• Energy Research
• Energies close
• University of Szczecin close

Nowadays, sustainability is one of the strategic goals of smart cities. They are the essential solution to creating the sustainable future. On the other hand, the smart city is intended to deal with the problems of energy management. This paper examines the influence of the smart sustainable cities concept on energy management from the labor market perspective. The paper fulfills the research gap about energy manager profession transformation considering smart sustainable city concept. The aim of the paper is to create an up-to-date holistic energy manager skill model with a focus on emerging technologies. The skill model reflects the synergy of two methodological approaches: the theoretical and practical approaches. Descriptive statistics are used to present the labor market research results. It is concluded that the core elements of the smart sustainable city concept have an impact on energy management are sustainability and big data. The labor market research also draws differences in the amount and structure of demand on energy manager skills by countries, but at the same time similar skills requirements are found. The skill model of the energy manager profession is built around several main groups associated with specific knowledge, social skills, and behavior skills. The findings of the present research can contribute to knowledge and practice by applying it in the process of developing energy manager competency models in commercial and non-commercial enterprises as well as in education programs and training courses.

The Polish economy is facing a huge challenge regarding the future of energy in Poland. The current energy system is very inefficient, it consumes huge resources that, like countries with high energy efficiency, could be allocated to the development of low-carbon and renewable energy networks. At the moment, the Polish energy sector, related to the coal monoculture, lacks electricity and the entire transmission system is obsolete. The solution may be distributed energy, which can ultimately satisfy energy supplies in less urbanized areas and in rural areas, while guaranteeing the sustainable development of these areas. In order to take up the challenge of better understanding and explaining such a complex reality, it was decided that the research framework of this article will be distributed energy in the region. The aim of the article is to ensure energy security in the conditions of innovative, ecological and open to competition regional energy using local energy resources. Currently, it is believed that distributed energy can be an effective solution to the problem of conventional energy operation.

Structural changes occurring in the crude oil market have stimulated the emergence of hypotheses suggesting that the relationship between prices of this raw material and the US dollar exchange rate can gradually become similar to that observed between oil prices and exchange rates of the currencies of the countries whose revenues from the export of this resource are a significant part of their current account balance. The purpose of this study was to determine and evaluate the time-varying dependence between oil prices and the exchange rate of the US dollar in the context of the same relationship for the Chinese, European, Japanese, Saudi, and Russian currencies. The results of our analyses implicate that a negative correlation between the variables in question grows stronger in time periods preceding global shocks and during thereof. The dominance of the USD in the crude oil market is reflected in similar characteristics of the correlations of the currencies of other countries, such as China, countries of the Euro area, or Japan. As for countries exporting crude oil, the situation varies. The results of our research suggest the lack of a stable relationships between prices of crude oil and currency exchange rates. It is also impossible to observe a long-term, unequivocal tendency of the currencies of oil exporting countries being positively correlated with oil prices. Russia was the closest to this situation. In Saudi Arabia, a positive correlation emerged during moments of crisis.

The aim of the article is to present the most important elements to be implemented in the European Union energy policy in the 2030 perspective in the context of sustainable development of the Member States. The solution to the too high emissivity of individual economies in the European Union is the energy mix, which will establish a compromise in the so-called the triad of EU policy goals. This is undoubtedly a current climate challenge for the modern world, which also has a direct impact on the economic situation of EU countries. The basis of the presented considerations and recommendations is a literature review on the subject and a statistical analysis of empirical data of the largest statistical organizations in the EU and the world. The starting point for the analysis is the assessment of the state of the energy sector in the EU. Therefore, the goals and tasks until 2030 result from many conditions of the energy sector. The article provides recommendations for the EU on future climate and energy policy, analysing the practices of member countries empirical and data compiled by the world’s largest organizations and institutions, such as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the World Nuclear Association (WNA), Eurostat, and the International Energy Agency (IEA). The strategic goals of the EU climate and energy policy presented in the study show the necessary challenges for the implementation of sustainable development in the analyzed sector, which is the driving force of world economies. The conclusions were presented in accordance with the current economic efficiency of various energy sources and the necessity to seek a compromise among the so-called a triad of goals defined in EU policy.

Achieving sustainable development goals depends on governance effectiveness within the penetration of digital technologies in all spheres and levels. Furthermore, the energy sector is a crucial inhibitor of sustainable development that depends on the efficacy of digital public services. In this case, the paper aims at analyzing the impact of e-governance on achieving sustainable development goals, particularly on affordable and clean energy. The object of research is EU countries in the period 2013–2019. The data are compiled from the databases of Eurostat, the World Data Bank, and the Sustainable Development Report. The study applies the following methods: the taxonomy method to measure the e-governance index, the fixed effect, the random effect, and a pooled OLS regression model to check the impact of e-governance on affordable and clean energy. The results outlined the leaders (Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Latvia, and Malta) and the outsiders (Romania, Croatia, Greece, Bulgaria, and Poland) in e-governance in 2019. The findings confirm the statistically positive impact of e-governance on extending affordable and clean energy. Thus, improving e-governance by 1 point causes the growth of renewable energy on average by 4.4 points. Furthermore, the industrial structures’ improvement allows increasing renewable energy on average by 0.4 and the trade activization (economic openness) contributes to an increase of renewable energy on average by 0.1. The democracy level does not have a statistically significant impact on achieving sustainable development goals for EU countries. The empirical results show that the countries with high values of e-governance (Sweden, Latvia, Finland, Denmark, and Austria) achieve the highest values of the SDG7 Index Score. Thus, within EU countries, governance digitalization is the strategic inhibitor of SDG achievement.

In this paper we have assessed the impact of the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) on the level of the carbon premium. The aim of the study is to determine whether there is a stable carbon premium in energy-intensive sectors. Unlike other studies, our research sample included not only companies in the energy sector, but also entities classified as energy-intensive. In the research, we used our own criterion for allocating companies to a clean and dirty portfolio, which made it possible to make the estimation of the carbon premium more resistant to changes in the rules for allocation of emission allowances. We detected a positive, statistically significant carbon premium in the years 2003–2012 and a negative one in the years 2013–2015, but we did not detect a statistically significant carbon premium in the period 2016–2019. This means that there are no grounds for concluding that there is a stable, positive carbon premium for energy-intensive companies subject to the EU ETS over time. We have also noticed that a significant problem in studying the impact of the EU ETS on the carbon premium is the use of static portfolios of clean and dirty companies

The effects of the labor market on environmental issues are an actual problem at the global level, and recommendations are required to achieve equilibrium between labor productivity and environmental protection. Considering the ecological limits of work and the necessity of reducing the working time to mitigate GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, this paper aims to assess the impact of the labor market on GHG emissions in the EU-28 countries. Using panel data models for 2007–2019, a positive effect of working time for employed persons on GHG emissions was detected. Labor productivity has a positive impact on emissions for most of the developed countries in the EU (old member states), while the effect is negative in the case of most of the new member states, which suggests that more efforts should be made by old member states to correlate labor productivity with a sustainable level of GHG emissions. As a novelty for research in the field, we assessed also the effect of targeted labor utilization on GHG emissions in order to describe the context of a sustainable economy that is an objective for each country in the EU. These results suggest that progress in GHG emissions mitigation might be achieved by reducing the working time for employed persons, which will also improve well-being. These recommendations could be useful also for other developed countries outside the EU that encounter the same difficulties.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected all areas of socio-economic life around the world. Its impact concerns not only the health system and the health of the population, but also the economy. Tourism is one of the sectors hardest hit by the restrictions imposed by governments in the wake of the pandemic. The pandemic has resulted in restrictions and limitations on movement and travel, covering both domestic and international tourism, which raises the question of have these restrictions imposed on tourist activities also caused an environmental impact? The aim of this article is to examine what impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the environmental issues within the tourism sector in the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region. The research task is to investigate whether this impact has changed in the pandemic era compared to previous years, and whether it has been positive or negative. The research method is multiple regression analysis. The results of the study indicated that the COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions from tourism in all CEE countries. Such decreases are both relative to 2019 and the estimated level of emissions that would be achieved if the countries surveyed achieved economic growth in 2020 consistent with the European Commission’s projections for that year. The scale of the impact varies from country to country, while the relationship between tourism development and pollution levels is positive.