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This paper examines the nexus between the main forms of transport, related investments, specific air pollutants, and sustainable economic growth. The research is important since transport may act as a facilitator of social, economic, and environmental development. Based on data retrieved from Eurostat, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and World Bank, the output of fixed-effects regressions for EU-28 countries over 1990–2016 reveals that road, inland waterways, maritime, and air transport infrastructure positively influence gross domestic product per capita (GDPC), though a negative link occurred in the case of railway transport. As concerning investments in transport infrastructure, the empirical results exhibit a positive impact on economic growth for every type of transport, except inland waterways. Besides, emissions of CO2 from all kind of transport, alongside other specific air pollutants, negatively influence GDPC. The fully modified and dynamic ordinary least squares panel estimation results reinforce the findings. Further, in the short-run, Granger causality based on panel vector error correction model pointed out a unidirectional causal link running from sustainable economic growth to inland waterways and maritime transport of goods, albeit a one-way causal link running from the volume of goods transported by air to GDPC. As well, the empirical results provide support one-way short-run links running from GDPC to investments in road and inland waterway transport infrastructure. In addition, a bidirectional short-run link occurred between carbon dioxide emissions from railway transport and GDPC, whereas unidirectional relations with economic growth were identified in the case of carbon dioxide emissions from road and domestic aviation. In the long-run, a bidirectional causal relation was noticed between the length of the railways lines, investments in railway transport infrastructure, and GDPC, as well as a two-way causal link between the gross weight of seaborne goods handled in ports and GDPC.

The tendency to implement diverse environmental tools and promote the adoption of environmentally friendly practices in tourism activities is relatively new. One such tool is the EU Ecolabel used in the hotel industry as a voluntary European initiative meant to attest to the responsible attitude towards the environment. Since holding the ecolabel by the Romanian accommodation units is rather an exception, our aim was to investigate the views of industry managers on environmental issues, focusing on the EU Ecolabel, and get a glimpse of the challenges and prospects of ecolabelling within the seaside hotel industry. To this end, the study was designed and conducted on 60 hotel managers. The research results gave evidence to the measures already implemented, those pending implementation, reasons for not applying for the EU Ecolabel, and the most challenging criteria. The potential impact of the EU Ecolabel on the economic activity efficiency, and its role in customer decision processes and in marketing communication, was highlighted. Subsequently, a mathematical model was proposed, revealing that the intention to meet the criteria and obtain the EU Ecolabel depends on the managers’ level of knowledge of the EU Ecolabel, their opinion on whether holding the EU Ecolabel represents a competitive advantage, and the current efficiency level of the hotels’ economic activity. Considering the research findings, it is obvious that the industry would benefit from ampler and more sustained information campaigns on the EU Ecolabel.

This paper studies the evolution of the most important emerging economies between 2002 and 2017 by estimating their capacity to implement the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda. In the existing literature there are only a few studies aiming to estimate the capacity of emerging countries to implement the sustainable development goals and demonstrate how groups are performing in the achievement of these goals. Being aware of the strengths and weaknesses of such studies, the authors identified a group of nine countries by applying as the main criterion the size of the economy, reflected by Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in current prices, taking into account the level registered in 2017. From a methodological point of view, the study was conducted through three stages: data collection and processing; empirical analysis and correlation testing; and cluster analysis using Statistica software (10.0, StatSoft, Tulsa OK, USA). The results of this investigation highlighted that all of the nine examined countries have the attributes needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, based on the qualitative and quantitative analysed indicators. Furthermore, the nine countries have already developed measures and adopted national strategies to implement the 2030 Agenda, with political will being also a relevant factor in this regard. This study provides a framework for theoretical and empirical analysis that could also be used in the future, whereby both the number of countries and the timeframe taken into account could be increased in order to identify new development trends for emerging economies.

Provision of adequate energy services in terms of quality, at acceptable prices, in terms of environmental compliance and security of supply, and in accordance with the requirements of economic growth is a vital component of sustainable development.Within the European Union the states are insisting on creating a single market in energy (in particular electricity and natural gas energy market, energies that are infrastructure network dependent). Hence, the emphasis must be focused on two different directions: ?? development of transmission and distribution networks;?? institutional reorganization of the system, abolition of monopolistic structures, activities unbundling, establishment of regulatory authorities, etc..

The study takes into account the two Romanian Eastern regions (North East and South East) trying to emphasize the post-communist dynamics of the energy sector in order to draw a general perspective for the future evolution towards both energy security and a clean environment. Before 1989, the energy sector, that had to sustain not only the population needs, but also an oversized manufacturing industry, was based on big power plants usually using coal and oil and highly polluting the environment. The hydropower had a rather small share in the total energy production. This inherited system was very much resistant after the end of the centralized political system, therefore after the general industrial decline the energy sector remained the main source of air pollution in many towns and cities from Romania. Meanwhile, in the last 6-7 years, due to a favourable national political context, we assisted, especially in the analysed area, to an important emergence of renewable energy investments (mainly wind and solar energy, but also biomass or hydro-energy). Our purpose is to evaluate, from a geographical point of view, the extent and the implications of a desirable progressive shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy that could radically change the territorial relations and sustain development on the long term.

Abstract This publication refers to the studies which were made to a compact car model to observe the behavior of the three drivetrain versions that the car can be equipped with: the version in which the vehicle model is equipped only with a Diesel engine (classic), a plug-in hybrid version with the combustion engine placed in a series circuit (pSHEV) and a second plug-in hybrid variant, where the thermal engine is arranged in parallel (pPHEV) with the electric motor (EM). The study emphasizes the behavior of three different vehicle propulsion systems equipped on the compact car on a standardized road cycle condition defined by the Urban Driving Cycle (UDC) referred as ECE 15 cycle combined with the Extra-Urban Driving Cycle (EUDC). The scope is to set up the three different powertrain systems through numerical modeling and to generate the conclusions based on the simulations results obtained in ADvanced VehIcle SimulatOR (ADVISOR).

Economic activities are directly supported by the natural environment, and in this context, it has become crucial to analyse the phenomenon of decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation. The negative effects of economic activities on the environment are clearly visible, and understanding how to separate economic growth from environmental harm is of utmost importance. This paper aims to study the degree of the decoupling of economic growth, measured by GDP, from environmental degradation, quantified through CO2 and HFCs emissions, at the level of each EU27 country in the periods 2008–2012 and 2013–2020. In the analysis, graphical representations and statistical tests were utilised. In the first period, most of the EU27 countries registered negative levels for the variables considered, placing them into the negative coupling stage. In the second period, the evolution of the decoupling process was visible in all the countries, enabling them to make a significant transition to the relative or absolute stages. Overall, the Nordic countries could be observed as examples of best practices, managing to achieve the most desired stage of decoupling, i.e., the absolute one. These results are important for a wide range of stakeholders implicated in the preparation of programs, projects and policies dedicated to achieving economic growth in a sustainable manner.

Abstract In response to changing international recommendations and national requirements, a number of assessment approaches, and associated tools and models, have been developed over the last circa 20 years to assess radiological risk to wildlife. In this paper, we summarise international intercomparison exercises and scenario applications of available radiological assessment models for wildlife to aid future model users and those such as regulators who interpret assessments. Through our studies, we have assessed the fitness for purpose of various models and tools, identified the major sources of uncertainty and made recommendations on how the models and tools can best be applied to suit the purposes of an assessment. We conclude that the commonly used tiered or graded assessment tools are generally fit for purpose for conducting screening-level assessments of radiological impacts to wildlife. Radiological protection of the environment (or wildlife) is still a relatively new development within the overall system of radiation protection and environmental assessment approaches are continuing to develop. Given that some new/developing approaches differ considerably from the more established models/tools and there is an increasing international interest in developing approaches that support the effective regulation of multiple stressors (including radiation), we recommend the continuation of coordinated international programmes for model development, intercomparison and scenario testing.