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As part of the Copenhagen Accord, individual countries have submitted greenhouse gas reduction proposals for the year 2020. This paper analyses the implications for emission reductions, the carbon price, and abatement costs of these submissions. The submissions of the Annex I (industrialised) countries are estimated to lead to a total reduction target of 12-18% below 1990 levels. The submissions of the seven major emerging economies are estimated to lead to an 11-14% reduction below baseline emissions, depending on international (financial) support. Global abatement costs in 2020 are estimated at about USD 60-100 billion, assuming that at least two-thirds of Annex I emission reduction targets need to be achieved domestically. The largest share of these costs are incurred by Annex I countries, although the costs as share of GDP are similar for Annex I as a group and the seven emerging economies as a group, even when assuming substantial international transfers from Annex I countries to the emerging economies to finance their abatement costs. If the restriction of achieving two-thirds of the emission reduction target domestically is abandoned, it would more than double the international carbon price and at the same time reduce global abatement costs by almost 25%.

The increasing depletion of natural resources, combined with a wider set of pressures on the environment, has, in recent years, highlighted the need for a more efficient use of energy and a development process that involves alternative energy sources. Energy efficiency has received much attention as a solution, implying both monetary and emissions savings. However, the latter may be partially offset by the income and demand effects of the former, both in more efficient sectors and in spreading to the wider economy. This is the problem of rebound effects. Taking Spain as a case study, and introducing an energy-related CGE model that develops the inclusion of renewables, this paper evaluates a combination of efficiency initiatives to deliver both reduced energy use by households and a more sustainable supply of energy. Our findings suggest that a package aimed at improving efficiency in household electricity and petroleum use, combined with a more competitive supply of energy from renewable sources, may be the only way to get reductions in all energy use, and thus benefit the economy. Specifically, we consider how this package may lead to positive economic impacts and associated rebound effects, where the latter are focused on a greener energy supply.

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.

Abstract Given the need to reduce the CO2 emissions coming from the manufacturing sector, it is important, for planning purposes, to know which countries and which manufacturing sub-sectors have the greatest potential for reducing energy use. Using data from the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization, the authors estimate trends in global decoupling of energy use and manufacturing value added, compare energy-use intensity in six country groups and estimate the potential for reducing energy use and CO2 emissions under two scenarios and compare selected sub-sector energy intensity and estimate the potential for reducing energy use CO2 emissions. The comparison of energy intensities across country groups and among countries suggests that there still remains significant potential to reduce energy use and associated CO2 emissions. The analysis of four sub-sectors in developing and transition economies also shows similar but varied potential for reducing energy use and associated CO2 emissions.

Abstract In modern developed economies, one of the primary objectives is to manage the transition from polluting to cleaner technologies as efficiently as possible. By now, in the current empirical literature, one can identify technological spillovers from environmental innovations as a major driver of this process. Specific energy policy aspects connected with industry behaviour have yet to be explored. The aim of this paper is to investigate energy efficiency via environmental innovation and the resulting degree of resilience and adaptation of both developed and developing countries. The work applies the non-parametric DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) framework and Tobit analysis. For this scope, it is built a panel dataset made of some 5000 observations based on energy policy and sustainable development variables for 136 OECD and non-OECD countries. The results show that knowledge spillovers from environmental innovations reduce inefficiency and therefore strengthen the resilience of economies that decide and manage to invest adequately in the transition to more sustainable technologies. Besides, OECD countries improve their energy efficiency scores over time, whilst non-OECD countries do not. This implies that sustainable technologies transition is made more efficient by environmental innovation but the process is fostered by disposing of a resilient economic system – hence, vulnerability can affect the transition. These hypotheses lead to important economic, social and environmental implications for energy policy modelling.

Globalization has resulted in several technical advancements, including the ability to connect people all over the world and drive the economies with higher agricultural output. With agricultural productivity expanding quickly, the negative impact of globalization on environmental degradation is being disregarded. Rapid agricultural expansion and globalization have resulted in significant increases in energy consumption and CO2 emissions. The primary purpose of this research is to assess the role of Pakistan’s massive agriculture industry in encouraging or discouraging CO2 emissions under Globalization scenario. Therefore, we applied Non-linear Autoregressive Distributive Lag Nonlinear Autoregressive Distributed Lag model from 1971 to 2021. Our results showed that in presence of globalization, agricultural production shows asymmetries in case of positive and negative shocks. A positive shock in Agricultural production increased the CO2 emissions while negative shock in agricultural production decreased CO2 emissions. Furthermore, GDP, energy consumption and economic globalization have positive association with economic globalization while on the other hand, surprisingly trade and urbanization in the presence of globalization have negative association with CO2 emissions. Environmental deterioration due to greenhouse emissions causes climatic variation in the economy and several mitigation strategies are required on sustainable basis in Pakistan. So, our study recommends that farmers of Pakistan should adopt organic farming this will help to reduce CO2 emissions.

Abstract The main aim of this paper is to analyse whether the adoption of sustainable energy systems improves corporate financial performance. To this end, we obtained data from a sample of 574 multinational companies from 36 countries in the 2008–2013 period. On this data we implement a dynamic system panel data method. Our findings show that the adoption of sustainable energy systems allows firms to improve their short-term corporate financial performance while not leading them to reduce their corporate financial performance in the long term. Specifically, our results indicate that an increase in energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources do not significantly affect corporate financial performance. Neither does the integration of energy efficiency systems and renewable energy sources have any significant influence on corporate financial performance, while the level of implementation of sustainable energy management systems has a significant effect on short-term, but not long-term, corporate financial performance. Furthermore, other control variables, such as research and development expenditure and year, are also relevant in explaining firms’ financial performance. The adoption of sustainable energy systems helps to improve corporate financial performance in the short-term but has no affect in the long-term. This might be because the monitoring of energy efficiency using key performance indicators allows firms to detect and correct failures in the production process and hence improve short-term financial performance. However, this measure does not generate competitive advantages for firms and therefore has no effect on long-term corporate financial performance. From a scientific perspective of energy, this paper contributes to the literature by providing a detailed explanation of how the adoption of sustainable energy systems proposed by Peura (2013) influences corporate financial performance on the basis of new empirical evidence. These explanations provide a strong rationale for improving the efficient use of energy and harvesting low hanging fruits in the short term from a managerial perspective. Policymakers should encourage firms to align sustainable energy systems with their core business strategy by developing green technologies that allow them to acquire rare and valuable capabilities and abilities, which generate competitive advantage, and therefore allow firms to increase their long-term corporate financial performance.

SummaryInequality has recently become a major concern in economics. Leaving aside its social and economic effects is also possible to trace its environmental consequences, which this article attempts to assess. The indicator to be measured is the household's carbon footprint (CF) for different social groups. The deep economic crisis in the Spanish economy between 2008 and 2013 has increased consumption inequality and doubled the number of households below the poverty line. When focusing on domestic consumption, we found that the shopping basket of all income groups has very similar emissions intensities; therefore, the differences among the household CFs depend mainly on the scale effect (i.e., the size of consumption). However, when international trade is also considered, we found that the emission intensity of imports is bigger than the intensity of all the respective domestic goods. Therefore, the share of imported goods and services by social class will be an important determinant of the respective total CF. Before the crisis, households with higher incomes imported 30% of their total consumption items whereas households with lower income imported only 20% of their consumption. During the crisis, the imports of medium‐high‐income households fell to 20%, whereas low‐ and middle‐income families maintained the same import share, which contributed to the reduction of the total household CF.