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Abstract This paper investigates the impact of urbanization on energy consumption by applying the Stochastic Impacts by Regression on Population, Affluence and Technology (STIRPAT) in case of Malaysia. The study covers the time period of 1970Q1–2011Q4. The unit root test and the ARDL bounds testing approach have been applied to examine integrating properties and long run relationship in the presence of structural breaks. Our results validated the existence of cointegration and exposed that urbanization is a major contributor in energy consumption. Affluence raises energy demand. Capital stock boosts energy consumption. Trade openness leads to affluence and hence increases energy consumption. The causality analysis finds that urbanization Granger causes energy consumption. The feedback effect is found between energy consumption and affluence and, energy consumption and capital. The bidirectional causality exists between trade openness and energy consumption.

Economists have confined the concept of 'sustainability' to intertemporal distributional equity. We propose a broader definition, combining dynamic efficiency and intergenerational equity, and relate it to two concepts from neoclassical economics: potential Pareto-improvements and inter-personal compensation.

This paper articulates and applies frameworks for examining whether consumption is excessive. We consider two criteria for the possible excessiveness (or insufficiency) of current consumption. One is an intertemporal utility-maximization criterion: actual current consumption is deemed excessive if it is higher than the level of current consumption on the consumption path that maximizes the present discounted value of utility. The other is a sustainability criterion, which requires that current consumption be consistent with non-declining living standards over time. We extend previous theoretical approaches by offering a formula for the sustainability criterion that accounts for population growth and technological change. In applying this formula, we find that some poor regions of the world are failing to meet the sustainability criterion: in these regions, genuine wealth per capita is falling as investments in human and manufactured capital are not sufficient to offset the depletion of natural capital.

This article examines and compares efforts to reduce energy subsidies in China, India and Russia. Despite dissimilarities in forms of governance, these three states have followed surprisingly similar patterns in reducing energy subsidies, characterised by two steps forward, one step back. Non-democratic governments and energy importers might be expected to be more likely to halt subsidies. In fact, the degree of democracy and status as net energy exporters or importers does not seem to significantly affect these countries’ capacity to reduce subsidies, as far as can be judged from the data in this article. Politicians in all three fear that taking unpopular decisions may provoke social unrest.

We employ a set of sign restrictions on the generalized impulse responses of a Global VAR model, estimated for 38 countries/regions over the period 1979Q2.2011Q2, to discriminate between supply-driven and demand-driven oil-price shocks and to study the time profile of their macroeconomic effects for different countries. The results indicate that the economic consequences of a supply-driven oil-price shock are very different from those of an oil-demand shock driven by global economic activity, and vary for oil-importing countries compared to energy exporters. While oil importers typically face a long-lived fall in economic activity in response to a supply-driven surge in oil prices, the impact is positive for energy-exporting countries that possess large proven oil/gas reserves. However, in response to an oil-demand disturbance, almost all countries in our sample experience long-run inflationary pressures and a short-run increase in real output.

Climate policy requires that much of the world’s reserves of fossil fuels remain unburned. This paper makes the case for implementing this directly through policy to close the global coal industry. Coal is singled out because of its high emissions intensity, low rents per unit value, local environmental costs, and sheer scale. Direct supply policy—the sequenced closure of coal mines—may lead to less policy leakage (across countries and time) than other policies based on demand or price management. It also has the advantage of involving relatively few players and leading to clear-cut and observable outcomes. Appropriately sequenced closure of the world coal industry could, we suggest, create the moral force needed to mobilize collective international action.