Abstract
The International Energy Agency’s annual energy projections. Based on scenarios, these projections compare what will happen if policies remain the same and what might happen if policies were improved. Each edition tends to have a particular geographical or policy focus.
... In 2011, the electrification rate in North Africa reached 99%; in sub-Saharan Africa, it was just 32%. Less than 10% of the population in places like Chad, Central African Republic, and Somalia have access to power, making the situation much worse in these countries (IEA, 2019). ...
Unlike previous studies which focused on the economic effects of infrastructures, this paper contributes to the literature by analysing the contribution of infrastructure development to well-being, considered the aim of all efforts. The paper uses composite infrastructure indexes from the African Development Bank, to capture infrastructure quality and the life ladder index as proxy for subjective well-being on a sample of 29 African countries during the 2007–2018 period. Estimates are done using panel corrected standard errors, Tobit regression, and the generalised method of moments. Results show that infrastructure development boosts the well-being of Africans. Further analysis at the disaggregated level shows that information and communication technology (ICT) and electricity are the main drivers of happiness in the region. After testing for possible mediators, human capital is found to be the main channel through which infrastructure development enhance subjective well-being in Africa. Therefore, policies aiming to promote the well-being of Africans should consider investments in infrastructure development, especially ICT, electricity, transport, water supply, and sanitation services. This would in turn improve the performance of institutions and human capital, contributing to the well-being of Africans.
... Hydroelectric power is a feasible option for meeting the rapidly increasing demand for electricity while curbing carbon dioxide emissions. According to the New Policies Scenario (Note 1) modeled by the International Energy Agency (IEA), hydropower generation capacity in the Asia-Pacific region (excluding China) will increase from 1,657 TWh to 2,634 TWh during 2017-2040(IEA, 2018a. In order to achieve the internationally agreed-upon sustainable development goals related to energy, as modeled in IEA's Sustainable Development Scenario (SDS) (Note 2), the capacity will have to further expand to 3,115 TWh (IEA, 2018a). ...
This special issue features case studies carried out in Indonesia, Japan, and Sri Lanka, in which at least one of the following issues was observed and studied: (a) long-term (a few to several decades) implications of resettlement on livelihood re-establishment, (b) resettlement from rural areas with agriculture- or forestry-based economies to cities, and (c) gender issues associated with resettlement and livelihood re-establishment. These case studies were conducted for the purpose of examining how the planning and operation of the resettlement process affected residents reconstructing their livelihood. We conclude that there is still room for improvement in how compensation for resettlers and their livelihood re-establishment should be addressed by dam developers. We found that very limited attention has been paid to the gender issue in designing and implementing compensation packages for resettlers. And we also note that resettlers are not the only populations that need to be cared for. Dam construction also has an impact on non-resettlers in the project command area whose assets are not submerged. Their livelihood tends to be worse off after completion of a dam and reservoir. Infrastructure development in the project command area, particularly improvement of traffic systems, should be undertaken both for non-resettlers and resettlers who need or decide to live in the same area as before the construction.
This study aims to provide insights into the factors shaping electricity demand in Swedish industrial sectors using the nonlinear version of the autoregressive distributed lag model (NARDL). This approach captures the complex short- and long-run relationships between uncertainty and electric power use in Swedish industrial sectors. The results reveal sector-specific responses to uncertainties and asymmetries in electricity use patterns. By examining the entire industrial sector in Sweden, this approach uncovers underlying issues and hidden patterns, while also providing insights into the functioning and behaviour of industrial systems. The rapid electrification and new green industrialisation initiatives in Sweden, coupled with the integration of a circular economy, underscore the importance of understanding the dynamics of electricity use in the face of uncertain shocks. This knowledge is vital for ensuring, amongst other things, grid stability, mitigating the need for costly peaking capacity, and identifying potential challenges in the interconnection of energy and material circular flows.
Offshore wind is planned to become the first source of energy by 2050. That requires installing turbines in deeper seas. It is shown that only floating wind turbines will allow dealing with this challenge while keeping a reasonable cost of energy production and transport according to the levelized cost of electricity. A Floating Offshore Substation will be needed in many sites. This technology is still at a low technology readiness level. This paper aims to analyze the system reliability of such a structure for which the failure rates of structural components such as mooring lines and dynamic power cables are close to the ones of electro-technical systems. Consequently, only a system reliability assessment of the floating offshore substation will allow accurately quantifying its availability and the most sensitive components. Usually, structural reliability aims at quantifying the probability of failures, while electro-technical reliability relies on feedback and observed failure rates. The paper first unifies these two concepts in a single formulation and then evaluates the system’s reliability and availability. This methodology is illustrated in a study case localized in the French coasts of the Mediterranean Sea, where the effect of several mooring and substation designs on the system reliability is compared.
This article analyzes the association between earnings management and investor protection during banking crises. Using a sample of firms from 16 European countries for the period 2006–2018, we show that, as banking conditions worsen, firms are more likely to manage earnings upward in countries with a stronger institutional environment, where alternative sources of financing are better available and more accessible. Moreover, we show that this strategy is successful because these firms are able to raise relatively more equity financing.
JEL Classification
M41, G14
The policy debate on the effects of urbanization, demographic dividend and biomass energy consumption on human development in Africa has long suffered from a scarcity of empirical evidence. This study, therefore, explores the relationship between urbanization, demographic dividend, biomass energy consumption and human development (measured by the human development index, human capital, life expectancy and infant mortality) in 33 African countries between 1990 and 2019. We employ Driscoll‐Kraay, instrumental variable and the panel quantile regression methods. We find that an increase in urbanization, demographic dividend and biomass energy consumption leads to a higher level of human development. Accounting for different facets of human development such as education (human capital) and health (life expectancy and infant mortality), the results show that urbanization and biomass energy consumption improve education and health. The results also show that while demographic dividend improves education and infant mortality, its effect on life expectancy is negative and significant. These findings are robust for reliable and consistent policy directives.
As the majority of fossil fuel carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions originate from cities, the use of novel techniques to leverage available satellite observations of CO2 and proxy species to constrain urban CO2 is of great importance. In this study, we seek to empirically determine relationships between satellite observations of CO2 and the proxy species nitrogen dioxide (NO2), applying these relationships to NO2 fields to generate NO2‐derived CO2 fields (NDCFs) from which CO2 emissions can be estimated. We first establish this method using simulations of CO2 and NO2 for the cities of Buenos Aires, Melbourne, and Mexico City, finding that the method is viable throughout the year. For the same three cities, we next calculate empirical relationships (slopes) between co‐located observations of NO2 from the Tropospheric Monitoring Instrument and Snapshot Area Mode observations of CO2 from Orbiting Carbon Observatory‐3. Applying varying combinations of slopes to generate NDCFs, we evaluate methodological uncertainties for each slope application method and use a simple mass balance method to estimate CO2 emissions from NDCFs. We demonstrate monthly urban CO2 emissions estimates that are comparable to emissions inventory estimates. We additionally prove the utility of our method by demonstrating how large uncertainties at a grid cell level (equivalent to ∼1–3 ppm) can be reduced substantially when aggregating emissions estimates from NDCFs generated from all NO2 swaths (about 1%–6%). Rather than rely on prior knowledge of emission ratios, our method circumvents such assumptions and provides a valuable observational constraint on urban CO2 emissions.
Orientation: Market events during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic exposed flaws in the econometric models used to derive International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 9 impairments. Models were unable to capture the level of government intervention or predict the economic recovery process because of the unprecedented nature of the pandemic.
Research purpose: This study examines the causes of the challenges experienced with the IFRS 9 models during the pandemic and approaches to minimise this risk in the future.
Motivation for the study: Structural correlation breaks forced banks to replace the IFRS 9 models with expert overlays or rapidly rebuild the models to reduce impairment volatility and manage the impact on earnings. Expert judgement may lead to biased outcomes.
Research approach/design and method: Behavioural finance theory suggests that emotion and cognitive biases often lead to irrational investment decisions with disastrous consequences to the market. The link between market sentiment and economic outcomes is tested with natural language processing. Archimedean copulas are used to compare the dependence structures of market variables between different stress periods.
Main findings: Market sentiment is closely related to the trends observed in major macroeconomic indicators. The nature of the dependence structures differs between stress periods.
Practical/managerial implications: Sentiment may be a valuable exogenous variable to incorporate into economic forecast models. Learnings from one stress period are not necessarily applicable to another.
Contribution/value-add: Government intervention and market sentiment had a significant impact on the economic outcomes and correlation breaks observed during the pandemic. Developing bespoke models for the different phases of the economic cycle may not necessarily lead to improved outcomes.
As the main means to dovetail the domestic system with international rules, institutional openness is the key to deepening participation in the global economic governance system, breaking through energy and carbon emission constraints, and achieving green and sustainable economic development. Taking 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2006 to 2019 as the research sample, this paper uses the establishment of Pilot Free Trade Zones as a quasi-natural experiment to systematically identify and test the actual impact of institutional openness on urban carbon emissions in China through the asymptotic difference in difference method, instrumental variables method, spatial econometric model, and mediating effects model. Meanwhile, technological progress is used as the entry point to analyze the intrinsic mechanism of action by adopting digital transformation oriented to efficiency improvement and green innovation capability oriented to R&D innovation as the differentiated perspective. It is found that institutional openness significantly suppresses urban CO2 emissions, and there is a certain heterogeneity and spatial spillover effect of this effect. Further study finds that institutional openness achieves carbon emission reduction through technological progress. The study aims to find new institutional innovation and development paths for low carbon development.
It’s known that since about 1850, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from 280 ppm, typical for the pre-industrial period and observed over many hundreds of years, to 421 ppm at present, that is more than 50%, which contributed to the dramatic climate change. Climate change has become one of the most pressing problems mankind faces. The temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere has risen by more than 1 °C compared to pre-industrial levels. The impact of climate change is observed everywhere. Extreme weather conditions are becoming more rapid, harsh, and destructive. Droughts, wildfires, floods, and hurricanes have become more frequent, which negatively affects global socio-economic development. The authors research and establish a functional relationship between climate change and the socio-economic development of the world. This will make it possible to estimate how the implementation of one or another scenario of climate change will affect the global economy.The authors also developed a mathematical model that allows predicting the average global temperature of the surface atmosphere for various demographic scenarios, taking into account the required fuel and energy balance. The parameters of the model are identified utilizing the least squares method using historical data. The model made it possible to select the optimal scenarios of the Great Energy Transition (from the use of currently dominant fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) to renewable energy sources) that meet the requirements of the UN Paris Climate Agreement to keep global warming within 1.5–2 °C. The authors have shown that to implement the most ambitious scenarios, in addition to the significant increase of the share of renewable energy sources, the development of energy-efficient technologies, the development of mobile nuclear energy, the development of technologies for capturing and storing carbon, and the expansion of the use of hydrogen are also required.KeywordsGlobal warmingParis climate agreementEnergy transitionEnergy efficiencyRenewable energy sourcesGreen hydrogenMathematical modeling
Sustainable development goal achievement is effective only through the contribution of consumers in green consumption. The productive generation of biofuel using lignocellulosic biomass is an effective and sustainable solution for the current problems in transportation fuel. One of the most prevalent renewable resources found on earth is lignocellulosic biomass and so it can fix an incremental role in the sustainable growth of society. Lignocellulosic raw material processing and its subsequent upgrading with supply chains constitute the bioeconomic strategy. The lignocellulosic bioeconomy addresses the key challenges in bioproduct generation, consumption, and recycling of resources. A well‐executable policy initiative is required to mitigate the challenges that vary country to country. Overcoming the challenges requires a need for strengthening the lignocellulosic bioeconomy and thereby creating an environment with sustainable products globally. One of the pivotal areas on which to focus for uplifting the lignocellulosic bioeconomy is promoting the integration of research with commercial applications that can cause incremental social and economic contributions towards the bioeconomy. The involvement of government agencies is a necessary requirement in addition to the integrated policy initiatives. Lignocellulose bioeconomy and its upward surge by green consumption is addressed in this chapter.
Recent technological advancements demand IEPM for sustainable energy development through the induction of advanced computational techniques. However, the applicability and outcomes of such modeling tools vary due to underlying limitations in addition to gaps within the energy sector. This study uses a three-pronged approach to determine the potential of IEPM in shaping sustainable energy systems, particularly for Pakistan. Findings suggest that the main hindrances in sustainable electricity generation in Pakistan are over dependence upon thermal fuel mix and partial achievement of national energy policy targets. A review of the public sector plans, researches, and historical energy mix of Pakistan affirms that all efforts are targeted towards least cost electricity production without considering social and environmental impacts. All past studies projected energy supply and demand to ascertain future implications, but no one suggested sustainable alternatives for meeting national energy targets. Findings of this study necessitate upon development of a fair, consistent, long-term and sustainable IEP with clear policies to overcome sectoral bottlenecks and attain a high growth trajectory. A review of modeling tools, their applications and limitations, carried out in this study, suggests the adoption of the LEAP model for realistic IEP for Pakistan. This considered LEAP’s strengths in terms of energy-environment nexus, strong-accounting and scenario-building, bottom-up/top-down approach, user-friendliness, and spatial-temporal flexibility.
The dynamic relationship between economic activity (economic growth) and environmental impact (carbon dioxide emissions) is the most debated topic in the present world. The global world is intended to curb environmental impact up to a threshold level of the 1990s while maintaining the same pace of economic growth. This study analyzes the decoupling of economic activity from environmental impact and its main driving forces from 1980 to 2018 for Pakistan. The decoupling status is examined using Tapio decoupling elasticity analysis. The cointegration and Impulse Response Function (IRF) are employed to explore the role of main decoupling drivers. The Tapio decoupling results exhibit that Pakistan experienced Expensive Negative Decoupling (END) for multiple years. Similarly, the Johanson Juselius (JJ) Cointegration assures the presence of a long-term relationship between the selected variables. The long-term regression estimates show that carbon intensity and urbanization are the main decoupling drivers. The industrialization and economic growth also weaken the decoupling progress in Pakistan. The value addition of the paper is that it exposes industrialization and urbanization as the two prominent factors of both economic growth and carbon emissions. Further, the industrial sector of Pakistan operates on polluted industrial stock, which needs to be replaced with energy-efficient technological stock. The study also added that renewable energy needs to be indulged in the industrial and urban sectors.
Monitoring the atmospheric CO2 columns inside and around a city is of great importance to understand the temporal–spatial variation of XCO2 near strong anthropogenic emissions. In this study, we use two FTIR CO2 column measurements in Beijing (Bruker EM27/SUN) and Xianghe (Bruker IFS 125HR) between 2019 and 2021 to investigate the differences of XCO2 between Beijing (urban) and Xianghe (suburb) in North China and to validate the OCO-2 and OCO-3 satellite XCO2 retrievals. The mean and standard deviation (std) of the ΔXCO2 between Beijing and Xianghe (Beijing–Xianghe) observed by two FTIR instruments are 0.206 ± 1.736 ppm, which has a seasonal variation and varies with meteorological conditions (wind speed and wind direction). The mean and std of the XCO2 differences between co-located satellite and FTIR measurements are −0.216 ± 1.578 ppm in Beijing and −0.343 ± 1.438 ppm in Xianghe for OCO-2 and 0.637 ± 1.594 ppm in Beijing and 1.206 ± 1.420 ppm in Xianghe for OCO-3. It is found that the OCO-3 snapshot area mode (SAM) measurements can capture the spatial gradient of XCO2 between urban and suburbs well. However, the FTIR measurements indicate that the OCO-3 SAM measurements are about 0.9–1.4 ppm overestimated in Beijing and Xianghe.
Cities are characterised by a high concentration of human population, dense development and a wide range of human activities. Urban development finds its spatial expression in area growth, densification, but also in the phenomenon of “shrinking”. These spatial processes are not mutually exclusive, but can take place simultaneously and are also interrelated. What impact do these processes have on the ecological structure and functioning of the city, and how do they relate to the three major challenges for ecologically oriented urban development - promoting a high quality of life and environment in the city, reducing the use and consumption of natural resources by cities, and urban adaptation to climate change?
The demand for energy in the world is increasing every year. For this reason, future energy demands should be planned within the framework of efficiency and trust principles. In addition to the environment and natural resources, sustainability of development and justice in economic prosperity are also necessary for all societies. The priority in sustainable development is undoubtedly the issue of energy production and consumption. It is not possible to meet the increasing energy demand with economic growth and population growth with traditional energy production systems that have destroyed the environment so far. For this reason, renewable energy systems, which are the most important alternative, should be considered from the perspective of sustainable development. In this study, the development processes of the concepts of sustainability, sustainable development and the basic foundations of today were put forward and the current situation in energy production was analyzed. Finally, the relationship and interaction between renewable energy sources and sustainable development were discussed.
Over the last four decades a number of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have been declining dramatically in most industries. However, state-owned national oil companies (NOCs) continue to secure dominant positions in most energy-producing countries. In some instances, energy-exporting countries conducted full nationalisation of their resources, while in other cases partial nationalisation took place with governments tightening control over privately owned firms. This chapter begins with general questions on why countries choose to have state-owned enterprises and why countries prefer to nationalize their oil and gas industries. Next, we explore a case of nationalization policies in Kazakhstan’s oil industry in the post-Soviet period. Although there was no full nationalization of the energy sector, the government’s intervention in the industry had become more pervasive. As a result, multinationals in major oil and gas projects were forced to form partnerships with the domestic national oil company (NOC), KazMunaiGas. We then further explore the role of KazMunaiGas NOC in the country’s hydrocarbon sector as the government was determined to ensure more active participation of the domestic NOC in a bigscale energy projects. Despite a special status and a preferential treatment conditions created for the company, KazMunaiGas has to deal with similar challenges that many NOCs face globally. These challenges include improving technological capabilities, access to capital and financial independence, as well as strategic human resource management.
Soft-hard-donor-combined ligands are a type of promising extractant for actinide and lanthanide separation. In this work, the effects of counteranions (Cl-, NO3-, and ClO4-) on the extraction and complexation behaviors of a recently reported tetradentate phenanthroline-derived phosphonate (POPhen) ligand toward lanthanides were thoroughly investigated using solvent extraction, NMR titration, UV-vis titration, and single-crystal X-ray diffraction measurements. It is found that C4-POPhen showed excellent extraction and selectivity toward heavy lanthanides [Lu(III)] compared to light lanthanides, particularly with the counterion of ClO4- and at low acidity. NMR titration studies demonstrated that both 1:1 and 1:2 Lu(III)/C4-POPhen complexes were formed in a CD3OD solution with all three counteranions and the 1:2 species was easier to form in a complexation of C4-POPhen with Lu(ClO4)3 under the same conditions. Furthermore, the stability constants of Nd(III) complexation with C4-POPhen in the counteranions of Cl-, NO3-, and ClO4- systems were determined through UV-vis titration, and a much larger value of log β of complexes was found in the ClO4- system, which was in good agreement with the results of solvent extraction. In addition, the structures of C2-POPhen complexation with Ln(NO3)3/Ln(ClO4)3 in the solid state were clearly unraveled by the single-crystal X-ray diffraction technique. This work demonstrated that the solvent extraction and complexation mechanisms of POPhen ligands with Ln(III) were significantly affected by the counteranions from both the solution and solid-state aspects, which might shed light on the lanthanide/actinide separation.
Urban environments are characterized by pronounced spatiotemporal heterogeneity, which can present sampling challenges when utilizing conventional greenhouse gas (GHG) measurement systems. In Salt Lake City, Utah, a GHG instrument was deployed on a light rail train car that continuously traverses the Salt Lake Valley (SLV) through a range of urban typologies. CO2 measurements from a light rail train car were used within a Bayesian inverse modeling framework to constrain urban emissions across the SLV during the fall of 2015. The primary objectives of this study were to (1) evaluate whether ground-based mobile measurements could be used to constrain urban emissions using an inverse modeling framework and (2) quantify the information that mobile observations provided relative to conventional GHG monitoring networks. Preliminary results suggest that ingesting mobile measurements into an inverse modeling framework generated a posterior emission estimate that more closely aligned with observations, reduced posterior emission uncertainties, and extends the geographical extent of emission adjustments.
Cities are blamed for the majority of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. So too are more affluent, highly urbanised countries. If all production- and consumption-based emissions that result from lifestyle and purchasing habits are included, urban residents and their associated affluence likely account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s GHG emissions. Attribution of GHG emissions should be refined. Apportioning responsibility can be misguided, as recent literature demonstrates that residents of denser city centres can emit half the GHG emissions of their suburban neighbours. It also fails to capture the enormous disparities within and across cities as emissions are lowest for poor cities and particularly low for the urban poor.
Urban policies and city inhabitants behaviors are at the forefront of global environmental issues. We live indeed in an urbanizing world, and cities are responsible for approximately two third of global energy consumptions. How buildings are built, and how cities are organized are both key drivers of greenhouse gases emissions. Making them coherent with environmental constraints often lead to co-benefits with other urban issues such as economic competitiveness or social inclusiveness. This explains why cities are globally active concerning climate change, even if much still needs to be done.
The transition towards sustainable cities requires extensive improvement of environmental and energy consumption performances. However, the design of alternative sustainable scenarios is a complex issue which involves a large number of indicators and multiple stakeholders. In this regard, the use of appropriate assessment tools and decision-making models for addressing this issue are needed. This study aims at presenting research activities with a specific focus on the definition of policies and decision-making models to guide future transformations in the city, developing a “sustainable path”. The result is a new multi-criteria indicators-based system for supporting decision making at the city level. This includes the organization of a workshop in order to select the relevant indicators and to assign the stakeholders’ preferences using a multi-criteria method. This approach is used in order to investigate the stakeholders’ perspectives on the impact of each indicator on the different future sustainable scenarios. Eight indicators have been selected, and accordingly, assessed through the collection of data for the “baseline” scenario. Next step will involve the definition of different forward-looking sustainable scenarios and the assessment of their impacts through the selected indicators. Finally, all the scenarios will be verified through a second interactive workshop as part of the sustainable urban planning process to choose the best scenario.
The size of our ecological footprint is often attributed to those social processes governing the consumption of material resources, reflecting the tendency within sociology to pay far more attention to our social constructions of nature, and our effects on nature, but far less attention to natural processes themselves. However, our level of ecological disruption is, more precisely, a function of the effort required to exploit natural resources and convert them into the things we value for use and exchange. As the quality of those resources declines in response to historic exploitation, effort increases, and hence so does our ecological impact, a tendency that interacts with social processes to produce emergent outcomes. This effort factor constitutes an important but largely overlooked feature of social-ecological metabolic relations, one that can offer fruitful opportunities for advances in scholarship in environmental sociology, and for environmental monitoring and mediation efforts by states and civil societies. The effort factor constitutes an important causal mechanism in our socioecological relations, the effects of which are best conceived through the lens of critical realism. This article offers a conceptual elaboration of the effort factor, and a case study analysis with reference to the historical development of oil, with particular emphasis on Alberta, Canada, which highlights the disruptive tendencies embodied in our current fossil fuel-dependent socioeconomic systems.
This study aims to investigate the relationship between nuclear energy consumption and economic growth in Switzerland over the period 1970-2018. We use data on capital, labour, and exports within a multivariate framework. Starting from the consideration that Switzerland has decided to phase out nuclear energy by 2034, we examine the effect of this structural economic-energy change in the country. To do so, two distinct estimation tools are performed. The first model, using a time-series approach, analyze the relationship between bivariate and multivariate causality. The second, using a Machine Learning methodology, test the results of the econometric modelling through an Artificial Neural Networks process. This last empirical procedure represents our original contribution with respect to the previous energy-GDP papers. The results, in the logarithmic propagation of neural networks, suggest a careful analysis of the process that will lead to the abandonment of nuclear energy in Switzerland to avoid adverse effects on economic growth.
This chapter provides an insight into different terminologies, their concepts and the key stages in the field of disaster management and how each of them constitutes the disaster management cycle. Further, it provides the trends of disasters globally, regionally and locally with specific reference to South Asian region that is vulnerable to all kinds of natural hazards due to its geo-climatic location and conditions.
Given large potentials of the MENA region for renewable energy production, transitions towards renewables-based energy systems seem a promising way for meeting growing energy demand while contributing to greenhouse gas emissions reductions according to the Paris Agreement at the same time. Supporting and steering transitions to a low-carbon energy system require a clear understanding of socio-technical interdependencies in the energy system as well as of the principle dynamics of system innovations. For facilitating such understanding, a phase model for renewables-based energy transitions in MENA countries, which structures the transition process over time through the differentiation of a set of sub-sequent distinct phases, is developed in this article. The phase model builds on a phase model depicting the German energy transition, which was complemented by insights about transition governance and adapted to reflect characteristics of the MENA region. The resulting model includes four phases (“Take-off renewables”, “System integration”, “Power to fuel/gases”, “Towards 100% renewables”), each of which is characterized by a different cluster of innovations. These innovations enter the system via three stages of development which describe different levels of maturity and market penetration, and which require appropriate governance. The phase model has the potential to support strategy development and governance of energy transitions in MENA countries in two complementary ways: it provides an overview of techno-economic developments as orienting guidelines for decision-makers, and it adds some guidance as to which governance approaches are suitable for supporting those developments.
Saudi Arabia has been implementing the domestic energy price reform (EPR) and fiscal reform since the end of 2015 under the Fiscal Balance Program (FBP), one of the key realization programs of Saudi Vision 2030 (SV2030). The EPR aims to increase the rational consumption of energy and budget revenues by gradually removing energy incentives across the economy by 2025 (FBP, 2019). This study assesses the impact of electricity incentives that the government provided for the development of the agricultural sector in the pre-reform period to find out how large its magnitude was and to determine whether removal of them in the sector is a relevant measure to take. We found that while these incentives had both short and long-run positive impacts on the agriculture growth, the magnitude of these impacts was quite small (the long-run elasticity is between 0.04 and 0.07 and the short-run elasticity is around 0.09–0.11). We also found that investing in capital stock and technological progress would lead to more and sustained development than a continuation of the government's electricity incentives in the sector. Additionally, we found that increases in temperature, primarily resulting from carbon emissions of fossil fuel consumption, is harmful to the sector's development. These empirical findings support the ongoing policy for the implementation of gradual removal of electricity incentives and suggest that some mitigation measures should be considered for the sector. In policy implementations, decision-makers should consider that the sector is capable of absorbing shocks, including policy interventions within two years.
The present study revisit the tradeoff between economic growth and pollutant emission popularly known as the EKC hypothesis. This study distinct from the bulk of study in the literature by circumventing for omitted variable bias by the addition of total natural resources rent. Empirical investigation is conducted on an annual frequency data from 1971 to 2015. Conventional unit root test of Augmented Dickey-Fuller (ADF) and Phillips Perron (PP) unit root to establish stationarity properties. For long run (equilibrium) analysis the Pesaran’s ARDL bounds test traces equilibrium relationship between the outlined variables. The ARDL regression suggest that 1% increase in real income increases pollutant emission by 79.33% and 117.18% in short run and long-run respectively. While electricity consumption positively increase pollutant emission in Nigeria. Interestingly, FDI inflow improves the quality of the environment by dampening emission. The current study validates the EKC hypothesis of the case of Nigeria. This suggests that the country is still at her scale stage of her economic growth trajectory where emphasis is placed on economic growth relative to quality of the environment. These outcomes are indicative to government administrators and environmental economists to be cautious on strategies to disentangle economic expansion from pollutant emissions there by necessitating the need for a paradigm shift to clean energy mix like renewable energy sources, which are globally recommended and environmental friendly.
China plans to pursue low-carbon development in its low-carbon pilot cities to control greenhouse gas emissions. The low-carbon city development is an important method to achieve sustainable development strategy, while it is also a new city development mode to promote natural ecology, low-carbon economy and social happiness. However, the evaluation process of the low-carbon city is a multiple objective and decision problem. A single indicator cannot comprehensively and objectively evaluate a city’s low-carbon development level, so a comprehensive evaluation index system should be established. So taking Guiyang as a case study, this article constructs 35 evaluating indicators that are based on the basic urban development level and low-carbon urban development level to analyse the economic development, social progress and environmental quality transmutation comprehensively by using the entropy method. The results show that in the whole process of sustainable development, the economic development, social progress and the environmental quality have been greatly improved, but the low-carbon level had been on the low side from 2003 to 2016 in Guiyang. Therefore, Guiyang still has a long way to go to become a low-carbon city, and concrete policies and countermeasures should be taken to promote the low-carbon level. In particular, Guiyang has to strengthen the dual constraint of carbon emission intensity and total carbon emissions, adhere to the development path characterized by low carbon and strive to achieve leapfrog development.
The countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region have the greatest potential for renewable energy consumption in the world and is likely to be the most vulnerable to the horrendous effects of climate change. Unfortunately, only a few of the countries have tapped into this potential, as non-renewable energy still dominates the total energy mix of these countries. This study explores the effect of renewable and non-renewable energy consumption on the environment in MENA countries from 1990 to 2016 by applying the Augmented Mean Group algorithm while accounting for urbanization, financial development, and economic growth. The panel result suggests that financial development, economic growth, and urbanization add to environmental degradation. Also, findings reveal that renewable energy does not contribute meaningfully to environmental quality, while non-renewable energy consumption significantly adds to environmental degradation. A uni-directional causality flows from urbanization, economic growth, and energy use to environmental degradation. One way to abate this damage is for countries in this region to embrace and promote the consumption of clean energy sources.
Regardless of increasing concern to climate change, mainstreaming the issue into a development plan has been challenging. A review at Bogor City government’s development plans reveals that a range of activities has been incorporated to reduce the City's Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions and these activities have also targeted major and increasing emission sources based on their emissions profile. We identified relevant activities indicated in Medium-Term City Development Plan (Rencana Pembangunan Jangka Menengah Daerah - RPJMD) and Medium-Term Sectoral Strategic Plans (Rencana Strategis - RENSTRA) for the periods of 2014–2019. We examined the emission profile and similar to other cities worldwide, energy was revealed as the largest source of emission in Bogor. Emissions from energy sector accounted for 99% of the total city emission and 36% of it come from transportation. We also examined the annual trends. In 2016, Bogor City had a population of 1,064,687, a 10% increase from year 2010. The increase was similar to their GHG emissions which showed a 13% increase in 2016 compared to the 2010’ level. The growth between these two parameters, however, was not similar. While Bogor City’s population showed a positive trend, despite at smaller rate than in previous years, emissions level in 2016 was actually less than the 2015 level. This significant emission reduction within a year might not merely be the results of mitigation action, but other factor such as economic condition.
Review on Bogor City government’s Development Plan for the period of 2014–2019 showed six groups of mitigation programmes were being implemented. Some of the activities within the programmes were progressing well while others were having set back. Consultation with relevant agency’s officers revealed some operational constraints to the implementation of the mitigation activities.
Bogor City has developed a Bus Rapid Transportation (BRT) system called Trans Pakuan and has improved pedestrian area to reduce individual vehicle trips. Despite enthusiasm from City Government through these programmes, the increasing trend of e-hail apps transportation was potentially constraining as their ability to cater door-to-door trip is preferable for users than using bus or walking. In the waste sector, lack of segregating habit in households contributed to problems in 3R (reduce, reuse, & recycle) stations. These findings indicate that development of mitigation options needs a comprehensive approach, including consideration of people’s habit and acceptance of the options.
This chapter assembles remaining evidence bearing on the modeling of The City of Grace. It commences by asking whether such a city exists in real life. An unsuccessful search is conducted for eponymous and, then, non-eponymous locales around the world, including a lesser quest for settings offering ‘bliss.’ Likewise unfruitful, this initiative gives way to a round-up of further texts on practical urban theology which discuss civility, conviviality and social capital on the streets and in suburbs. The interest gravitates to place attachment and the makings of a cohesive community. These inquiries complete the gathering of background material, thus enabling the commencement of actual urban modeling. Three conceptual schema are adopted to offer guiding principles for a vision and mission for The City of Grace. On these bases, three precepts and six operative strategies are developed to support gracious function and graceful form using the conventional epistemology of urban planning. A process model of function is outlined in the conclusion of the chapter.
This chapter concerns the characteristics capable of imparting graciousness of function to the model City. In a programmatic way, it covers ends and means in the domains of macro and microeconomics, politics and sociology. The aim is to support the precepts and effect the strategies of The City as previously determined. The progression suggests a secular, eco-tech city set in a high-wage economy to facilitate the mission and vision. Political and social conditions support these objectives, a keynote being the low entropy necessary to ensure urban survival in what could be a turbulent context. In this way, The City of Grace starts to differentiate itself from conventional expressions of contemporary urbanism.
Abstract Satellite observations of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions within urban settings offer unique potential to understand carbon sources and sinks and evaluate carbon mitigation strategies. Despite availability of column‐averaged dry air mole fraction of CO2 ( XCO2) from Orbiting Carbon Observatory‐2 (OCO‐2), temporal variations of XCO2 and their drivers in cities remain poorly understood due to inconsistent definitions of urban extent, diverse urban forms, and unresolved impacts of urban vegetation on carbon fluxes. To this end, this study revealed that OCO‐2 XCO2 measurements from 2014 to 2018 exhibited statistically significant seasonal and trend components for each city. A correlation analysis suggested a weak association between XCO2 trends and fossil fuel CO2 emissions ( FFCO2) trends but a close relationship between yearly average XCO2 and FFCO2 trends. Vegetation abundance exhibited a negative relationship with the XCO2 seasonality, though it only explained 21% of the variance. No statistically significant relationship between urban morphological factors (areal extent, complexity, and compactness) and temporal XCO2 components was observed. However, urban morphological factors had a close relationship with the total amount of FFCO2 aggregated over the study period. Thus, it was speculated that urban morphological factors exerted their influence on XCO2 through fossil fuel consumption. When only cities of high normalized difference vegetation index seasonality were used, statistically significant correlation coefficients between urban morphological factors and winter/summer averaged XCO2 measurements were found. The variations of these correlation coefficients between leaf‐on and leaf‐off seasons stress the important role that urban trees play in mitigating carbon emissions in cities.
Reducing consumers’ demand for energy is on the agenda of various energy and climate policies. Although these policies are increasingly internationalised in Europe, our understanding of consumers’ energy saving behaviour remains fragmented with often contradicting findings from single case studies. Drawing on the latest round of the European Social Survey across 22 countries (n = 41,830), we find that many variables have the same relationship with different energy saving behaviours, except household income. While income correlates positively with the likelihood of buying energy efficient appliances, it correlates negatively with the frequency of engaging in energy curtailments. If income has a differentiating effect on consumers’ energy saving behaviour, then the demand reduction policies that take this difference into account will be more successful.
We investigate the links between energy efficiency and productive performance by relaxing the technological isolation assumption among country economies at a global scale. More precisely, we partition the universal technology giving rise to heterogeneous competitiveness regimes to investigate the relationship between energy efficiency, productive performance and spillover effects by adopting a metafrontier framework. Considering seventy seven countries from 2002 through 2011, we employ data on the global competitiveness index to cluster the examined countries into two technological groups, the competitive and less competitive one. The performance of the country economies is evaluated using the Data Envelopment Analysis and the corresponding slack-based energy efficiency scores. Endogeneity between measures of performance stimulates the use of a control function approach employing fractional probit models with endogenous regressor. Although there is not enough evidence to justify the endogenous relationship between the energy efficiency and productive performance, results indicate that the two performance measures appear to be detached, for the competitive cluster. We find that dichotomy matters, as the less competitive country economies capitalize spillover effects to improve energy efficiency, but this is not the case for the countries clustered in the competitive group. In addition, a U-shaped relationship between energy efficiency and productive performance is documented, highlighting that performance measures are intrinsically linked.
The building sector has become the main source of implicit greenhouse gas(GHG)emissions worldwide, and Macau is no exception. However, as yet, there is a lack of work to quantify the GHG emissions and guide cities on how best to reduce emissions. By using the life cycle assessment method, this study is therefore designed to estimate the GHG emissions from urban buildings during the period of 1999–2016, to figure out the major contributors, and finally, to propose potential effective measures for GHG emissions reduction in Macau. The results show that total GHG emissions from buildings have grown quickly from 1.52 million metric tons (Mt)CO 2 e in 1999 to 5.91 Mt CO 2 e in 2016. The use phase contributes to most GHG emissions during the whole life stage, accounting for 65.75% of the total GHG emissions, followed by construction stage (33.72%). The unit GHG emissions in the construction stage is 1.47 (0.84–3.82)tons CO 2 e/m ² , while for the use stage, unit GHG emissions from resident and non-resident buildings in 2016 are up to 65.33 and 3316.37 CO 2 e/m ² /year, respectively. It is noted that EoL stage has ‘negative value’, indicating that it could generally bring some environmental benefits due to materials recycling. e.g. In 2016, the environmental impacts and benefits in the EoL stage are 21.12 and 85.94 Kt CO 2 e, respectively. The gaming industry and clean electricity should be the key points of building GHG emission reduction in Macau. Further scenario analysis shows that the enforceable policies can slow down the growth rate of GHG emissions.
Energy is undoubtedly the most key to sustainability of the economic growth of a country. Turkey is today dependent on energy approximately at a rate of 75%. The country is able to meet approximately half of its total electricity demand owing to its own limited resources. Over the past 10 years period, Turkey paid nearly half a trillion dollars for its energy bill. On the other hand, the official reserve assets are equal to 93 billion dollars in the central bank of Turkey in November 2018. New power plants are being installed and planned to decrease the energy dependency in the country, particularly for electricity generation. Of these plants, nuclear energy is currently one of the newest and the most debated issues for the country. Hence, this study mainly focused on the possible outputs of the transiting to nuclear energy such as carbon dioxide emissions, radiation doses, energy demand, economic growths, etc., in the country. Additionally, new shares on electricity generation by the new sources were foreseen with this study after the nuclear plants to be operated in Turkey.
It is commonly agreed upon that the main impediment to a wide dissemination of household-size bio-digesters in sub-Saharan Africa is primarily related to up-front costs. As in other sub-Saharan African countries, the original assumption of the biogas program initiated by the government of Senegal, in collaboration with some international organizations, was to develop bio-digesters as viable marketable goods to alleviate poverty, improve health by reducing indoor air pollution associated to fuel-wood, mitigate deforestation, and produce bio-slurry as an alternative to non-organic fertilizers. The failure of the biogas program followed the failure of the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) program in rural areas. The present study has investigated the policies of cooking fuels and the socio-economic challenges thwarting the dissemination of biogas in Senegal, essentially focusing on the root cause of unaffordability of clean cooking energy in rural areas. The study has found that the development of clean cooking fuel in Senegal is hindered by ill-devised and poorly implemented government policies and the rampant, structural poverty of the rural populations, particularly that of farmers who are mostly involved in agriculture and animal husbandry that do not generate sufficient revenues. The Senegalese government’s biogas program that had aimed at installing 8000 digesters between 2009 and 2013 failed to reach its goals, as less than 600 units were built. This study proposes a new paradigm that associates market-oriented livestock farming, income generation, and household biogas production in order to successfully deliver clean cooking energy to farmers. A successful dissemination of clean cooking fuel by means of biogas digesters, in particular, needs to be accompanied with better access to financial resources for rural farmers who generally live in poverty.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to determine inasmuch energy suppliers dedicate communicative resources toward sustainable development and corporate social responsibility (CSR), also paying attention to how they frame it, and if they manage to achieve consistency in their communication or fall victim to contradictions.
Design/methodology/approach
By use of a qualitative content analysis, online communication tools (information on corporate websites) as well as content for download were examined in detail. The present study sample comprised of 12 case studies from selected countries (Austria, Russia, Germany, the USA, France and Korea).
Findings
Overall, findings indicate that CSR has already been implemented in most energy and energy-related industries; however, it is put forward with varying degrees of attention and intensity, depending on which topics energy companies choose to address communicatively (results were classified according to a frame positioning scheme by Weder, 2012, 2018). Results underscore the fact that, at times, companies are struggling to link their CSR projects back to their core businesses. Yet, a clear trend to politicization can be described as a strong correlation of communication strategies of energy suppliers and political programs of the respective country becomes obvious.
Research limitations/implications
Limited research as to how CSR topics are framed in different branches has been conducted to date; likewise, the energy sector, whose motives has been often subject to public questioning, has received little attention in CSR communication research to date. Hence, ambiguities were presumed to exist.
Originality/value
The present study examines the relevance and framing of CSR in a highly competitive, centralized industry that is challenged by a global process of transition to renewable energy. The results show that the analyzed energy suppliers offer only a limited variety of issue-specific frames; instead CSR as well as sustainability are (ab)used as master frames or “buzz words” in a fairly shallow economic or socio-political argumentation.
This chapter describes four broad categories of emerging global energy security threats: availability, affordability, efficiency, and stewardship. After defining energy security, it discusses threats related to the availability of energy resources and fuels, the affordability of the services they provide, the efficiency of their use, and the effective management of their negative environmental and social impacts, notably climate change. Energy security has long centered on questions of reliable energy supplies, the regional concentration of energy resources, and the implications of the strategic withholding of energy fuels, mostly oil. Recent assessments of energy security have expanded to embrace electricity reliability as well as natural gas and petroleum security, and the entire energy supply chain including energy delivery infrastructure. The chapter concludes by noting how the energy security of many industrialized and developing countries has eroded over the past few decades and proposes potential areas of future research.
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