• Energy Research
• 8. Economic growth close
• Beijing Institute of Technology close

Abstract To empirically verify whether financial risk affects global carbon emissions, this study investigates the financial risk-emission nexus by employing a global balanced panel dataset of 62 countries over the period 2003–2018. Furthermore, we explore the mediation effect of technological innovation on the financial risk-emission nexus. Fully considering potential regional heterogeneity and asymmetry, this study further analyzes the heterogeneous and asymmetric relationships among the variables, such as the difference between regional comprehensive economic partnership countries and other countries. The empirical results indicate that: (1) a mediation effect between financial risk and global carbon emissions exists; in other words, increased financial risk not only reduces global carbon emissions directly, but can also have an indirect impact in mitigating carbon emissions by promoting technological innovation; (2) the impacts of financial risk and technological innovation on global carbon emissions show significant regional heterogeneity; and (3) financial risk and technological innovation show asymmetry across different quantiles. To be specific, technological innovation and financial risk have a significant inhibitory effect on global carbon emissions only in the 10th quantile, while promoting carbon emissions in other quantiles.

Abstract In the context of addressing climate change, the carbon emission trading scheme has become one of the main measures adopted by many countries and regions to achieve emission reduction goals. Noticing this current lack of research, based on a duopoly model, this paper quantitatively explores the impact of carbon offsetting scheme on both emission trading participants' profits and industry's output by drawing on advanced experience of carbon offsetting scheme from developed countries, such as US, Switzerland and EU, and thus provides a perspective for government to design optimal aggregate standard for carbon cap-and-trade. Results show a negative correlation between enterprises' carbon intensity and their equilibrium output in the product market, and indicate a threshold for the relative magnitude of the duopoly enterprises' carbon intensity, above which their absolute output will differ dramatically. The incorporation of carbon offsetting scheme into a non-offset quota trading scheme will reduce its equilibrium carbon price, thereby mitigate its negative impact on industry's total output in the product market by an either linear or quadratic form, depending on the design for the proportion ceiling of offsetting quota.

The present study investigates the effect of public–private partnership investment in energy and renewable energy consumption on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, taking into account the critical role of economic growth and trade openness in Pakistan from 1992 to 2019. The linear and nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag models are employed to check the co-integration link between dependent and independent variables, further estimate short-run and long-run associations, and examine the symmetric and asymmetric effects of public–private partnership investment in energy on CO2 emissions in Pakistan. The empirical findings show that public–private partnership investment in energy reduces environmental quality by increasing CO2 emissions. Similarly, economic development and trade openness harms the atmosphere by raising CO2 emissions. On the other hand, renewable energy consumption significantly negatively affects CO2 emissions. In addition, the findings also authenticate the asymmetric link between public–private partnership investment in energy and the environment, as CO2 emissions are caused mainly by positive shocks in public–private partnership investment in energy in the short and long run. This study proposes financing renewable energy projects through public–private partnership is needed for an environmentally friendly future.

© 2021 Elsevier LtdDespite extensive research to address the impact of environmental reforms under the Paris Climate Agreement, current literature has failed to provide sufficient insights into Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) countries. To this end, the current study attempts to address the impact of the economic complexity on environmental quality in the presence of renewable energy consumption, financial development, urbanization and energy innovation in RCEP countries from 1990 to 2019. Our empirical estimates confirm a significant association between environmental quality, economic complexity index, renewable energy consumption, financial development, urbanization and energy innovation in the short-run and long run. Based on extensive econometric analysis (CS-ARDL, AMG, PMG, FMOLS, and DOLS), we conclude that economic complexity, renewable energy, and energy innovation effectively mitigate environmental degradation. At the same time, financial development and urbanization have an adverse impact on the environment. These findings have extensive policy implications for policymakers and environmental stakeholders, who are aiming to achieve sustainable energy policy and economic growth to meet the environmental commitments under Paris Climate Agreement.

Abstract The rapid increase in per capita energy consumption is likely to be an important factor affecting the sustainable development of China's economy. In this study, the convergence of per capita energy consumption, which is an important inherent characteristic of China's energy consumption, is investigated using panel data for the period 1994–2014 for 30 Chinese provinces. To control for the potential spatial dependence in energy consumption per capita and introduce dynamics, appropriate spatial dynamic econometric models are employed. The empirical results indicate that there are both absolute and conditional β-convergences in per capita energy consumption across provinces. In addition, there is also evidence for an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita energy consumption and per capita GDP. Therefore, per capita energy consumption would increase when economic development is relatively low. However, per capita energy consumption may decrease after a threshold level of economic development is reached. Among the factors that potential influence provincial energy consumption, the ratio of secondary industry value-added to GDP and the spatial correlation of energy consumptions in neighboring provinces are positively related to energy consumption per capita, while population density and per capita foreign direct investment do not affect energy consumption per capita significantly.

Abstract This study develops an integrated analytical framework, based on LMDI method, to identify the driving factors of energy and water (EW) nexus in Beijing from both economy- and sector-wide perspectives. The notable findings are: (1) The service and urban household sectors contributed most to the increase of energy use while the agriculture sector played a dominated role in the large decline of water use in Beijing from 2002 to 2017. Service and urban household were the key sectors of EW nexus. (2) Both economy- and sector-wide factors exerted synergistic effects on EW use, although their contributions to water-saving were much higher than energy-saving. Regarding economy-wide factors, production expansion considerably increased both EW use in Beijing, with the contribution degrees of 129.9% and 276.2%, respectively, and population expansion also played an important role in increasing EW use, with the contribution degree of 10.3% and 32.9%; while efficiency improvement and industrial structure adjustment led to much more water-saving of 261.7% and 145.1% than energy-saving of 56.6% and 5.6%, respectively. As to sector-wide factors, production expansion of industry and service sectors, and income improvement of urban household contributed to a considerable increase in both energy and water use, and the contribution degree are 58.3%, 65.7% and 28.5% for energy use as well as 61.0%, 79.8% and 22.8% for water use, respectively, whereas efficiency improvement of industry sector effectively curbed the increase of energy and water use, with the contribution degree of −50.5% and −76.7%, respectively. (3) The only trade-off between energy- and water-saving occurred in the efficiency improvement of the agriculture sector. (4) More attention should be paid to reducing EW use in the service and urban household sectors through efficiency improvement and behavior guidance for EW saving.

Abstract Quantifying marginal abatement costs of CO2 emissions are beneficial to estimate mitigation potentials and costs of China's regional thermal power sector. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2004 to 2013, this study estimates the technical efficiency, reduction potential, and marginal abatement costs of CO2 emissions from the thermal power sector in China using a parametric quadratic directional output distance function. A regression analysis is undertaken to identify the factors that drive marginal abatement costs. The main results are: (1)The mean value of directional output distance function in China's thermal power sector is 0.0449, indicating that inefficient production of Chinese thermal power sector accounts for 4.49%. CO2 emissions could be mitigated by accumulated 1.22 billion ton in the past ten year, which is approximate 4.49% of total CO2 emissions; (2)The national weighted average marginal abatement costs of CO2 emissions are 316.51 Yuan/ton which is far higher than carbon price in the current ETS (emission trading system) pilots in China, implying that carbon price does not inflect supply and demand of carbon allowance; (3)The regression results show that the marginal abatement costs positively connect with regional power scale, namely a 1% increase in power scale will result in a 13.8% increase. Technology level, coal supply and power structure are negatively correlated with marginal abatement costs, namely a 1% increase in technology level, coal supply and power structure will result respectively in a 30.41%, 4.38% and 77.7% decrease.

Abstract Environmental pollutants have become a problem throughout the world. In the past few years, investigations of ecological footprints and their determining factors have been at the core of debate among policymakers. However, some of the crucial determinants of ecological footprints, such as the value-adding manufacturing and the merchandise trade have not been sufficiently covered in the literature. Manufacturing and the merchandise trade provide substantial economic growth opportunities but are frequently associated with high pollution and environmental degradation. We investigate the impact of natural resources, urbanization, value-adding manufacturing, and the merchandise trade on the ecological footprints and economic growth of the top ten manufacturing countries using data from 1970 to 2016. We designed comprehensive empirical analyses and applied advanced econometric methodologies to show that value-adding manufacturing, the merchandise trade, and urbanization are positively associated and natural resources are negatively associated with countries' ecological footprints and economic growth. Our results suggest that urbanization, value-adding manufacturing, and the merchandise trade deteriorate environmental quality while simultaneously stimulating economic growth. Policymakers are encouraged to address sustainable manufacturing and trade policies through commercial exchanges, to generate fair trade, to protect natural resources, and to address urbanization to secure a sustainable future. The study's limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Water issue is one of the challenges of urban sustainability in developing countries. To address the conflict between urban water use and economic development, it is required to better understand the decoupling states between them and the driving forces behind these decoupling states. The transformed Tapio decoupling model is applied in this paper to study the decoupling relationship between urban industrial water consumption and economic growth in Beijing and Shanghai, two megacities in China, in 2003–2016. The factors driving decoupling are divided into industrial structure effect, industrial water utilization intensity effect, economic development level effect, and population size effect through Logarithmic Mean Divisia Index (LMDI) method. The results show that: (1) the decoupling states of total water consumption and economic growth in Beijing and Shanghai are mainly strong decoupling and weak decoupling. In comparison, Shanghai’s decoupling effect is better than Beijing; (2) regarding decoupling elasticity, Beijing is higher than that of Shanghai in tertiary industry and lower in primary industry and secondary industry. As a result, Beijing’s decoupling level is worse than Shanghai in tertiary industry, while better in primary industry and secondary industry; (3) The common factors that drive the two megacities’ decoupling are industrial structure effect and industrial water utilization intensity effect. The effects of economic development level and population size mainly present weak decoupling in two megacities, but the decoupling state is optimized year by year. Finally, based on the results, some suggestions for achieving the sustainable development of urban water use are proposed.