• Energy Research
• 8. Economic growth close
• Energies close
• University of Szczecin close

The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly affected the economic situation of many countries, which is worth considering not only globally but also in the context of specific industries. An asset that is particularly sensitive to negative economic changes is goodwill. The aim of this study is to assess the impact of the pandemic on the quality of financial disclosures concerning goodwill in consolidated financial statements of groups of chosen strategic sectors in Poland. We investigated the implications of the pandemic on the frequency and scale of goodwill impairment in relation to 23 companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange from the Energy, Mining, and Fuel Index. We identified the research gap in this area. For the purposes of this study, two research hypotheses were formulated: (H1) during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a slight improvement in the quality of goodwill disclosures in the consolidated financial statements of groups in the energy, fuel, and mining sectors; (H2) The COVID-19 pandemic caused a decrease in goodwill due to impairment losses in the consolidated financial statements of groups in the energy, fuel, and mining sectors. The hypotheses were verified on the basis of the above research sample. In order to verify the first hypothesis, we tested 81 consolidated financial statements for the years 2018–2021 based on a self-developed index of the quality of disclosed information. To verify the second hypothesis, we analyzed the frequency and scale of the estimated loss of goodwill during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the deterioration of the financial condition of the same research sample. The conducted research shows that the quality of disclosures regarding the goodwill in the examined sample has changed slightly. Contrary to our expectations, the pandemic did not materially reduce the value of goodwill. This means that the first hypothesis was verified positively, while the second hypothesis had to be rejected.

Energy and climate policies play an increasingly important role in the world in the era of climate change and rising energy prices. More often, the importance of the development of the energy sector and climate protection is seen from the point of view of the expenditures that will need to be absorbed in the economy, with the potential for increased energy prices. However, it should be remembered that this is also related to the issue of fuel poverty and the inability to meet basic energy needs by parts of society. The aim of the paper is to assess the importance of macroeconomic policy instruments in reducing fuel poverty, using Poland as an example. It will be examined whether and how the government influenced this phenomenon (directly or indirectly), through which instruments, and which instruments (fiscal, monetary or energy-climate policy) played the most important role in shaping the scale of fuel poverty in Poland, with an emphasis on the role of monetary and fiscal policy instruments. The analysis covered the period from 2004 to mid-2021. The results of the research showed that in Poland there is a lack of policy directly aimed at reducing fuel poverty, and the government affects the scale of fuel poverty indirectly mainly through macroeconomic policy instruments, i.e., fiscal and monetary policy instruments. The main and most effective instruments for reducing fuel poverty in Poland are social transfers. Other instruments that have a statistically significant impact on this poverty rate are the level of tax burdens and short-term interest rates. The analysis also revealed some opportunities for effective fuel poverty reduction policies. It was proven that in addition to fiscal policy, monetary policy, which would stimulate a decrease in short-term interest rates, is also an effective way to reduce the fuel poverty rate in Poland.

The business model is understood as a way of generating revenue and creating value. This article aimed to define the framework and detailed characteristics of the business model in corporate reporting in the energy sector. The study also addressed the issue of value creation and examined the correlation between reporting information about the business model and the value of the enterprise, calculated using selected accounting measures. The research was conducted in 2021 on all listed companies in the energy sector included in the WIG20 index in 2019–2020. The research methodologies included critical analysis of the literature, analysis of the content of corporate publications, comparative analysis, analysis of phenomena and synthesis of results, Spearman’s rank correlations, and graphical data presentation. The originality of our research concerns directing attention to the disclosure and reporting of information about the business model in corporate reports in the energy sector in Poland. This is the first such study in Poland conducted on companies in the energy sector; therefore, it is treated by the authors as a pilot study. The results show that companies in the energy sector included in the WIG20 index do not disclose information about their business models in reports and the structure of published reports is very diverse, which makes it even more difficult to compare financial and non-financial data. Enterprises in the energy sector disclose financial and non-financial information in financial statements and the reports of the management board on the activities of the company and the capital group. The financial information disclosed by the companies most often included financial and productive capital. Energy companies are reluctant to disclose information about by-products and waste.

Innovation is a very important attribute of energy companies. Its level largely depends on employees’ attitudes and behaviours, which are determined on the one hand by individual factors (e.g., psychological contract) and on the other hand by organisational factors (e.g., human resources (HR) practices). The aim of this article is to identify the relationship between pro-innovative HR practices, psychological contract and employee attitudes—commitment and job satisfaction. The research was conducted in a company which is one of the leading Polish electricity suppliers. Data were collected using a proprietary survey questionnaire. The research involved 402 HR professionals responsible for shaping and implementing pro-innovative HR practices in the company. Hypotheses were tested using the partial least squares structural equation modelling technique (PLS-SEM). The results indicate the existence of a positive relationship between pro-innovative HR practices, psychological contract and employee commitment and satisfaction. Furthermore, they indicate that organisations wishing to increase employee commitment and job satisfaction should strengthen and implement existing psychological contracts. One way to do this is to invest in pro-innovative HR practices, such as competence development, knowledge sharing or creativity-based candidate selection, as they have been shown to be good moderators of these relationships. The obtained results may be of particular importance for HR management specialists and managers responsible for shaping desired attitudes and behaviours of employees.

The aim of this analysis is to identify the possibility of treating eco-innovation in micro and small enterprises as a factor influencing the energy efficiency of the economy. In order to obtain an answer to such a research question, quantitative research was carried out among Polish enterprises from the SME sector (N = 400). Accordingly, the CATI technique was applied. The selection of enterprises was random and took place in the non-returnable drawing process. The criterion for selecting the sample was the size of enterprises, but in order to ensure the possibility of drawing conclusions based on a sufficiently large research sample, its structure (300 micro and 100 small enterprises) assumed the study of small enterprises in a proportion greater than their actual share in the population of enterprises. As a result of this research, the existence of a relationship between the improvement of the company’s competitive position and its activity in the field of eco-innovation implementation was confirmed. It is shown that the behavior and attitudes of entrepreneurs largely determine the very decisions regarding the use of specific types of eco-innovation, as well as the areas in which they brought about changes influencing the improvement of the competitive position of the surveyed companies. Differences in these decisions can be observed in micro and small companies. This article justifies the notion that the impact of the scale of micro and small companies is important in shaping the energy efficiency of the economy.

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.

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.

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 rapid growth of aviation over the past fifty years has resulted in numerous negative environmental impacts due to the combustion of fossil fuels in aircraft engines. This paper presents the relationship between air transport and GHG emissions. Based on data on the development of aviation, the level of GHG emissions from transport, environmental tax revenues and the amount of GDP per capita in the countries of the European Union, an attempt was made to create a typification that would illustrate the interaction of GHG emissions with air transport, environmental taxes and GDP in the years 2009–2018. The next step to confirm the obtained results was the application of statistical methods: the TOPSIS (Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) method of linear ordering and the Perkal index. Based on the study findings, the analyzed countries were divided into three groups: the group of innovators, the stable group and the group of students. The analysis revealed the relationship of all three analyzed variables with air transport. The development of the aviation sector leads to a significant increase in GHG emissions from transport, increased revenues from environmental taxes and acceleration of the rate of economic growth of a country.

Nowadays, the importance of activities for the protection of the environment is growing. This approach has a major impact on the current energy and mining policy in Poland. On the one hand, the energy policy has imposed several restrictions to which the Polish economy will have to adapt; on the other, however, it raises great social opposition from professional groups that will be at risk of changing or losing their jobs and income, which implies extensive restructuring processes. These processes involve the decarbonisation of the economy and include, among others: sustainable production and consumption, sustainable municipal management and high quality of life in the city, waste management, sustainable transport, and energy management. The aim of the article is to indicate the importance of investment outlays and costs incurred when purchasing alternative fuels that would replace hard coal in Poland. It is part of the process of adjusting to the requirements of the new energy policy adopted by Poland as an EU member. In order to ensure energy security by abandoning coal mining, disproportionately high investment outlays for such a transformation would have to be incurred, as well as significant resources that would have to be allocated in the future to the purchase of alternative fuels. The result of the scenario methods used is the proposition of the proprietary RCAES index, which is to facilitate the transition from fossil fuels to alternative fuels, which the authors will fill in the gap existing in this area.