• Energy Research
• 8. Economic growth close
• 1. No poverty close
• CN close
• DE close

With respect to conventional energy, the significant advantages of new energy are the balanced regional distribution and the large resource extent which, to some extent, could be regarded as infinity compared with human's demand for energy. The development and utilization of new energy are beneficial to optimize energy consumption structure, to protect ecological environment, and to guarantee energy security. Accelerating the development of new energy industry is strategic choices of pulling domestic demands, cultivating new economic growth points, improving employment opportunities, and promoting economic and social sustainable developments. New energy mostly characterizes disadvantages of low energy density and decentralization, which are difficult to substitute for fossil energy on a large scale in the near future. More efforts will be needed in the aspects of technology, cost and management. In this paper, the development status and prospect of new energy were reviewed, and some suggestions were put forward based on the problems existed in the development process of new energy in China.

Abstract The vast output of household waste has become a terrible environmental problem with the rapid growth of social development and population in China. Several pilot cities have introduced related policies to regulate urban residents in sorting household waste. Although existing research has concentrated on sorting waste intentions and behaviours amongst urban residents, especially in pilot cities or other large cities, waste produced in non-city areas should not be neglected. Accordingly, this study identified the determinants influencing waste sorting intentions and behaviours of residents in rural or urban–rural integration areas by incorporating the theory of planned behaviour and norm-activation model. A total of 241 residents completed valid questionnaires, and the collected data were empirically analysed through covariance-based structural equation modelling. Results implied that behavioural attitude and perceived behavioural control were the most significant predictors of sorting waste intention and behaviour. Meanwhile, personal moral norms and subjective norms also presented positive effects on behavioural intention. Awareness of consequence had a significant influence on personal moral norm rather than behavioural intention. After empirical analysis, this study proposed several managerial implications regarding waste problems in rural and urban–rural integration areas in China.

In this study, we investigate whether outbound foreign direct investment (OFDI) either augments or impedes domestic public and private investment, incorporating the role of institutional quality into the context of developed and emerging countries. To this end, we apply a cross-sectional-autoregressive-distributed lag (CS-ARDL) approach to analyze panel data from the period 1996–2017. Our empirical findings suggest that OFDI augments private capital formation for developed countries. Institutional quality (IQ) is found to be a driving factor that promotes private capital formation in the established economies of developed countries. However, OFDI has a negative association with the public capital formation in the established economies of developed countries, while IQ has a positive association with it. In the context of emerging economies, OFDI is found to be too insignificant to have an effect on private and public capital formation. Interestingly, IQ has a detrimental effect on both private and public capital formation in emerging economies. Our findings are robust. The empirical findings of this study imply that institutional quality should continue to be improved in developed countries, while it should surpass a certain threshold for emerging economies to promote domestic capital formation.

To study the economic and environmental effects of human capital, previous studies measure human capital based on education; however, this approach has many shortcomings because not all educated people are innovative human capital. Hence, this study introduces the concept of innovative human capital by developing a new index that measures human capital based on the number of patents every one million R&D staff full-time equivalent. After this, this paper studies the impact of innovative human capital on CO2 emissions in China. The provincial panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2003 to 2017 is analyzed using the fixed effect, ordinary least squares, and the system generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM). The analysis revealed that innovative human capital alleviates environmental deterioration in China. The findings unfold the existence of the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) considering innovative human capital in the model. It implies that Chinese economic development will eventually support environmental sustainability if China continues to develop its innovative human capital. Among the control variables, economic structure, population density, and energy intensity stimulate environmental degradation by increasing CO2 emissions. However, FDI has a negative relationship with CO2 emissions. Lastly, the study proposes comprehensive policies to increase innovative human capital for environmental sustainability.

Analyzing the efficiency of the water, energy, and food (WEF) nexus is critical for effective governance strategies. Therefore, three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) was used to measure the efficiency level of WEF in the 36 districts of Punjab, Pakistan, for the period from 2015 to 2021. Furthermore, the stochastic frontier was used to analyze the effect of external environmental factors on these efficiency scores of the WEF nexus. The results of the DEA showed that the number of frontier efficiency districts decreased, and most districts experienced rank change over time. Overall, the performance of 50% of the districts declined over time. The relative decline in efficiency was found to be higher in districts Bahwalnaghar and Rahim Yar Khan. The performance of districts Multan and Sheikhupura increased over time, while districts Vehari and Sargodha were the most complete and efficient in actual performance. According to the SFA’s findings, the WEF nexus efficiency of South Punjab districts was negatively impacted by external environmental factors (urbanization rate, manufactured industry output, population), leading to severe stress across WEF sectors. Districts in central and southern Punjab, however, were more likely to have lower rankings because of the positive impact of external environmental factors on the efficiency of the WEF nexus. The substantial rise of external environmental variables focused on scale expansion rather than quality improvement, which created a wide gap in WEF inputs and, hence, reduced the efficiency of the WEF nexus in the districts. The findings of this study provide valuable insights for developing governance strategies based on external environmental factors and WEF resource endowment, and they complement the efficiency calculation of WEF nexus research. Future research should focus on the Baluchistan region, the most deprived area in terms of water, energy, and food.

Local government's environmental expenditure (LGEE) is critical to ecological protection and environmental governance, and it has not played its due role. By constructing a theoretical model of the competitive effect of LGEE under the intervention of central government, this study used the spatial econometric model to analyze the competitive effect of LGEE based on the data of 30 provinces in China from 2007 to 2016. The main results show that (1) from the perspective of the national area, LGEE shows a U-shaped development model together with economic growth; (2) a significant positive spatial effect in interprovincial LGEE is observed in eastern region, indicating that local government tends to adopt the competitive strategy of mutual imitation. Local government will not reduce environmental expenditure as fiscal decentralization increases; (3) the coefficient of the spatial effect in LGEE is significantly negative in central and western regions, which is manifested as a competitive strategy of mutual substitution. The coefficient of fiscal decentralization is significantly negative, indicating that LGEE relies mainly on the transfer payments from central government, and the essence of interprovincial competition regarding environmental expenditure is the competition for the transfer payments from central government.

Sustainable tourism is essential for tourism sector development. Environmentally responsible behaviors and behavioral intentions are important prerequisites for sustainable tourism. This research explores the behavioral intentions of university tourism students and significant factors affecting these behavioral intentions. The questionnaire survey method was applied to university students from the tourism departments of nine universities in Taiwan. A total of 390 valid questionnaires were collected. The pro-environmental behavioral intentions of the students ranged from moderate to high. Environmental knowledge positively affected behavioral intentions and positively influenced environmental sensitivity and environmental responsibility. Furthermore, environmental sensitivity and environmental responsibility exerted a full effect in mediating the relationship between environmental knowledge and behavioral intentions. Hence, increasing students’ environmental knowledge will enhance their behavioral intentions. However, by improving students’ sensitivity and responsibility, their intentions to protect the environment can be more effectively elevated. Development implications and recommendations for sustainable tourism and higher education are provided.

Highlights •Biomass resource constraints impact the effectiveness of bioeconomy policies. •Bioeconomy policies may have an important impact on the sector structure in the long run, but the sector growth remains ultimately constrained by the availability of inputs. •Solutions to reduce the biomass constraint have to be included in innovation policy for the biobased economy.