Energy Policy最新文献

The management of forest residue following timber harvesting is an important global issue. If forest residues are not managed appropriately, they can increase the risk of catastrophic wildfires, negatively impact wildlife and aesthetic values. These risks can be reduced if forest residues are used for bioenergy production, which can also generate jobs, but using forest residues for bioenergy production may adversely impact biodiversity. We explore public preferences relating to the varied impacts of forest residue management outcomes using data collected for a Discrete Choice Experiment in Tasmania, Australia. On average, respondents were willing to pay AUD 34, AUD 29, and AUD 14 per year, respectively, to reduce smoke emissions, increase the abundance and diversity of invertebrate species, and create employment. This suggests that Tasmanian forest managers may find public support for residue management practices that include the production of at least some bioenergy products. Moreover, the social benefits of the state-wide harvesting of forest residues for bioenergy could be positive even with relatively high costs. WTP varied by age, education, environmental group membership, invertebrate fear, and wildfire exposure. The influence of these factors varies across regions, offering insights into forest residue management for regions with similar socioeconomic and environmental contexts.

Petroleum security is the guarantee of national security that plays an important role in national energy security, while petroleum strategic reserve is the most basic guarantee of national petroleum security. At present, the number of selected countries in the study of petroleum strategic reserves is insufficient, as there are too much vertical comparison and the horizontal comparison analysis is not enough. Based on this, on the basis of comparing the strategic petroleum reserves of major countries in the world in terms of storage methods, address selection, policy formulation, management system and utilization mechanism, this paper conducts longitudinal comparison and horizontal comparative analysis and research, trying to find out their common policy characteristics and advantages from different strategic petroleum reserve policies, modes and practices of various countries, and carries out eliminating the rough and learning from the strong. The experience gained can be used for reference by other countries.

Diversification in economic and energy sectors has been proven to contribute enormously to economic development. However, given the sustainability targets, the effectiveness of those strategies in alleviating environmental deterioration is ambiguous. This research examines how economic complexity and energy diversification could affect the levels of carbon emissions among economies that are in different phases of economic growth. Applying a novel panel quantile regression to a sample of 66 economies from 1995 to 2018, dividing into high-income, upper-middle-income, and lower-middle-income subgroups, allows us to reveal and compare the heterogeneous impacts across different levels of carbon emissions and income levels. The empirical results reveal that the environmental impacts of both economic complexity and energy diversification are not only heterogeneous across quantiles of carbon emissions but also vary among high-, upper-middle-, and lower-middle-income countries. While economic sophistication improves environmental sustainability in high- and upper-middle-income countries, it exacerbates ecological degradation in lower-middle-income countries. While energy diversification benefits environmental quality across all quantiles of carbon emissions in both upper and lower-middle-income countries, a harmful effect of energy diversification is only found in some high-income economies. Our research findings suggest that although energy and economic diversification could be a viable path for upper-middle-income countries to attain sustainability targets, these strategies should be combined with other environmental protection strategies to demonstrate desirable environmental benefits in high-income and lower-middle-income countries.

Improving carbon emission performance contributes to climate change mitigation, and green innovation may help achieve this goal. Digital economy may promote the diffusion and application of green innovation. Thus, we explore how digital economy affects the impact of green innovation on carbon emission performance based on the panel data covering 240 cities in China from 2005 to 2019. System-generalized method of moments (SYS-GMM), the two stage least square method (2SLS), and the panel quantile regression approach are adopted. The results show that, (1) Green innovation improves carbon emission performance. (2) The digital economy (digital development carrier, digital industrialization, industry digitization, digital development environment) promote the positive impact of green innovation on carbon emission performance. (3) The specifical digital economy elements, such as new digital infrastructure, communication business and services industrialization, service digitalization, institutional and innovation environment also have the positive role. (4) For the mechanism, digital economy is conducive to green innovation for lower energy consumption scale, higher energy efficiency, and cleaner energy structure, thus improving carbon emission performance. (5) Asymmetric analyses imply that green innovation improves carbon emission performance better with developed digital economy.

In democratic countries, the success of energy policies hinges on citizens' support and their acceptance of policy outcomes. In this study, we develop a digital feedback intervention to prompt citizens with information that visualizes the geographical distribution of wind turbines and to evaluate the effects on socio-political acceptance. In an online experiment, we exposed 430 German citizens to a personalized digital feedback intervention and elicited their acceptance of renewable wind energy. The results are threefold: First, citizens' acceptance of renewable wind energy that results from digital feedback is lower than initially claimed. Second, citizens who meaningfully engage with the digital feedback intervention are more likely to revise their acceptance of wind energy. Third, and surprisingly, citizens’ ecological attitude and place attachment to their current residence had no significant effect on the extent to which they revised their acceptance of renewable wind energy. Our results demonstrate that digital feedback interventions can act as a “sensor” for socio-political acceptance. This contributes to informing citizens about energy policy outcomes and provides valuable insights for policymakers promoting a participatory democracy paradigm.