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Treball Final de Grau en Finances i Comptabilitat. Codi: FC1049. Curs acadèmic: 2019/2020 In recent years there has been a rise in businesses investing in social and ethical issues. The sustainable development goals published in 2015 by the UN provide a globally agreed framework to make the world more sustainable. Companies have been given the opportunity to help the environment and society through their actions whilst increasing their value and return and improving their reputation. A method for doing so is by following the principles of responsible investment and incorporating environmental, social and governance criteria into long-term businesses strategies. Spanish banks are actively working to achieve the sustainable development goals by investing in sustainable finance, social projects, housing programmes, etc. to meet societal needs whilst extending their market scope and achieving corporate growth and financial success. The main focus of their actions lays with two specific goals: ending poverty and providing decent work and economic growth for all.

Abstract In this study, we investigate the driving forces behind the changes in residential energy consumption (REC) in China’s urban and rural areas over the 2001–2012 period. Based on the logarithmic mean Divisia index method, the REC changes are decomposed into seven driving forces, which are climate change, energy price, energy expenditure mix, energy cost share (in total expenditure), expenditure share (in income), per capita income and population effects. According to the results, climate effect due to increasing days with abnormal temperature, energy cost share effect characterized by more expenditure to be paid for energy use, income effect describing constant income growth in the residential sector definitely increase REC in both urban and rural areas. In contrast, energy prices and energy expenditure mix effects negatively contribute to the REC increase, respectively because of the increase in energy prices and the transition from the low-priced energy to high-priced energy. Expenditure share and population effects play opposite roles in urban and rural areas, and the reasons and implications are analysed in depth.

While park-people conflicts have received worldwide attention, the extent of illegal resource extraction and the relationship with communities' livelihoods has gained little attention in the literature. Thus this paper investigates the impact of socio-economic factors involved in illegal fuel wood and fodder extraction at Bardia National Park in Nepal. Household questionnaires, key-informant interviews and focus groups were conducted to identify different plant species used by households and explore the causes and mode of resource extraction in three buffer zone villages in the park. Altogether 50 different plants were identified by villagers that were used regularly for different livelihood purposes. Almost half of the respondents met their needs by illegally and regularly extracting resources from the park. Incentive schemes in the form of development projects were important but not sufficient in meeting the basic needs of households' especially for such daily items such as fuel wood and fodder. The results described in this paper showed that proximity and access to resources either in the national park, the buffer zone community forest or the government forest, and impact on the livelihoods significantly influenced the likelihood of illegal resource extraction activities. Villages that differed in terms of their location to the resource base, the provision of alternative resources and influence of these on their livelihoods showed significant differences in terms of their patterns of resource extraction and use of these resources. As resource use options, resource interest, and resource extraction patterns were different between villages and dependent on circumstances specific to villages, site-specific management strategies were necessary and more influential than the enforcement of 'one-size fits all' policies. It is suggested that park management plans should be flexible and adaptive enough to meet site-specific contexts and to endear wider support from local communities.

Artículos en revistas The effectiveness and efficiency of policies that try to reduce carbon emissions in the transport sector may depend significantly, at least in the short term, on the availability of options to shift away from diesel and gasoline private cars. This paper uses a detailed model, and a carefully-constructed dataset, to show how a fuel tax reform affects differently Spanish metropolitan areas based on their fleet composition, share of public transport, and urban vs suburban distribution. We find that those areas with the largest share of diesel and with the highest penetration of public transport are able to reduce more their carbon emissions and energy use, at a lower welfare loss. We also find that the reductions obtained are not large, thus requiring additional measures. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion

The repercussions of climate change will be felt in various ways throughout both natural and human systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. Climate change projections for this region point to a warming trend, particularly in the inland subtropics; frequent occurrence of extreme heat events; increasing aridity; and changes in rainfall—with a particularly pronounced decline in southern Africa and an increase in East Africa. The region could also experience as much as one meter of sea-level rise by the end of this century under a 4 °C warming scenario. Sub-Saharan Africa’s already high rates of undernutrition and infectious disease can be expected to increase compared to a scenario without climate change. Particularly vulnerable to these climatic changes are the rainfed agricultural systems on which the livelihoods of a large proportion of the region’s population currently depend. As agricultural livelihoods become more precarious, the rate of rural–urban migration may be expected to grow, adding to the already significant urbanization trend in the region. The movement of people into informal settlements may expose them to a variety of risks different but no less serious than those faced in their place of origin, including outbreaks of infectious disease, flash flooding and food price increases. Impacts across sectors are likely to amplify the overall effect but remain little understood.

Abstract The primary focus of this study is to empirically investigate the natural gas consumption-economic growth nexus in Iran, while incorporating real gross fixed capital formation (GFCF) and the role of oil revenue (OR) as additional variables to make it a multivariate framework in order to avoid possible omission variable bias in the estimations. To this end, quarterly frequency data from 1990Q1 to 2017Q4. Structural break point unit root test like Zivot and Andrews is employed and complemented with traditional non-stationarity tests such as Augmented Dickey Fuller and Phillips and Perron unit tests to investigate the interest variables stationarity characteristics. Recently developed Bayer and Hanck (2013) combined cointegration test is used alongside the Pesaran et al. (2001) bounds testing cointegration to test for long-run relationship among the variables. Finally, we test for causal relationships through Modified Wald test of Tada-Yamamoto (1995) Granger causality tests is employed. Empirical findings show cointegration relationship between the variables while accounting for structural break. Further piece of empirical results suggest that natural gas consumption exerts a significant positive impact on economic output in Iran, and also that there is a one-way causality from natural gas consumption to economic output. Thus, our study corroborates the natural gas-led growth hypothesis; being natural gas consumption a suitable alternative, as a complementary green energy source (IGU, 2015). One important conclusion reached in our study is that there is need for energy portfolio diversification in Iran in order to attain full gains from the energy sector, reducing other energies' emissions. Further insights are elucidated in the main text. Our findings provide policymakers useful insight into the state of the energy sector in Iran.

Most households in sub-Saharan Africa rely on wood-based cooking fuels and their number is expected to rise. Despite this, national and subnational energy policies often neglect biomass cooking fuels. A Formative Scenario Analysis process is applied to show how the cooking fuel sector in Kilimanjaro Region (Tanzania) and Kitui County (Kenya) might evolve by 2030. In order to provide relevant knowledge for potential energy policies, this paper aims to identify the main drivers impacting the cooking fuel sector, and to assess and explore current and future demand and supply potential of biomass cooking fuels. Our results show that policies have the potential to substantially impact the future mix of cooking fuels and to foster or hamper the use of efficient cooking fuel technologies. Half of Kilimanjaro Region’s households could be supplied with biogas; in Kitui County, wood-based cooking fuels is likely to remain dominant but improving the efficiency of the technologies would reduce the demand for wood considerably. Hence, we argue that energy policies should explicitly consider biomass cooking fuels and endeavour to make this sector more sustainable and that priority should be given to increasing the sustainability of the biomass cooking fuel sector. Key leverage points to do so are improving the access to improved biomass technologies and capacity building.

Artículos en revistas Since the outset of power system reform, one of the main objectives of regulation has been to assess whether the market, of its own accord, can induce agents to adopt decisions that maximise social welfare. This paper analyses the effect of generating companies' risk aversion on their medium-term (typically 1 year) hydroelectric resource planning, along with its possible inducement of system operation that deviates from the centralised (maximum social welfare) solution. Forward markets may play a key role by making hedging instruments available to risk-averse agents. A stylised mathematical model is used in this study to prove the equivalence of centralised planning and market equilibrium in the presence of such agents under the following assumptions: 1) both the spot and forward markets are perfectly competitive; 2) it has at least one risk-neutral consumer or arbitrageur; 3) all agents share the same beliefs about uncertain parameters; 4) only one price is in place in each trading period (which can be perfectly hedged with a forward contract); and 5) a solution for the resulting market equilibrium problem exists. The findings show that such equivalence vanishes when forward markets are missing or inaccessible (attributable in some electricity markets to the absence of demand-side participation). This article consequently suggests that requiring demand-side agents to sign forward contracts with generators might constitute an effective regulatory measure where no fully functional forward market is already in place. info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion