• Energy Research

The aviation industry’s contribution to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has been on an unsteady rise for the past few decades. This paper aims to identify the determinants of increasing GHG emissions in Europe in a dynamic panel setting, paying specific attention to the role of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Unlike previous studies, this paper proposes business tourism spending and capital investment in the tourism and travel industry as explanatory factors together with GDP per capita and jet fuel consumption. Unexpectedly, the EU ETS coverage is found to have an increasing role for GHG emissions from international aviation in countries where the system is put into effect. The results suggest that a more targeted emissions reduction policy needs to be implemented in order to mitigate aviation emissions in the region.

Abstract The aim of the paper is to investigate how the location of non-carbon ecological footprint (home or abroad) changes along with environmental regulation. Ecological footprint measures the amount of biocapacity required to sustain the consumption patterns of human beings. Employing panel data analysis, the relationship between income and footprints that result from domestic production and importsis investigated for 87 countries during the period 2004-2010 within the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) framework. We find that an EKC relationship cannot be validated for income (GDP per capita) and non-carbon footprints of production and of imports. Besides, the analysis shows that countries reach the turning points for import footprint at lower levels of income once stringency of environmental regulation and enforcement of environmental regulation are accounted for. Environmental regulations push the economic structure towards a cleaner transformation by which resources can be exploited more effectively, and short run losses in economic growth can be avoided in the medium and long run, conditional on a successful transformation toward higher value-added and cleaner production processes.

Over the past few decades, demarketing has come up as an unorthodox but potentially strong approach that can be used to counter the negative effects of oversaturation in tourism destinations. This study investigates the difference that demarketing strategies can make on mitigation efforts towards overtourism in destinations across the globe by conducting a meta-analysis of the previous literature examining various case studies on the topic. This study approaches demarketing efforts against overtourism through the lens of the 4Ps of marketing: price, place, product, and promotion. The results of the logit model designate price as the only significant predictor in the mitigation of overtourism through demarketing, with the other three falling short. The findings are enhanced through various other predictors from the literature as well as government effectiveness in the destinations. Moreover, the driving forces such as environmental concerns and community satisfaction have proven to be significant factors as well.

Abstract Turkey is known to suffer from severe volatility in its growth patterns, as well as from the uneven sectoral growth and employment. Volatile rates of emissions across sectors are further manifestations of this uneven structure. The purpose of this study is two-fold: first, we check for dynamic patterns of convergence of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions across sectors; and second, using evidence from panel data econometrics, we search for the determinants of these processes utilizing macroeconomic explanatory variables. We find that, based on various alternate criteria, CO2 emissions display conditional convergence mainly driven by the business cycle. Furthermore, across sectors, high technology activities display convergence over time; and yet, medium technology sectors that constitute the bulk of the aggregate value added display either poorly convergent or divergent trends. These results reveal that much of the emissions convergence is driven by the business cycle rather than the workings of discretionary mitigation policy.

Abstract Climate change is impacting marine ecosystems and their goods and services in diverse ways, which can directly hinder our ability to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), set out under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Through expert elicitation and a literature review, we find that most climate change effects have a wide variety of negative consequences across marine ecosystem services, though most studies have highlighted impacts from warming and consequences of marine species. Climate change is expected to negatively influence marine ecosystem services through global stressors—such as ocean warming and acidification—but also by amplifying local and regional stressors such as freshwater runoff and pollution load. Experts indicated that all SDGs would be overwhelmingly negatively affected by these climate impacts on marine ecosystem services, with eliminating hunger being among the most directly negatively affected SDG. Despite these challenges, the SDGs aiming to transform our consumption and production practices and develop clean energy systems are found to be least affected by marine climate impacts. These findings represent a strategic point of entry for countries to achieve sustainable development, given that these two goals are relatively robust to climate impacts and that they are important pre‐requisite for other SDGs. Our results suggest that climate change impacts on marine ecosystems are set to make the SDGs a moving target travelling away from us. Effective and urgent action towards sustainable development, including mitigating and adapting to climate impacts on marine systems are important to achieve the SDGs, but the longer this action stalls the more distant these goals will become. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

Since the deregulation of significant parts of electricity markets in many countries worldwide, a generally pronounced matter is that firms strategically lower their generating capacity to raise electricity prices. This paper investigates whether strategic capacity withholding exists in the form of generation failures in the Turkish day-ahead market and whether the capacity remuneration mechanism contributes to the failure durations. The empirical results show strong support for strategic capacity withholding in the Turkish market, and the capacity mechanism adds to the duration of these failures. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate capacity withholding considering centrally determined capacity prices and to focus on failure durations and the potential amount of power generation losses they cause. Our analysis conveys core messages for policymakers. A random verification mechanism may be implemented to verify that the failures are purely technical and apply penalties for nonperformance. Second, the Turkish capacity mechanism needs to be restructured to make it more compatible with performance incentives. Our analysis, while focused on the Turkish market, provides insights into the prevalent challenges and potential solutions tied to strategic capacity withholding in deregulated electricity markets globally, notably those employing capacity remuneration mechanisms.

AbstractClimate change affects the comfort level of tourists visiting coastal areas. Researching these impacts is important for a more comprehensive understanding of climate change and for developing effective adaptation solutions. Considering this fact, the study derived the Holiday Climate Index (HCI: Coast, HCI: Urban, and HCI: Combined) in the Mediterranean coastal provinces of Türkiye from 1976 to 2020. Utilizing the derived indices, the effects of climate-related holiday comfort on the number of tourist arrivals as well as on overnight stays between 1976 and 2020 were examined by panel data analysis. The study examined how comfort patterns could change during the period 2026–2050 under the pessimistic RCP8.5 scenario. It was detected that the comfort level significantly and positively affects the number of arrivals and overnight stays of tourists. Besides, comfort levels were found to deteriorate in the period 2026–2050 compared to the reference period, 1976–2020. As the comfort conditions get worse, the number of tourist arrivals and overnight stays is expected to decline in the future. It is envisaged that the results of the study can be useful for tourists, tourism professionals, operators, other stakeholders, and policymakers.