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

Much of New South Wales and southern Queensland suffered from extreme drought from 2017 to 2019. This study models drought and bushfires impacts using VU‐TERM, a multi‐regional, dynamic CGE model. Prolonged drought pushed national real GDP to 0.7 per cent or more below base in 2018–2019 and 2019–2020. NSW’s real GDP fell relative to forecast by 1.1 per cent or $6.9 billion in 2018–2019 and 1.6 per cent or $10.2 billion in 2019–2020. These impacts reflect a severe diminution of farm output, given that agriculture accounts for around 1.6 per cent of NSW’s income. Bushfires exacerbated 2019–2020 losses. We assume that there is a full recovery in seasonal conditions in 2020. However, prolonged drought and bushfire destruction deplete farm capital through depressed investment and diminished herd numbers. Consequently, the income earning capacity of farms in recovery remains below that of a no drought base. The net present value of the national welfare loss is $63 billion, split between $53 billion in losses from drought and $10 billion from bushfires. The latter excludes any valuation of human lives lost, flora, fauna or forestry destruction. In the longer term, adaptation and policy responses will need to reflect the expectation of increased frequency of adverse climatic events.

Due to various environmental degradation and natural resource depletion around the world, researchers' and policymakers' attention has turned to what causes environmental degradation. The pursuit of a healthy environment has become a global challenge, a problem that affects more than one nation. Climate change is causing severe weather conditions in every world, disrupting economies and affecting the lives of many people. Hence, the study analyzes how trade and economic growth impact environmental degradation in Belgium, the USA, and Canada using panel data from 1995 to 2016. The study utilized the autoregressive distributed lag approach to provide new evidence and policy implications. The outcome confirmed the presence of cointegration among the selected variables. However, it was observed that economic growth decreases environmental degradation in the long run while trade openness shows a positively insignificant relationship with carbon emission. Nevertheless, a positive short-run relationship was observed between economic growth and carbon emissions whereas a negatively insignificant relationship was observed for trade and carbon emission. The findings prompted policy implications that more trading could be done between the countries. When countries trade more, their economies will flourish, ensuring global prosperity and minimizing environmental degradation.

In recent years, the global economy has become more closely related among countries, and people’s pursuit of economic growth has caused the destruction of the environment. This paper selected panel data from 30 provinces in China from 1997 to 2020 to investigate the dynamic relationship between trade liberalization, financial development and carbon dioxide emissions by constructing a PVAR model. We also consider technology as an important variable for studying the effect on carbon dioxide emissions. We draw the following conclusions. First, financial development promotes carbon dioxide emissions, while trade liberalization has no significant impact on carbon dioxide emissions. Second, China’s trade liberalization promotes financial development, which has limited support for international trade. Third, there is a two-way causal relationship between financial development and carbon dioxide emissions, and there is also a two-way causal relationship between trade liberalization and financial development. Finally, there is a significant inverted “U” curve relationship between trade liberalization and innovation efficiency, environmental regulation and innovation. According to the results, we believe that openness to trade impacts emissions of carbon dioxide, opening a new function path: namely, trade openness and financial development result in high carbon dioxide emissions; consequently, China has relied on this process in the development of their financial system.

The prevailing need for a more sustainable management of natural resources depends not only on the decisions made by governments and the will of the population, but also on the knowledge of the role of energy in our society and the relevance of preserving natural resources. In this sense, critical work is being done to instill key concepts—such as the circular economy and sustainable energy—in higher education institutions. In this way, it is expected that future professionals and managers will be aware of the importance of energy optimization, and will learn a series of computational methods that can support the decision-making process. In the context of higher education, this paper reviews the main trends and challenges related to the concepts of circular economy and sustainable energy. Besides, we analyze the role of simulation and serious games as a learning tool for the aforementioned concepts. Finally, the paper provides insights and discusses open research opportunities regarding the use of these computational tools to incorporate circular economy concepts in higher education degrees. Our findings show that, while efforts are being made to include these concepts in current programs, there is still much work to be done, especially from the point of view of university management. In addition, the analysis of the teaching methodologies analyzed shows that, although their implementation has been successful in favoring the active learning of students, their use (especially that of serious games) is not yet widespread.

The subject of research in the paper is the capital structure of companies in the Republic of Serbia. The research sample consists of companies that operated in the manufacturing industry in the Republic of Serbia in the period 2006–2020. The aim of the research is to identify firm-specific variables that have significant influence on the capital structure of the analyzed companies. Using a panel data methodology, three leverage models were estimated: long-term leverage, short-term leverage, and total leverage. The research results confirm the importance of company size, profitability, tangibility, and risk in determining the capital structure of companies in the Republic of Serbia. However, the research results show that size, profitability, and tangibility of assets have the opposite effect on long-term leverage compared to short-term and total leverage. That is, the behavior of companies in the Republic of Serbia in the case of long-term leverage is in accordance with the predictions of the trade-off theory, while in the case of short-term and total leverage, the behavior of companies can be explained by the pecking order theory.

Abstract An energy access assessment conducted by Practical Action in 2018 as part of the Renewable Energy for Refugees project established that most households and small enterprises in Kigeme, Gihembe and Nyabiheke refugee camps in Rwanda had limited or no access to electricity. It also identified both demand in the camps for modern energy services and a willingness and ability to pay. To address the lack of access to electricity, two solar home system companies operating in Rwanda were supported by the project to access the camps and supply systems to refugees and the host community via market-based delivery models. This paper applies the diffusion of innovations theory as a framework to investigate the sales of solar home systems in the camps. It is the first paper to present data in this area and it assesses both the viability of market-based delivery of solar home systems in refugee camps and the suitability of using diffusion of innovations theory in these contexts. The results indicate that solar home systems can provide an advantage to households compared to existing energy solutions and are, in most cases, compatible with refugees' basic energy needs and expectations. However, the cost of systems remains a barrier and without subsidy, further reductions in costs or adaptations to payment models, solar home systems are unlikely to provide large proportions of households and small enterprises in the camps with access to energy. This seriously impacts the possibility of achieving Sustainable Development Goal 7 and for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to achieve the objectives it set out in its Clean Energy Challenge policy.

As an important livelihood strategy choice to promote the sustainable development of themselves and regions, returnees’ entrepreneurship has played a vital role in the governance of all-level Chinese local governments since the 21st century. The policy attention reflects the importance that the local governments attach to this issue, and the evolution process also reflects relevant policies’ internal rules and characteristics. Based on this, this paper, taking 242 policy texts related to returnees’ entrepreneurship issued by local governments from 2000 to 2021 as the research objects, uses grounded theory and social network analysis in order to explore the policy attention evolution from the aspects of time, space, specific policy domains and cooperative relationship among policy subjects. Finally, this research finds the main conclusions as follows: (1) The policy attention evolution on time dimension has the characteristic of synchronism, different levels and “reciprocal U”. (2) The policy attention evolution on space dimension is closely linked to “pull” and “push” forces of local population flow and has neighborhood effects. (3) The policy attention evolution on specific policy areas will gradually spread and diversify with the change in local governance environment and stage goals. (4) The evolution trend of collaborative social network among policy objects has the characteristic of “loose-central-loose”.

In the light of the COP27 Climate Change Conference, the concept of the circular economy has come to the fore with promotion of reuse and recycling of appliances and materials from electronics to clothes. This concept has not been widely taken up by healthcare systems. In this perspective article, we discuss the idea of the circular economy and how, by extension, the concept of "circular medicine" with optimised hospital and medical clinic waste recycling might be promoted in the context of better stewardship of resources in healthcare management.