• Energy Research
• 2021-2025close
• 8. Economic growth close

We researched China's climate and sustainable development goal with relevant and susceptible instruments capable of inducing and mitigating carbon emissions. Amidst the contributor to the global carbon emissions, China is caught in between mitigating its carbon emission and aiming towards placing its national contribution of emissions to the acceptable levels of 1.5 °C and below 2 °C. Following the intricacies surrounding China's sustainable development as it contains its economic and environmental performance, we adopt China's data of 1980 and 2018 with different scientific approaches (nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag (NARDL), dynamic ordinary least square test, and bootstrap Granger causality) with different instruments (such as economic growth, financial development, renewable energy, and innovation policies) to research China's sustainable development. For clear exposition and insight into our findings with policies attached, we draw a conclusion from the outcomes of the mentioned approaches. From NARDL and dynamic ordinary least squares (DOLS), we find that economic growth through economic activities is statistically significant in determining the trend (increase) of carbon emissions in China in both periods (short run and long run). However, other selected instruments (financial, renewable, and innovation policies) tend towards controlling and moderating the carbon emissions in China. Thus, China has good prospects to mitigate its carbon emissions if considered tailoring its policies towards favorable instruments. From bootstrap Granger causality, we find similar inferential results that support previous findings thereby confirming the positive implication of the selected instruments to China's sustainable development. Hence, the nexus that is established among the selected instruments clearly show the importance of technological innovation and renewable energy in mitigating carbon emissions.

Achieving economic development is one of the most important economic goals of every country. Identifying the determinants of economic growth, is a useful tool for adopting appropriate economic policies. This study, therefore, empirically examines the impact of trade openness, foreign direct investment, and financial development on economic growth, across 62 countries over the period 1995–2016. These countries are divided into two groups: low-income and high-income countries. We employ the pooled mean group (PMG), mean group (MG), and dynamic fixed effect (DFE) estimation techniques on the cross-country panel data. The findings show a positive long run association between trade openness, foreign direct investment (FDI), financial development, labor, government expenditure, and economic growth in low-income countries, with a positive and negative short run effect from capital and government expenditures, respectively. For high-income countries, a positive long run association between trade openness, FDI, capital, and economic growth exist. The short run estimates indicate a positive effect on trade openness and capital as well as a negative effect on government expenditure. Our study shows that the adoption of policies that improves access to skilled labor and international trade, affect the attainment of a sustainable economic development.

The proposition that living in the largest urban agglomerations of an advanced economy reduces the average wellbeing of residents is known as the urban wellbeing paradox. Empirical tests using subjective wellbeing have produced mixed results and there are two reasons for being cautious. Firstly, the default reliance on the conditional mean can disguise uneven effects across the wellbeing distribution. Secondly, relying on respondents to define their settlement size does not ensure a consistent measure of the agglomeration. I therefore apply quantile regression to the life satisfaction and happiness measures of wellbeing as collected by the 2018 European Social Survey (ESS9) and employ a consistent local labour market-based definition of agglomeration—The Functional Urban Area (FUA). I compare three countries as proof of concept: one with a known strong negative (respondent defined) agglomeration effect (Austria), one with a slight negative effect (Czech Republic), and one where living in the main agglomeration is positively associated with average wellbeing (Slovenia). The uneven wellbeing effect of living in the largest agglomeration in each country raises questions about who benefits in which cities.

Sustainable development is one of the issues that many developed and developing countries focus on in the world. The sustainability of human and natural resources is of great importance for securing the world and humanity's common future. In this context, this study aims to evaluate the socio-economic structure of Erzurum with analytical hierarchy process (AHP) and digitized strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analysis considering sustainable development goals (SDGs). The items included in the Agenda 21 report of the United Nations and 17 SDGs determined by the United Nations were taken into consideration in this endeavour. In line with expert opinions, the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats created by the sustainable development goals for Erzurum province were analysed statistically with the AHP. Priority and weighted values of each sub-criterion were calculated. According to this analysis, "the richness of natural, cultural and historical resources for tourism potential" ranks first among the strengths of the province regarding sustainable development goals. Weaknesses include "insufficient investment and entrepreneurial culture". However, "priority region status for development" criterion stands out as the most important opportunity. Threats include "loss of labour force due to migration from agricultural areas" criterion. After the statistical analysis, the quantitative results of made for the best realization of sustainable development for the area were assessed to specify new goals and strategies. Suggestions were offered to define opportunities and strengths, threats and weaknesses with new-build strategies and to make the plans accordingly.

With the fast growth of the global economy, energy supply and demand have a strong impact on social, economic, and environmental aspects. As a consequence, this has pushed the decision-makers to formulate objectives, guiding economic policies toward sustainable goals. The process is known as Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that have been proposed by the United Nations. This being said, the energy sector is a vital domain with a vast potential for improvments in terms of technologies and ligistalations. Solar energy is among the most efficient solutions proposed to reduce the economic and environmental footprints of energy. In this frame, the current paper aims to localize solar energy within SDGs and analyze the contribution of the solar energy towards the achievement of the SDGs. Moreover, the current work highlights the contributions of Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum (MBR) Solar Park in the United Arab Emirates to achieving the SDGs. Indeed, the MBR Solar Park concept offers valuable insights of environmental impacts by deploying clean and affordable energy sources in place of conventional fossil fuel power plants that are still heavily used in the region. The MBR Solar Park operation has already mitigated 6.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent and this number will likely rise when all phases are installed and operational. Moreover, it has been shown that MBR Solar Park achieve several SDGs such SDG 8: decent work and economic growth, SDG 9: industry, innovation and infrastructure, SDG 11: sustainable cities and communities, and SDG 15: life on land.

This research studied the impacts of the environmental Kuznets curve and the determinants of economic growth for Visegrad countries from 1990 to 2018. This paper reflects on the effects of renewable and non-renewable energy, urban population, foreign direct investment, economic growth, and carbon dioxide emissions. According to our results, the panel of unit root tests showed that the variables under study are integrated into the first differences. Considering the empirical results for the environmental Kuznets curve, we observe that economic growth is positively correlated with pollution emissions; nevertheless, the squared income per capita is negatively impacted by carbon dioxide emissions. Energy consumption increases carbon emissions, and foreign direct investment confirms the pollution halo hypothesis. Therefore, the econometric results showed that renewable energy consumption promotes regional growth. Consequently, urban population and foreign direct investment positively correlate with economic growth.

This paper analyzes the effectiveness and efficiency of the normatives' controlling against the operational and strategic controlling. The general focus in studies and focus of the controlling experts is mostly on the operational controlling. For the analysis of the normatives' controlling in Bavarian SMEs a primary research data set is used. The survey was aimed on Bavarian SME's in the machine building sector. We employ regression models for the assessment of significance of the influencing factors, which are causing the negation of the normatives' controlling. We use monthly hours worked in the normatives' controlling, percentage acceptance of the normatives' controlling, used normatives' controlling instruments and the number of employees working in the controlling department as the influencing factors. The empirical evidence shows significant results affecting Bavarian SME's - Acceptance (monthly capacity of the head of controlling department) was identified as a significant variable on a statistically significant level with the estimated coefficient of 0.217 in relation to the Hours (monthly hours of work capacity) of normatives' controlling departments, and Instruments (number of instruments used) were proved to significantly influence the Employees (number of employees in controlling department) with the coefficient of 2.099. With the growing importance of the ability of an organization to publicly demonstrate its success in reaching objectives and specifically in its societal impacts, the importance of setting normatives and their control will project into higher demands on the work capacity of the controlling departments.