• Energy Research

Globally, non-cereal crops such as vegetable oils and their associated products will surpass cereals in demand by 2050, according to the World Bank (WB). Despite being considered an energy-efficient food crop, the production and supply capability of rapeseed is mostly influenced by climate conditions. Aiming in this context, the study explored how temperature and rainfall patterns influence rapeseed production, as well as how rapeseed prices in major trading countries may influence production and consumption patterns in developing countries. To do this, a supply and demand model approach has been employed for major exporting (Canada) and importing countries, i.e., China, the United States (U.S.) along with Bangladesh, a developing nation. The baseline study period was considered from 1991 to 2018, and simulations were performed up to 2040. The findings revealed that the most important effect on rapeseed yield is directly related to changes in temperature, which are positively related to the growing season but negatively related to the maturity stages of rapeseed in all studied countries. Rapeseed exports from Canada are expected to rise by 2040, while imports from China and the U.S. will rise simultaneously. In Canada, the per capita consumption of rapeseed oil is expected to increase from 16 to 24 kg per year between 2019 and 2040. Over the projection period, oil per capita consumption has steadily increased in China, the U.S., and Bangladesh. The relative demand for rapeseed oil is projected to increase by 2060, according to representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Therefore, it is necessary to determine market prices considering the probable climatic effect and increasing market demand for rapeseed to sustain the international market access of trading nations.

The state of emergency (SOE) period in Tokyo under the COVID-19 pandemic restricted people to staying in their homes and changed human mobility, which has impacted the major agricultural markets in Tokyo. In this research, we analyzed how the changes in people’s staying-at-home behaviors during the four SOE periods (7 April 2020–28 October 2021) in Tokyo affected the daily market prices of cabbage, tomato, Japanese radish, carrot, and potato. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the study reveals that all the investigated vegetables except potatoes have a long-term relationship with the staying-at-home index. The long-term influence of staying-at-home behaviors on cabbage, tomato, radish, and carrot markets during the early SOE periods had a negative impact on these vegetable prices, indicating that an increase in the hours of staying-at-home as related to SOE measures might have decreased the demand for these vegetables. The negative impact of the stay-at-home index on vegetable prices lessened in the fourth SOE period, likely because more people did not remain in their homes. Moreover, the study findings reveal that, compared to less perishable vegetables, the price of perishable vegetables is more likely to have been affected by human mobility constraints during the pandemic. Therefore, agricultural policymakers should consider providing subsidies to producers based on the negative influence on market prices of perishable and less perishable vegetables in pandemic situations, such as COVID-19.

Just after the Indian government issued the first lockdown rule to cope with the increasing number of COVID-19 cases in March 2020, the energy consumption in India plummeted dramatically. However, as the lockdown relaxed, energy consumption started to recover. In this study, we investigated how COVID-19 cases affected Indian energy consumption during the COVID-19 crisis by testing if the lockdown release had a positive impact on energy consumption and if richer regions were quicker to recover their energy consumption to the level before the lockdown. Using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model, the study reveals that a long-run relationship holds between the COVID-19 cases and energy consumption and that the COVID-19 cases have a positive effect on Indian energy consumption. This result indicates that as lockdown relaxed, energy consumption started to recover. However, such a positive impact was not apparent in the Eastern and North-Eastern regions, which are the poorest regions among the five regions investigated in the study. This implies that poorer regions need special aid and policy to recover their economy from the damage suffered from the COVID-19 crisis.

Quarantining at home during the COVID-19 pandemic significantly restricted human mobility such as visits to parks, grocery stores, workplaces, retail places, and transit stations. In this research, we analyzed how the changes in human mobility during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, from February to April 2020 (i.e., between 17 February and 30 April 2020), affected the daily CO2 emissions for countries having a high number of coronavirus cases at that time. Our daily time-series analyses indicated that when average hours spent at home increased, the amount of daily CO2 emissions declined significantly. The findings suggest that for all three countries (the US, India, and France), a 1% increase in the average duration spent in residential areas reduced daily CO2 emissions by 0.17 Mt, 0.10 Mt, and 0.01 Mt, respectively, during the first wave period. Thus, confining people into their homes contributes to cutting down CO2 emissions remarkably. However, the study also reveals those activities such as visiting parks and going grocery shopping increase CO2 emissions, suggesting that unnecessary human mobility is undesirable for the environment.

This research investigates the variation in the impact of different energy sources on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in Japan during the period from January 2019 to March 2023. The results of the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model suggest that a 1% increase in energy consumption produced through the photovoltaic (PV) decreases carbon emission by 0.053% in the short-run. Conversely, a 1% increase in coal, oil, and liquefied natural gas (LNG) leads to an increase in CO2 emissions by 0.317%, 0.038%, and 0.214%, respectively. The study also reveals an inverted-U-shaped relationship between CO2 emissions and economic growth, represented by the Nikkei stock index. The research emphasizes the critical need for Japan to prioritize investments and incentives in renewable energy technologies such as the PV systems, which have been demonstrated to effectively reduce CO2 emissions in Japan. This is essential to uphold long-term ecological balance and to proactively support the ongoing reduction in CO2 intensity, a key objective outlined in the Paris Agreement.

From the perspective of nutritional security, we investigated the influence of climate change on potato production in Bangladesh using a supply and demand model by considering the potato as an important non-cereal food crop. To provide an outlook on the variation in potato supplies and market prices under changing climatic factors (temperature, rainfall, and solar-radiation), the yield, area, import, and demand functions were assessed using district-level time-series data of Bangladesh (1988–2013), disaggregated into seven climatic zones. Results suggest that temperatures above or below the optimal range (18–22 °C) lowered yields. Little rainfall and low solar radiation hinder potato cultivation areas during the potato maturity stage. During the simulated period, the annual production was projected to rise from 88 to 111 million metric tons (MT), with an equilibrium farm price of 155 to 215 US dollars MT−1. Between 2014 and 2030, the nation’s per-capita potato intake is expected to increase from 49 to 55 kg year−1 because of changing dietary patterns. According to the estimated equilibrator, scenario simulations that incorporated various dimensions of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios indicate that potato production and consumption can increase in the future.