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Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the “just transition” strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of “just transition” today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, we add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally. Analytically, our goal is to place the various approaches to a “just transition” within a heuristic framework of environmental justice that is explicit about power relations when demanding justice, two themes central to this special issue.

Research on why firms should outsource and how they should do it has proliferated in the past two decades, but few consistent findings have emerged concerning the benefits of outsourcing. We argue that this is in part due to the lack of an adequate framework for measuring the effects of outsourcing. To address this, we present such a framework based upon the Cobb–Douglas productivity function. We explain how our framework can be used to unpack one component of the Cobb–Douglas productivity function, the ‘total factor productivity’, which represents the other numerous sub-variables that affect outsourcing productivity, beyond the capital and labour expenditures. We also demonstrate the framework using a simple illustrative example.

SummaryCoulomb Counting (CC) method plays an important role in the state of charge (SOC) estimation theory of lithium‐ion batteries, and a lot of improvement and optimization strategies are based on it. With the increasing demand for precise management of lithium‐ion battery systems, the performance of the traditional CC method is no longer suitable for more complex working conditions. First, the battery aging, extreme temperature, and high‐rate discharging were considered as the main influencing factors which limit the SOC estimation accuracy of the CC method, and the performance degradation mechanism of the traditional CC method under the influence of the above factors are experimentally analyzed, especially the change of battery total dischargeable capacity after aging, and the change rules of key parameters in the CC equation are analyzed. Then the initial SOC and the total dischargeable capacity of the CC method are modified and estimated respectively to realize the accurate estimation of SOC under complex working conditions, especially the accurate SOC estimation during the whole life cycle of lithium‐ion batteries. The experimental results show that the improved CC method can effectively deal with complex working conditions, and the comprehensive estimation accuracy of SOC is within 3.6%.

It is increasingly evident that the direction of technological change responds to economic incentives. We review the literature on directed technical change in the context of environmental economics and labor economics, and we show that these fields have much in common both theoretically and empirically. We emphasize the importance of a balanced growth path and show that the lack of such a path is closely related to the slow development of green technologies in environmental economics and to growing inequality in labor economics. We discuss whether the direction of innovation is efficient.

Lack of access to modern energy services is a daunting development challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. The promotion of renewable energy technologies (RETs) by development partners and government organizations is one way of meeting this challenge. Despite substantial investment of effort, the diffusion of RETs in Africa has been disappointing, leading to a search for more effective policies and approaches. In this paper, we discuss the role of technological innovation system (TIS) in fostering technology diffusion. We argue that the functional build up of TIS shapes technology diffusion levels in least-developed country settings. We report a comparative analysis of the biogas TIS in Kenya and Rwanda by applying the so-called the 'functions approach to innovation systems'. On this preliminary evidence, we argue that patterns of accumulation of TIS functions may determine rates of technology diffusion. We argue that to ensure accelerated diffusion of RETs, policy attention should be paid to improving the functional performance of TIS.

Abstract We examine the macroeconomic effects of privatizing the ownership structure of the electricity market, using a novel indicator of privatization which covers 90 advanced, emerging market, and developing economies, since 1974. Privatization reforms, on average, improve outcomes in the provision of electricity and have positive macroeconomic effects: output and employment increase in the years following electricity-sector privatization reforms. Reforms are also associated also with an increase in income inequality, but the effects are small, on average. These impacts vary according to the business cycle, quality of institutions, and a country's development status, with macroeconomic and distributional outcomes generally positive when reforms are pursued during economic expansions and in countries with strong political and economic institutions. Macroeconomic outcomes also tend to be stronger in advanced economies.

This paper investigates the interactive relationships between oil price shocks and Chinese stock market using multivariate vector auto-regression. Oil price shocks do not show statistically significant impact on the real stock returns of most Chinese stock market indices, except for manufacturing index and some oil companies. Some "important" oil price shocks depress oil company stock prices. Increase in oil volatility may increase the speculations in mining index and petrochemicals index, which raise their stock returns. Both the world oil price shocks and China oil price shocks can explain much more than interest rates for manufacturing index.

Overreliance on energy from fossil fuels is unsustainable because of their regional depletion and associated environmental impacts. The British industrial sector accounts for around one fifth of final energy demand and one third of carbon emissions nationally. This thesis attempts to quantify the potential for industrial energy efficiency from the current baseline, by adopting thermodynamic and economic perspectives. The methodology involves a top-down analysis of energy trends within the manufacturing sector to determine the baseline against which changes are measured, leading to bottom-up case studies which explicitly consider the detailed mechanisms affecting energy demand. Top-down analysis highlights the diversity between industrial sectors, for which a sectoral classification based on process homogeneity is proposed. It also enables the long term, systemic potential for efficiency improvements to be estimated and identifies the barriers to uptake. Bottom-up case studies are better suited to identifying the sectoral potential in the short to medium term. Firstly, the technical potential for heat recovery from industrial sectors is quantified by recourse to thermodynamic quality and spatial considerations. Secondly, an energy and exergy analysis of a glass furnace enables a distinction between avoidable and unavoidable losses, leading to the identification of economic savings. Thirdly, a process integration study at a pulp and paper mill based on a pinch analysis and optimisation of a heat exchanger network highlights economic efficiency improvements. This thesis demonstrates that realising the full industrial energy efficiency potential requires improvements to public policy intended to overcome market-related barriers, especially the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and the Carbon Trust, with additional scope for a mandatory efficiency standard relating to motors. Energy efficiency has to part of a company’s overall strategy to be effective. Future work should focus on heterogeneous sectors and the broader effects on industrial energy efficiency of globalisation and the shift towards services.