outputs a separation into technical and scale efficiencies is accomplished by the methods developed in this paper without altering the latter conditions for use of dea directly on observational data technical inefficiencies are identified with failures to achieve best possible output levels and or usage of excessive amounts of inputs methods for identifying and correcting the magnitudes of these inefficiencies as supplied in prior work are illustrated in the present paper a new separate variable is introduced which makes it possible to determine whether operations were conducted in regions of increasing constant or decreasing returns to scale in multiple input and multiple output situations the results are discussed and related not only to classical single output economics but also to more modern versions of economics which are identified with contestable market theories

general equilibrium electricity generation technologies and the cost of carbon abatement a structural sensitivity analysis abstract electricity generation is a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions and abatement in this sector is a key determinant of economy wide regulation costs the complexity of an integrated representation of economic and electricity systems makes simplifying assumptions appealing but there is no evidence in the literature on how important the pitfalls may be the aim of this paper is to provide such evidence drawing on numerical simulations from a suite of partial and general equilibrium models that share common technological features and are calibrated to the same benchmark data we report two basic findings first general equilibrium inter sectoral effects of an economy wide carbon policy are large it follows that assessing abatement potentials and price changes in the electricity sector with a partial equilibrium marshallian demand can only provide a crude approximation of the complex demand side interactions second we provide evidence that widely used top down representations of electricity technologies produce fuel substitution patterns that are inconsistent with bottom up cost data this supports the view that the parametrization of substitution possibilities with highly aggregated production functions is difficult to validate empirically the overall picture that emerges is one of large quantitative and even qualitative differences highlighting the role of key structural assumptions in the interpretation of climate policy projections

marginal abatement costs of carbon dioxide emissions in china a parametric analysis this paper investigates the technical inefficiency shadow price and substitution elasticity of hbox co 2 emissions of china based on a provincial panel for 2001 2010 using linear programming to calculate a quadratic parameterized directional output distance function we show that china s technical inefficiency increases over the period implying further scope for hbox co 2 emissions reduction in the medium and longer term at best by 4 5 and 4 9 respectively our results notwithstanding regional differences highlight increases in the shadow price of hbox co 2 abatement 1 000 yuan ton in 2001 to 2 100 yuan ton in 2010 additionally increasingly steep substitution elasticity highlights the difficult reality of reducing china s hbox co 2 emissions

evaluation of china s electric energy efficiency under environmental constraints a dea cross efficiency model based on game relationship abstract the traditional data envelopment analysis dea model ignores the cooperation relationship among decision making units dmus so it is difficult to evaluate the dmus efficiency reasonably in this study we use a cross efficiency model considering the game relationship of dmus to evaluate and analyze the provincial electric energy efficiency of china the power industry panel data of china s 30 provinces from 2005 to 2014 are used to evaluate the energy efficiency of china s provincial power industry under environmental constraints in addition based on the obtained values of electric energy efficiency clustering analysis is implemented and the regional similarity in electric energy efficiency is analyzed the results indicate that in the past decade china s provincial electric energy efficiency has not significantly improved and efficiency values have a certain degree of volatility especially in western china in general the electric energy efficiency of eastern china is significantly higher than central and western china the clustering analysis further demonstrates that there is no polarization phenomenon in china s electric energy efficiency in recent years the electric energy efficiency of western china has been greatly improved with significant volatility it reveals that the electric energy efficiency of western china is sensitive to the environment the implementation of energy policies should be adapted to local conditions in the process of formulating policies for improving electric energy efficiency the provincial government should improve the regional opening up layout and establish effective coordination mechanisms among different regions

exploring impact of carbon tax on china s co2 reductions and provincial disparities abstract with fast development it is not easy for china to achieve carbon reduction targets only by traditional command and control measures e g the measures for energy efficiency carbon tax is advocated as one effective complementary measure and has high possibility to be implemented for china s future low carbon development under such a circumstance this paper aims at forecasting the possible impact of carbon tax on both carbon reduction and economic loss of 30 chinese provinces a 30 chinese province cge computational general equilibrium model has been developed to conduct the provincial evaluation and seven scenarios including business as usual bau scenario and six carbon tax scenarios with carbon price from 20 usd ton to 120 usd ton up to 2030 are set the results show that china s industrial co2 will be reduced from 12 2 billion tons under bau scenario to 10 4 billion tons 9 3 billion tons 8 5 billion tons 7 9 billion tons 7 4 billion tons and 7 0 billion tons under scenarios of tax20 tax40 tax60 tax80 tax100 and tax120 in 2030 respectively electricity metal and chemicals sectors have high reduction potentials and are priority sectors for carbon tax policy provincial disparity analysis demonstrates that coal production consumption and total energy consumption are key factors to affect carbon tax effect on co2 reduction and inner mongolia shandong shanxi and hebei have the largest industrial co2 reduction potentials after levying carbon tax however the implementation of carbon tax will impede economic development for all provinces therefore the concept of carbon tax efficiency is further proposed in order to evaluate the effectiveness of carbon tax by considering both co2 reduction and gdp loss policy suggestions indicate that provinces of shanxi inner mongolia hebei and anhui should be set priority when implementing carbon tax policy in china and carbon price should be no more than 50 usd ton

how can china reach its co2 intensity reduction targets by 2020 a regional allocation based on equity and development in late 2009 the chinese government committed to cut its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product gdp by 40 to 45 of 2005 levels by 2020 this has raised the issue of how to allocate the co2 reduction target regionally to meet the national reduction target to meet this objective the following aspects may be taken into consideration equity principles common but differentiated responsibilities intensity reduction target fulfillment and economic difference and reduction potential among provinces this paper selects per capita gdp accumulated fossil fuel related co2 emissions and energy consumption per unit of industrial added value as indicators for emission reduction capacity responsibility and potential respectively based on these three indicators a comprehensive index is developed and an intensity allocation model constructed as decision makers may have different preferences when allocating the reduction burden we allocate different weights to the indicators analyzing the results using cluster analysis the following aspects may also be considered together with the national regional development strategy to determine how to share the burden the reduction potential of various regions implementation potential of the plans and promotion of a highly efficient low carbon economic development model

dynamic misspecification in the environmental kuznets curve evidence from co2 and so2 emissions in the united kingdom this study looks at the behaviour of emissions when in disequilibrium with respect to the environmental kuznets curve ekc relationship we use the non linear threshold cointegration and error correction methodology and a long dataset beginning in 1830 in an application to the united kingdom there is significant evidence that not only does the inverse u shape hold between per capita co 2 and so 2 emissions and gdp per capita but we also find that temporary disequilibrium from the long run ekc is corrected in an asymmetric fashion this may be due to the historical pressure of environmental regulation in the uk to reduce emissions that are higher than permitted however further analysis suggests that technological change can partially account for the asymmetric adjustment

which policy is more effective carbon reduction in all industries or in high energy consuming industries from dual perspectives of welfare effects and economic effects abstract carbon emission reduction policy is the main method to curb carbon emissions and tackle climate change however few studies have investigated the effectiveness of carbon emission reduction polices from the welfare and economic perspectives this study establishes a dynamic general equilibrium model with input output structure and compares the effects of emission reduction in all industries and in high energy consuming industries the main conclusions are that carbon emission reduction constraints for all industries have more significant negative impacts on consumption and social welfare compared to emission reduction constraints for high energy consuming industries to be more precisely carbon emission reduction in high energy consuming industries has comparative advantages in maintaining social welfare stability regarding economic effects compared with the carbon emission reduction in high energy consuming industries carbon emission reduction in all industries leads to a larger decline in total output and outputs of most industries however the role of carbon emission reduction in all industries is more significant in promoting employment the carbon emission reduction policies of all industries and high energy consuming industries have strengths in economic effects respectively the findings could provide references for the government to take appropriate measures to promote carbon emission reduction and economic growth

can an emission trading scheme promote the withdrawal of outdated capacity in energy intensive sectors a case study on china s iron and steel industry abstract outdated capacity and substantial potential for energy conservation are the two main features of energy intensive sectors in developing countries such countries also seek to implement market based options to further control domestic carbon emissions as well as to promote the withdrawal of outdated capacity and upgrade production level this paper presents a quantitative assessment of the emission trading scheme ets for china s iron and steel industry the diverse array of normal and outdated capacities was modeled in a two country three good partial equilibrium model simulation results show that the abatement potential can be underestimated if the energy saving effects that result from emission abatement are not considered in the scenario analysis we demonstrated that the free allocation of allowances can cause a competitiveness distortion among domestic normal and outdated capacities given the government s intention to promote outdated capacity withdrawal and production level upgrading an output based allocation approach is strongly suggested for china s iron and steel sector

the economic impact of china s indc distinguishing the roles of the renewable energy quota and the carbon market abstract this study contributes to the existing literature on economic impacts assessment of china s intended nationally determined contributions indc by 2030 a dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model of china that incorporates the technological details of the electricity sector is used in this study two main policy choices including the renewable quota and the carbon market are modeled to distinguish different pathways to indc targets results show several important findings first the total economic cost required to achieve china s indc targets ranges from 0 11 to 0 43 of gdp by 2030 second energy sectors such as the coal mining and electric power sectors are the most affected by china s indc in terms of both sectoral production and price this study further indicates that the implementation of a national carbon market is efficient in reducing the compliance costs of indc targets while the deployment of renewable power helps to create employment opportunities and reduce permit prices in the carbon market in addition the results of a cost benefit analysis suggest that the hidden health benefits of china s indc can offset approximately 42 1 162 3 of the compliance costs even based on the most conservative estimates

can china afford to commit itself an emissions cap an economic and political analysis as the world s second largest carbon emitter china has long been criticised as a free rider enjoying benefits from other countries efforts to abate greenhouse gas emissions but not taking due responsibilities of its own china has been singled out as one of the major targets at the subsequent negotiations after the kyoto curtain had fallen by analysing the historical contributions of inter fuel switching energy conservation economic growth and population expansion to china s co2 emissions during the period 1980 1997 this article first demonstrates that the above criticism cannot hold its ground next we analyse what the economic effects would be if china s carbon emissions in 2010 were cut by 20 and 30 respectively relative to the baseline we found that china s gnp losses under the two less restrictive carbon limits are in the same range as the often reported estimates for industrialised countries under very restrictive carbon limits then the article envisions some efforts and commitments that could be expected from china until its per capita income catches up with the level of middle developed countries by emphasising the win win strategies these efforts and commitments could be unlikely to severely jeopardise china s economic development and at the same time would give the country more leverage at the post kyoto climate change negotiations finally the article is concluded with the argument that combating global climate change is in china s interest it will be beneficial to a more sustainable development of the chinese economy as well as to the global climate

a consumption based approach to environmental kuznets curves using the ecological footprint indicator recent research suggests that consumption based measures offer an insightful perspective on the debate on the relationship between economic growth and the environment in this article we deepen the

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

on the robustness of robustness checks of the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis since its first inception in the debate on the relationship between environment and growth in 1992 the environmental kuznets curve hypothesis ekc hereafter has been subject of continuous and intense scrutiny the most recent line of investigation criticizes the ekc hypothesis on more fundamental grounds in that it stresses the lack of sufficient statistical testing of the empirical relationship and questions the very existence of the notion of ekc attention is in particular drawn on the stationarity properties of the series involved per capita emissions or concentrations and per capita gdp and in case of presence of unit roots on the cointegration property that must be present for the ekc to be a well defined concept only at that point can the researcher ask whether the long run relationship exhibits an inverted u pattern on the basis of panel integration and cointegration tests for sulfur stern 2004 and perman and stern 1999 2003 have presented evidence and forcefully stated that the ekc hypothesis does not exist in this paper we ask whether similar strong conclusions can be arrived at when carrying out tests of system fractional integration and cointegration as an example we use the controversial case of carbon dioxide emissions the results show that more ekcs come back into life relative to traditional integration cointegration tests however we confirm that the ekc hypothesis remains a fragile concept

exploring the effect of producer services agglomeration on china s energy efficiency under environmental constraints abstract this paper makes an empirical analysis of the effect of producer services agglomeration on china s energy efficiency under environmental constraints eee by using spatial durbin model the results show that at the national level the urbanization agglomeration of producer services not only improves the local eee significantly but also has an obvious spatial spillover effect on the surrounding regions while the localization agglomeration of producer services is only beneficial to the improvement of the local eee from the regional perspective both the urbanization and localization agglomeration of producer services show significant promotion effect and spatial spillover effect on china s eee in the east region and the promotion effect of the urbanization agglomeration of producer services is greater while the improvement of eee in the central and west regions mainly depend on the mar externality of producer services agglomeration and its spatial spillover effects are not obvious moreover the above empirical results exhibit strong robustness based on these empirical findings this paper puts forward some specific suggestions for improving china s eee so as to achieve the multi win of economic growth energy conservation and environmental protection the study contributes to improving the environmental quality and speeding up the construction of beautiful china

region division of china s carbon market based on the provincial municipal carbon intensity abstract the difference of carbon trading prices among emission trading scheme pilots may hinder the unified carbon market that china s government plans to establish in 2017 to achieve this goal this study develops a regional carbon market mode based on the similarity of thirty provinces municipalities carbon intensity by the aid of logarithmic mean divisia index autoregressive and dynamic time warping models according to the dynamic clustering result we divide these provinces municipalities into three sub markets that are the western eastern and central markets furthermore we propose the carbon emission modes corresponding to each sub market namely the energy dependence mode western market sustainable economy mode eastern market and industrial upgrading mode central market briefly we suggest that the unified market should be firstly divided into some sub markets finally we propose some critical routes as well as corresponding managerial implications for establishing such unified market

is there a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions abstract we analyze the effect of fuel mix model specification and the level of development on the presence and size of a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use and or carbon emissions the results indicate that fuel mix the specification for income and the level of economic development affect conclusions about whether there is a turning point in the relationship between economic activity and energy use and carbon emissions including fuel shares generally reduces the size of a turning point that is estimated from a panel that includes observations from both oecd and non oecd nations but this result varies according to the level of development for oecd nations there is limited support for a turning point in the relationship between income and per capita energy use and or carbon emissions for non oecd nations there is no turning point in the relationship between income and either energy use or carbon emissions instead the relationship is positive together the results indicate that forecasters and policy makers should not depend on a turning point in the relationship between income and energy use or carbon emissions to reduce either

empirical evidence in the analysis of the environmental and energy policies of a series of industrialised nations during the period 1960 1997 using widely employed macroeconomic indicators this article underlines the main implications of the interrelations between the energy problem and that of environmental pollution using the most widely used macroeconomic indicators in the field of policy analysis in fact carbon dioxide co2 emission intensity and energy intensity trends may be used to highlight the most important features of economic development over a given time scale in a variety of different countries the empirical analysis proposed here covering a time span of some 40 years in a number of the most highly industrialised nations seems to be useful if we are to understand the main similarities and differences in the interaction between the energy choices made by different countries and their respective environmental effects moreover by using ppps it has been possible to propose a more detailed cross country analysis for the different international situations

analysis of the economic impact of different chinese climate policy options based on a cge model incorporating endogenous technological change abatement cost is the main concern for climate change mitigation and the key factor for mitigation cost is technological change this study established an integrated economic energy environmental dynamic computable general equilibrium cge model representing endogenous technological change for china s climate change policy analysis this study analyzed and compared the economic impact of different approaches to mitigation commitments as well as the potential role of technological change in the formulation of mitigation targets and commitments taking into account china s climate policy making needs based on the current international climate negotiation process the results show that absolute emission limits similar to the kyoto protocol will seriously impede the future economic development of china while the impact of an 80 reduction in carbon intensity forecast for 2050 based on the 2005 level is relatively small technological change can promote economic growth improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon intensity per unit of output through the substitution of production factors consequently it can reduce marginal abatement cost and related gdp loss by mitigation at the same time it can increase mitigation potentials and extend the emission reduction amount showing that consideration of the impact of technological change when deciding the emission reduction targets is necessary

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

interprovincial migration and the stringency of energy policy in china the authors thank eni s p a icf international shell international limited and the french development agency afd founding sponsors of the china energy and climate project we also gratefully acknowledge the support of the energy information administration at the u s department of energy we are also thankful for support provided by the ministry of science and technology of china the national development and reform commission and rio tinto china we further gratefully acknowledge the financial suppo rt for this work provided by the mit joint program on the science and policy of global change through a consortium of industrial sponsors and federal grants this work is also supported by the doe integrated assessment grant de fg02 94er61937

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

developments in the throughput income relationship theoretical and empirical observations abstract it has been suggested that the relationship between income and the associated environmental pressure in terms of derived materials inputs and pollution levels may take an inverted u shape indicating a delinking of environmental pressure from economic growth in relation to rising per capita incomes the likelihood of such a relationship being persistent is discussed in the context of a simple macro model of industrial metabolism and the possibility of relinking clearly emerges data on specific indicators of environmental pressure i e the throughput of materials energy and the volume of transport in 19 countries have been used to investigate patterns of delinking the results suggest that delinking may not be persistent already some advanced economies may be entering a new period of relinking the relationships between environmental pressure and welfare in the medium long term may be n shaped rather than inverted u shaped

impacts of urbanization on renewable energy consumption in china abstract in this paper we used the logarithmic mean divisia index method to investigate the impact of urbanization on renewable energy consumption growth recg the growth in renewable energy consumption is attributed to the urbanization effect energy mix effect energy intensity effect economic effect and population effect recg can be roughly divided into the slow growth stage the fluctuant growth stage and the accelerated growth stage the results showed that the energy mix effect economic effect and population effect positively affected recg however a significantly negative relationship was found between energy intensity and recg furthermore the contribution of urbanization differed in recg stages and urbanization contributed more to the total energy consumption growth than to recg this study would thus provide policymakers with insights about the link between urbanization and renewable energy consumption

total factor energy efficiency of coal consumption an empirical analysis of china s energy intensive industries abstract improvement of coal consumption efficiency is very important both for china in solving its problems of energy security and environmental pollution and for the world in addressing the issue of greenhouse gas emissions using a total factor framework this paper employs a data envelopment analysis dea approach to evaluate the coal consumption efficiency of six energy intensive sub industries in china in 2015 coal consumption efficiency is factorized into economic efficiency and environmental efficiency with sulfur dioxide nitrogen oxide and industrial smoke dust and soot emissions treated as undesirable outputs of energy consumptions the results show the following 1 of the six energy intensive sub industries studied two exhibit both dea effective coal economic efficiency and coal environmental efficiency coal economic efficiency is found to be greater than coal environmental efficiency indicating that the benefits of economic efficiency have masked the negative effects of the environmental impact china should therefore pay more attention to the clean utilization of coal 2 low environmental efficiency mainly resulted from the joint effects of pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency therefore enterprises in these industries must engage in management efforts to improve their ability to manage large enterprises 3 the energy intensive industries characterized by coal environmental efficiency that failed to achieve pure technological effectiveness all exhibited input redundancy or output inadequacy of varying degrees while showing a potential for energy conservation and emissions reductions

happiness and health two paradoxes abstract this paper aims to establish systematic relationships between the two rapidly growing research streams on the socio economic determinants of happiness and health although they have been pursued quite independently by different communities of researchers empirical evidence points to very similar underlying causal mechanisms in particular in both cases per capita income seems to play a major role only up to a very low threshold beyond which relative income and other relational factors become crucial for happiness and health on the basis of these structural analogies we argue that a process of cross fertilisation between these two research streams would contribute to their development by clarifying the relationship between happiness health and their determinants finally we observe that the two literatures have converging policy implications measures meant to reduce poverty and inequality and invest in social and environmental capital may improve both health and happiness of the individuals

decoupling analysis and environmental kuznets curve modelling of provincial level co2 emissions and economic growth in china a case study abstract guangdong is one of the most representative provinces of china in terms of reflecting how the provincial level co2 emissions dynamically evolve with economic development during the process of industrialisation and urbanisation the present study combines decoupling analysis with environmental kuznets curve ekc modelling to systematically explore the interactions between co2 emissions and economic growth in guangdong from the short to long terms aiming to provide the referential significance of low carbon development to other chinese provinces empirical results indicate that co2 economy interactions in guangdong dynamically changed with time performing an effect of expansive weak decoupling during 1995 2014 and having a potential to achieve a strong decoupling in the long run the decoupling states of various sectors and their contributions to the provincial overall decoupling differed greatly and varied by time and household and service sectors played increasingly important roles overall the decoupling effect of provincial co2 emissions is distinctly affected by the stage of industrialisation and urbanisation renewable energy utilisation as well as low carbon technical progress therefore promoting co2 economy decoupling at the provincial level should be specific to the feature and development reality of various provinces

distributional impacts of carbon pricing a general equilibrium approach with micro data for households article i nfo many policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions have at their core efforts to put a price on carbon emissions carbon pricing impacts households both by raising the cost of carbon intensive products and by changing factor prices a complete analysis requires taking both effects into account the impact of carbon pricing is determined by heterogeneity in household spending patterns across income groups as well as heterogeneity in factor income patterns across income groups it is also affected by precise formulation of the policy how is the revenue from carbon pricing distributed as well as the treatment of other government policies e g the treatment of transfer payments what is often neglected in analyses of policy is the heterogeneity of impacts across households even within income or regional groups in this paper we incorporate 15 588 households from the u s consumer and expenditure survey data as individual agents in a comparative static general equilibrium framework these households are represented within the mit usrep model a detailed general equilibrium model of the u s economy in particular we categorize households by full household income factor income as well as transfer income and apply various measures of lifetime income to distinguish households that are temporarily low income e g retired households drawing down their financial assets from permanently low income households we also provide detailed within group distributional measures of burden impacts from various policy scenarios

regional energy efficiency evaluation in china a super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs abstract with the rapid development of global economy the demand for energy has increased significantly therefore energy efficiency improvement is essential for global energy and economic transformation in the chinese context study on the energy efficiency of various provinces can contribute to better understand china s energy utilization status and provide policy implications for improving china s energy utilization efficiency in this study based on the super efficiency slack based measure model with undesirable outputs the energy efficiency of china s 30 provinces in 2013 and 2014 was investigated then the energy efficiency of the eastern central and western china was compared and further discussed finally according to the results the relevant policy implications were put forward the results showed that china s overall energy efficiency had decreased while taking the undesirable outputs into consideration in addition eastern china had the highest energy efficiency and the energy efficiency of western china was relatively low the energy efficiency gap among china s provinces was still large therefore it was necessary to improve china s overall energy efficiency by developing targeted policies considering regional conditions

the synthesis of bottom up and top down approaches to climate policy modeling electric power technologies and the cost of limiting us co2 emissions abstract in the us the bulk of co 2 abatement induced by carbon taxes comes from electric power this paper incorporates technology detail into the electricity sector of a computable general equilibrium model of the us economy to characterize electric power s technological margins of adjustment to carbon taxes and to elucidate their general equilibrium effects compared to the top down production function representation of the electricity sector the technology rich hybrid specification produces less abatement at a higher welfare cost suggesting that bottom up models do not necessarily generate lower costs of abatement than top down models this result is shown to be sensitive to the elasticity with which technologies generating capacities adjust to relative prices

industrial energy efficiency and driving forces behind efficiency improvement evidence from the pearl river delta urban agglomeration in china abstract improving energy efficiency of industrial sectors is essential to achieve energy conservation in the pearl river delta urban agglomeration prdua in china this study adopted stochastic frontier analysis sfa to evaluate the industrial total factor energy efficiency tfee of nine cities in prdua during 2004 2016 and then to decompose the growth of tfee into technical change tc technical efficiency change tec and economies of scale sc effects results show that the tfee of industrial sectors of prdua had an overall downward trend during the study period and that technical change was the major driving force behind the growth of tfee the tobit model was then adopted to further investigate the determinants of energy efficiency improvement and test the robustness of empirical results the main contributions of this study to the existing literature lie in showing that 1 the degree of openness local government spending foreign direct investment factor input structure environmental regulation strength and gdp per capita have positive impacts on the industrial tfee 2 enterprise scale and energy consumption structure have a negative impact on industrial energy efficiency finally we address policy implications for energy management regarding their economic and environmental aspects in industrial sectors of the prdua

assessment of china s climate commitment and non fossil energy plan towards 2020 using hybrid aim cge model china made a commitment in copenhagen to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gdp from 40 to 45 compared with the 2005 level by 2020 and is determined to vigorously develop non fossil fuels this study analyzes the effects and impacts of policies that could help to achieve china s copenhagen commitments with a hybrid static cge model in which the electricity sector is disaggregated into 12 generation technologies four scenarios are developed including the reference scenario a the reference scenario b and two carbon constraint scenarios the results show that carbon intensity in terms of gdp will fall by 30 97 between 2005 and 2020 in the reference scenario a and will be reduced further by 7 97 if china s targeted non fossil energy development plans can be achieved in the reference scenario b however the rest of the 40 45 target must be realized by other measures such as carbon constraint it is also observed that due to carbon intensity constraints gdp loss would be from 0 032 to 0 24 compared to the reference scenario b and co2 emission reductions are due mainly to decreases in coal consumption in the electricity sector and manufacturing sector

the formation of cooperatives a game theoretic approach with implications for cooperative finance decision making and stability this paper departs from the traditional organization oriented approach to cooperative analysis it exploits cooperation s functional similarity to vertical integration to examine individuals incentives to form cooperatives a model of formation of a purchasing cooperative is presented and developed as an n person game with the core as a solution concept core existence is examined for both single and multiple cooperative configurations and cooperative finance methods are examined relative to finding core compatible allocation rules the results provide insight into a cooperative s equilibrium output stability decision making financing methods and choice of open or restricted membership

stochastic trends and structural breaks in the intensity of metals use abstract this research examines whether innovations in the relationship between metals demand and economic activity are of a deep nature such that they have persistence or whether such innovations are transitory conditional on a break point resulting from the 1973 oil price shock evidence was found to suggest that at least for some of the metals studied in this research intensity of use is well represented as a stationary process after accounting for a break point at 1973 one interpretation of this result is that technological shocks are not as pervasive as one might have thought and that only extraordinary events have a measurably long lasting influence on metals demand

environmental regulation capital output and energy efficiency in china an empirical research based on integrated energy prices abstract how to improve environmental quality and achieve high quality development of economy have become important challenges for china in the new era based on the klems framework this paper analyzes the relationship between environmental regulation factor substitution and energy saving effect by using panel structure vector autoregression model and panel data of china industry from 2004 to 2014 the following conclusions are drawn 1 china s environmental regulation can promote the substitution of capital to energy however benefit of this substitution in the long run is greater than that in the short run 2 only in the long run can china s environmental regulations have significant energy saving effect technological innovation is the main reason for the improvement of energy saving effect of environmental regulation 3 china s environmental regulation will not significantly improve the structure of capital which makes the economic benefits low finally the paper discusses the possible ways to improve china s environmental regulation from the aspects of forming a scientific environmental supervision system improving energy pricing mechanism and capital structure

common trends in economic activity and metals demand cointegration and the intensity of use debate abstract this research examines whether a long run stationary equilibrium relationship holds between aggregate income and consumption of various primary industrial metals using the theory of cointegrated processes it is possible to determine if metals consumption and income follow a common stochastic trend or whether the two variables tend to randomly drift apart over time little evidence is found to support the presence of a long run equilibrium relationship between income and metals consumption given this result researchers interested in estimation and inference based on reduced form structural or forecasting models of metals demand should be aware that standard econometric techniques may lead to false conclusions

confronting the environmental kuznets curve t he environmental kuznets curve posits an inverted u relationship between pollution and economic development kuznets s name was apparently attached to the curve by grossman and krueger 1993 who noted its resemblance to kuznets s inverted u relationship between income inequality and development in the first stage of industrialization pollution in the environmental kuznets curve world grows rapidly because people are more interested in jobs and income than clean air and water communities are too poor to pay for abatement and environmental regulation is correspondingly weak the balance shifts as income rises leading industrial sectors become cleaner people value the environment more highly and regulatory institutions become more effective along the curve pollution levels off in the middle income range and then falls toward pre industrial levels in wealthy societies the environmental kuznets curve model has elicited conflicting reactions from researchers and policymakers applied econometricians have generally accepted the basic tenets of the model and focused on measuring its parameters their regressions typically fitted to cross sectional observations across countries or regions suggest that air and water pollution increase with development until per capita income reaches a range of 5000 to 8000 when income rises beyond that level pollution starts to decline as shown in the conventional ekc line in figure 1 in developing countries some policymakers have interpreted such results as conveying a message about priorities grow first then clean up numerous critics have challenged the conventional environmental kuznets curve both as a representation of what actually happens in the development process and as a policy prescription some pessimistic critics argue that crosssectional evidence for the environmental kuznets curve is nothing more than a

estimates of energy subsidies in china and impact of energy subsidy reform abstract for a transitional economy such as china some energy subsidies are reasonable and sometimes even necessary for achieving social goals however with rising energy prices and environmental concerns we see conflicts emerging between energy subsidies energy demand supply fundamentals and climate change considerations energy subsidies have important implications for sustainable development through their effects on energy use efficiency and the choice of fuel source this paper applies the price gap approach to estimate china s energy subsidies results indicate that china s energy subsidies amounted to cny 356 73 billion in 2007 equivalent to 1 43 of gdp subsidies for oil products consumption are the largest followed by subsidies for the electricity and coal sectors furthermore a cge model is used to analyze the economic impacts of energy subsidy reforms our findings show that removing energy subsidies will result in a significant fall in energy demand and emissions but will have negative impacts on macroeconomic variables we conclude that offsetting policies could be adopted such that certain shares of these subsidies are reallocated to support other sustainable development measures which could lead to reducing energy intensity and favoring the environment

economic growth and emissions reconsidering the empirical basis of environmental kuznets curves abstract recent empirical research indicates that certain types of emissions follow an inverted u or environmental kuznets curve ekc as income grows this regularity has been interpreted as a possible de linking of economic growth and patterns of certain pollutants for developed economies in this paper the empirical basis of this result is investigated by considering some statistical particularities of the various ekc studies performed it is argued that the inverted u relationship between income and emissions estimated from panel data need not hold for specific individual countries over time based on insights from intensity of use analysis in resource economics an alternative growth model is specified and estimated for three types of emissions co2 nox and so2 in four countries netherlands uk usa and western germany it is found that the time patterns of these emissions correlate positively with economic growth and that emission reductions may have been achieved as a result of structural and technological changes in the economy sustainable growth is defined as the rate of economic growth that does not lead to growth in emissions its rate is calculated for each type of emission and country based on estimated parameter values the resulting indicators reflect a balance between the positive influence of growth and negative influence of structural change and technological progress on emission levels

information communication technology and electricity consumption in emerging economies abstract this study examines the impact of information communication technology ict on electricity consumption in emerging economies the empirical results obtained from dynamic panel demand models show a positive and statistically significant relationship between ict and electricity consumption when ict is measured using internet connections mobile phones or the number of pcs long run ict elasticities are smaller than income elasticities but because ict growth rates are so much higher than income growth rates the impact of ict on electricity demand is greater than the impact of income on electricity demand one implication of these results is that policies designed to close the digital divide between developed and developing economics by increasing the adoption of ict in developing countries are put at odds with energy policies to reduce ghg emissions

energy caps alternative climate policy instruments for china abstract decoupling fossil energy demand from economic growth is crucial for china s sustainable development especially for addressing severe local air pollution and global climate change an absolute cap on coal or fossil fuel consumption has been proposed as a means to support the country s energy and climate policy objectives we evaluate potential energy cap designs that differ in terms of target fuel point of control and national versus regional allowance trading using a global numerical general equilibrium model that separately represents 30 provinces in china first we simulate a coal cap and find that relative to a cap on all fossil fuels it is significantly more costly and results in high localized welfare losses second we compare fossil energy cap designs and find that a national cap on downstream fossil energy use with allowance trading across provinces is the most cost effective third we find that a national fossil energy cap with trading is nearly as cost effective as a national co2 emissions trading system that penalizes energy use based on carbon content as a fossil energy cap builds on existing institutions in china it offers a viable intermediate step toward a full fledged co2 emissions trading system

the role of globalization in energy consumption a quantile cointegrating regression approach abstract this paper examines the quantile behavior of the relationship between the nuances of globalization and energy consumption while incorporating capital and economic growth in case of top two most globalized countries netherlands and ireland by employing the recently developed quantile autoregressive distributed lag qardl model of cho et al 2015 the model is estimated using quarterly data over the period 1970q1 2015q4 the results indicate that the relationship is quantile dependent which may reveal misleading results in studies using traditional analyses that address the averages the wald test confirms our findings by rejecting the null hypothesis of parameter constancy for both the netherlands and ireland the changes in energy consumption are more responsive to past levels and past changes in globalization than the adjustment provided by the error correction method ecm interestingly the findings indicate that globalization is positively correlated with energy consumption in the long term for the two countries furthermore globalization shares a robust long term relationship with energy consumption energy consumption is strongly related to globalization in the long term however the short term effects of globalization on energy demand are limited for those countries important policy implications are then suggested based on the empirical results

carbon emissions in china how far can new efforts bend the curve while china is on track to meet its global climate commitments through 2020 china s post 2020 co2 emissions trajectory is highly uncertain with projections varying widely across studies over the past year the chinese government has announced new policy directives to deepen economic reform to protect the environment and to limit fossil energy use in china to evaluate how new policy directives could affect energy and climate change outcomes we simulate two levels of policy effort a continued effort scenario that extends current policies beyond 2020 and an accelerated effort scenario that reflects newly announced policies on the evolution of china s energy and economic system over the next several decades we perform simulations using the china in global energy model c gem a bespoke recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium model with global coverage and detailed calibration of china s economy and future trends importantly we find that both levels of policy effort would bend down the co2 emissions trajectory before 2050 without undermining economic development specifically in the accelerated effort scenario we find that coal use peaks around 2020 and co2 emissions level off around 2030 at 10 bmt without undermining continued economic growth consistent with china reaching the status of a well off society by 2050

the measurement and influences of china s urban total factor energy efficiency under environmental pollution based on the game cross efficiency dea abstract in recent years urban energy efficiency has received much attention from researchers however ignorance of the competitive relationships among regions results in inaccurate energy efficiency game cross efficiency data envelopment analysis dea which can account for the competitive relationships is a reliable method to measure energy efficiency first this paper applies game cross efficiency dea to analyze the urban total factor energy efficiency utfee of 26 chinese prefectural level cities from 2005 to 2015 under environmental constraints then a comparative analysis and a concrete analysis are conducted based on the urban energy efficiency finally a tobit model is used to examine the effects of 10 potential influence factors the measurement results show that the urban energy efficiency considering the competitive relationship is lower than the traditionally calculated efficiency additionally the urban energy efficiency did not improve during the research period furthermore regression analysis suggests that economic development and city scale can promote urban energy efficiency while government expenditure industrial structures energy prices foreign investments research investments and production endowment have negative impacts on urban energy efficiency according to our results some implications of theory and practice are discussed for researchers and policy makers

how does income inequality affect energy efficiency empirical evidence from 33 belt and road initiative countries abstract at present income distribution and environmental pollution are serious issues faced by the belt and road initiative bri countries and exploring the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is meaningful for the sustainability of bri countries using the panel data of 33 bri countries from 2000 to 2016 we first evaluate the energy efficiency of the countries by dynamic dea model and then adopt the tobit regression model to investigate the nonlinear effect of income inequality on energy efficiency the results suggest that first during 2000 2016 the overall energy efficiency of 33 bri countries is relatively low falling to 0 38 while the overall energy efficiency of high income bri countries is much higher than that of the middle and low income bri countries second the average energy efficiency of the bri countries has declined since year 2013 third there is an inverted u type effect of income inequality on energy efficiency in the whole sample but the impact of income inequality on energy efficiency is heterogeneous for countries at different income levels specifically in high income bri countries income inequality shows a u type effect on energy efficiency while in middle and low income bri countries the relationship between income inequality and energy efficiency is an inverted u type moreover economic growth positively impacts the energy efficiency while industrialization and energy structure negatively influence the energy efficiency

efficiency evaluation of regional energy saving and emission reduction in china a modified slacks based measure approach abstract china s economic reform and opening policy has resulted in china s rapid growth especially in terms of economy unfortunately the growth has brought about huge consumption of energy and increasing emission of environmental pollution little research has been done which pays close attention to the efficiency evaluation of regional energy saving and emission reduction even though such evaluation is considered a crucial method in the fight to save resources and protect the environment aiming at evaluating the efficiency of regional energy saving and emission reduction of china we firstly construct an evaluation index system for input and output selection then a modified slacks based measure model is applied to measure the performance of energy saving and emission reduction an empirical study is done on 30 of mainland china s provincial level regions the results show that the energy saving and emission reduction efficiencies of the regions in china are generally at a low level more precisely china s regional regions performed really badly in energy saving although their emissions results are passable barely to resolve this problem several policy recommendations are proposed to improve the efficiency of regional energy saving and emission reduction of china

correcting the uneven burden sharing of emission reduction across provinces in china abstract although china committed to reduce its energy and emission intensity the allocation of such national targets in the provincial level is still a political negotiation process and lack of a systematic principle from the perspective of efficiency this paper proposes an allocation principle based on the efficiency levels the efficiency levels are estimated by employing a stochastic frontier analysis approach and the links between energy intensity and efficiency are constructed the results show that energy efficiency change is not the major contributor to energy intensity reduction furthermore this analysis indicates that i the efficiency based allocation can distribute reduction burdens among regions smoothly compared to the intensity based allocation and ii the national target of emission intensity reduction can be achieved solely through efficiency measures

information technology and the use of energy abstract this paper assesses the potential impact of information technology on energy use in advanced economies irrespective of energy price movements information technology is expected to raise the energy efficiency of economic activity through its direct application to reducing energy consumption in products and processes and through the productivity improvements and structural changes it initiates which will not involve substantial increases in energy use economic growth will thus be less tied dynamically to the expansion of energy supply and demand than in previous phases of industrialization while overall energy demand may not rise strongly information technology will however tend to increase electricity s importance in the economy

disaggregating energy use cap among china s provinces the 2015 paris climate change negotiations represents the most ambitious worldwide effort to date to combat climate change as the largest energy consumer and carbon emitter china pledges 60 65 cut in carbon intensity below 2005 levels by 2030 to accelerate china s climate efforts china has also committed to cap its primary energy use at 4 8 billion tons of coal equivalent in 2020 this paper proposes an equitable and efficient scheme to disaggregate this national goal among provinces a three step disaggregation procedure is proposed which takes into account the initial allocation national redistribution and inter provincial adjustment first this study allocates the incremental energy quota taking 2010 as the base year second part of the energy quota is set aside by the central government for redistribution purposes while an incremental energy quota index comprising equity and efficiency criteria is used for initial allocation among provinces finally historical efforts and inter provincial energy flows are considered for inter provincial adjustment this disaggregation scheme is flexible and can be easily extended to allocation and management of other resource and environmental targets the empirical findings can assist decision makers in identifying which provinces are likely to over consume the energy quota relative to the proposed allocation and which provinces are likely to perform better in energy conservation moreover the results show that the energy cap set for 2020 is unachievable without further action market based instruments such as an energy allowance trading market are strongly recommended to achieve the energy use target in an equitable and cost effective manner

aligning renewable energy targets with carbon emissions trading to achieve china s indcs a general equilibrium assessment abstract this study evaluates the economic impact of achieving china s intended nationally determined contributions indcs through emissions trading scheme ets and renewable energy policy using a computable general equilibrium cge model we explored the behavior of different sectors in the carbon market carbon trade amount carbon price and the economic impact of an emissions cap and trade on the employment and gdp the results demonstrate that the electricity and aviation sectors have relatively higher mitigation costs and tend to be the main buyers of the carbon credits whereas chemicals nonmetal production iron and steel paper and other manufacturing sectors have relatively lower mitigation costs and tend to be the main sellers carbon trading price and market scale are closely related to various factors such as the emissions quota allocation scheme among sectors coverage of participating sectors and the level of renewable energy development emission trading is also confirmed to be an economically efficient approach that contributes to the achievement of emission reduction targets with less economic cost in order to make full use of this approach policy maker should assign an appropriate emissions quota allocation scheme extend coverage of various sectors and promote the expansion of low carbon technologies such as renewable energy

optimal strategies for carbon reduction at dual levels in china based on a hybrid nonlinear grey prediction and quota allocation model abstract in this research a hybrid nonlinear grey prediction and quota allocation model hngp qam wasdeveloped for supporting optimal planning of china s carbon intensity reduction at both departmentaland provincial levels in 2020 at such dual levels hngp qam can not only help forecast carbon intensityand its uctuations over the concerned period but also facilitate the identi cation of china s carbonintensity reduction target in 2020 and the corresponding quotas for minimizing the total abatement cost two scenarios were developed based on multiple governmental policies and allocation schemes amongprovinces and departments the results showed that the total abatement cost would be 92 07 and98 93 10 9 as well as 180 57 and 194 19 10 9 rmb it is another shortname for china yuan for pro vincial and departmental allocation schemes under the reduction ratios of 40 and 45 respectively furthermore the west the east and the central china would be allocated the emission assignments thatwould be accounting for 48 53 28 26 and 23 21 of the total national emission reduction respectively the obtained results were particularly useful for multi level governments in providing information toidentify the carbon intensity reduction target conducting emission reduction assignments amongprovinces and departments as well as supporting relevant policy making the results also suggested thatthe developed hngp qam be applicable to similar engineering and planning problems 2014 elsevier ltd all rights reserved

exploring the relationship between energy usage segregation and environmental degradation in n 11 countries numerous studies regarding the economic growth environmental pollution link have struggled to determine the effects of various forms of energy consumption on environmental degradation particularly in the context of emerging economies this study examines the environmental kuznets curve ekc for co2 emissions in n 11 countries during 1990 2014 by segregating three forms of energy consumption renewable biomass and non renewable urbanization and trade openness are additional explanatory variables that are used in the empirical framework using the generalized moments method gmm the empirical evidence confirms the presence of an n shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental degradation for n 11 countries this study analyzed the interaction effects among trade openness biomass consumption and economic growth these interactions had a negative impact on co2 emissions levels of n 11 countries suitable policy recommendations have been provided based on the detailed results

china s regional co2 emissions characteristics inter regional transfer and emission reduction policies abstract this paper analyzes the characteristics of china s regional co 2 emissions and effects of economic growth and energy intensity using panel data from 1997 to 2009 the results show that there are remarkable regional disparities among eastern central and western areas regional elasticities of per capita gdp and energy intensity on co 2 emissions which reflect the regional differences in economic development economy structure and restraining function of energy intensity decrease on the emission energy intensity reducing is more effective to emission abatement for provinces with higher elasticity of energy intensity but may not be significant for provinces with lower elasticity the inverse distribution of energy production and consumption regional unfairness caused by institutional factors like energy price and tax system result in inter regional co 2 emission transfer embodied in the power transmission the calculation indicates that the embodied emission transfer was gradually significant after 2003 from eastern area to the central and western areas especially energy production provinces in central area which leads to distortion on the emission and emission intensity the regional emission reduction targets and supporting policies should be customized and consistent with the actual situations rather than setting the same target for all the provinces

sensitivity of modeling results to technological and regional details the case of italy s carbon mitigation policy model differences in technological and geographical scales are common but their contributions to uncertainties have not been systematically quantified in the climate policy literature this paper carries out a systematic assessment on the sensitivity of computable general equilibrium models to technological and geographical scales in evaluating the economic impacts of carbon mitigation policies in particular we examine the impacts of sub national details and technological details of power generation on the estimate of carbon price and economic cost taking italy as an example we find that the estimation for carbon price and the economic cost of a de carbonization pathway by means of a model with technological and regional details can be lower than a model without such details by up to 40 additionally the effect of representing regional details appears to be far more important than the effect of representing the details of electricity technology in both the estimated carbon prices and the estimated economic impacts our results for italy highlight the importance of modeling uncertainties of these two key assumptions which should be appropriately acknowledged when applying cge models for policy impact assessment our conclusions can be generalized to different countries and policy scenarios not in terms of absolute numbers but in terms of economic explanations in particular intra national trade and the sub national sectoral technological specialization are important variables for understanding the economic dynamics behind these outcomes

the role of globalization on the recent evolution of energy demand in india implications for sustainable development using annual data for the period 1971 2012 this study explores the relationship between globalization and energy consumption for india by endogenizing economic growth financial development and urbanization the cointegration test proposed by bayer hanck 2013 is applied to estimate the long run and short run relationships among the variables after confirming the existence of cointegration the overall results from the estimation of an ardl energy demand function reveal that in the long run the acceleration of globalization measured in three dimensions economic social and overall globalization leads to a decline in energy demand in india furthermore while financial development is negatively related to energy consumption economic growth and urbanization are the key factors leading to increased energy demand in the long run these results have policy implications for the sustainable development of india in particular globalization and financial development provide a win win situation for india to increase its economic growth in the long run and become more environmentally sustainable

analysis of energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors abstract because industrial sectors in china are energy intensive improving energy efficiency and promoting energy savings in these sectors are of great importance for the further sustainable development of china s economy using a proposed meta frontier data envelopment analysis dea this paper analyzes the total factor energy efficiency and energy savings potential in china s provincial industrial sectors for the years 2000 2014 from three perspectives namely the technology gap management and scale the results indicate that 1 driven by technological progress energy efficiency during the sample period was greatly improved though the expansion of technology gaps between regions and the decline in scale efficiency represented two significant handicaps 2 the current energy efficiency in china s industrial sectors remains extremely low indicating that there is considerable potential for energy efficiency improvement and energy savings and 3 the sources of energy inefficiency and energy savings potential in china s industrial sectors exhibit spatially distinct characteristics accordingly it is determined that most of china s eastern provinces should focus on improving scale and management efficiency whereas most of its central and western provinces should concentrate on three factors narrowing the regional technology gap improving management efficiency and optimizing the industrial scale