• Energy Research

Oxides of nitrogen are among the most dangerous emissions to human health and to the environment. In European nations, road transportation contributes to approximately 40% of emissions of oxides of nitrogen with the dominant share coming from passenger and freight transport. To help mitigate emissions of oxides of nitrogen, the European Union (EU) has implemented vehicular emissions standards. This paper studies the effect of EU vehicular emissions standards on per capita emissions of oxides of nitrogen in European nations during the period 2000 to 2017, both for on-road vehicular emissions and at the economy level. To do this, pollution is modelled as a byproduct of economic production. After controlling for economic growth, historical per capita levels of emissions of oxides of nitrogen, and a series of geographic and technological factors, it is determined that the vehicular emissions standards put in place by the EU decrease per capita levels of emissions of oxides of nitrogen. More precisely, reducing the heavy duty emissions standard by 1 g/kWh leads to as much as a 7% reduction in per capita on-road emissions of oxides of nitrogen. Reducing the passenger vehicle emissions standards for both diesel and gasoline engines enhances this effect, resulting in an even greater reduction in per capita emissions of oxides of nitrogen. These results further suggest that any rebound effect taking place is outweighed by the reduction in emissions of oxides of nitrogen from lowering emissions standards.

The 45th presidential administration declared natural gas to be "molecules of freedom", a perfunctory used for political gain. Additionally, this administration has also levied tariffs as a political tool designed to reduce trade deficits rather than promote sustainability. In this paper, we study the impact of tariffs on domestic carbon intensities and carbon dioxide emissions. We find that tariffs increase carbon intensities and do not have an effect on carbon dioxide emissions. Since tariffs also reduce output, we conclude that by implementing tariffs the second best problem is invoked and overall market inefficiency increases. Additionally, since carbon intensities rise and overall carbon dioxide emissions do not decline, regional concerns over environmental quality and health should be raised. The paper concludes with a discussion of how these results impact policy decisions pertaining to instruments for promoting sustainability.

Over the past few years, a growing number of scholars employed ecological footprint (EP) as a proxy of environmental deterioration because this comprehensive indicator effectively captures environmental degradation. However, the literature on driving factors of the ecological footprint indicates diverse findings, and the majority of the studies explore symmetric relationships. Taking this in view, the current study uses both symmetric and asymmetric methods to examine the nexus between ecological footprint, economic globalization, economic growth, and financial development, controlling for population density and energy consumption in the third-largest economy Japan. The study uses advanced unit root methods including the Narayan-Popp and CMR unit root tests with two breaks to determine unit root properties. The asymmetric and symmetric ARDL methods are used to probe cointegration and long-run associations. The findings reveal the long-run asymmetric and symmetric relationship of variables with the ecological footprint. The long-run empirical results of symmetric ARDL suggest that economic globalization and financial development increase footprint in Japan. On the flipside, the novel findings from the asymmetric ARDL indicate that positive and negative changes in economic globalization reduce footprint. Interestingly, the asymmetric ARDL presents a totally different picture, indicating that the results of symmetric ARDL can be unreliable in the presence of asymmetries. A positive change in financial development increases footprint with a more pronounced effect in the long-run, compared to a negative change which has a comparatively weak effect. Energy consumption deteriorates the environment by increasing the ecological footprint. On the positive side, population density decreases footprint, and the inverted U-shaped relationship between footprint and income confirms the validity of the EKC in Japan. Finally, the policy implications of these novel findings are discussed.

In this paper we test for convergence in access to clean energy and clean technology among nations in order to study the economic determinants of access to clean energy and clean technologies. This is important because without access to clean fuels, no global development strategy can be environmentally sustainable. After obtaining an estimated convergence rate under a conditional β -convergence model, we use a more sophisticated club convergence econometric framework and ultimately reject the hypothesis of β -convergence in favor of subgroups exhibiting intra-group convergence tendencies that are distinct from the other groups. We then employ a club convergence algorithm which groups the 93 nations studied into 8 convergence clubs based on characteristics including the percentage of the population with access to clean energy in the household and the growth rate of this percentage. Evidence that household access to clean energy and clean technology is tied to economic development and institutional quality is provided by showing that the convergence clubs not only reflect distinct strata in access to clean energy but are also strongly tied to important indicators of institutional quality.

Analyses of the Environmental Kuznet's Curve (EKC) hypothesis have largely focused on economy level data with occasional analyses exploring sector level data. This paper exploits a new data set which contains sector level data on greenhouse gas emissions from the US energy sector as well as subsector data from six disjoint subsectors which together comprise the entire energy sector. The data contained in this data set is annual data at the state level from 1990 through 2011. A battery of EKC models are tested and some evidence supporting the EKC hypothesis is found for the US energy sector and its subsectors. We find that aggregated subsector level estimates outperform sector level estimate on in-sample accuracy. These estimated models are then used to forecast emissions for the energy sector. We find that EKC estimations for the energy sector as a whole are consistently lower than aggregated subsector EKC estimates. Addressing the title, we find limited evidence at best that US greenhouse gas emissions are at or near a peak.