Resource and Energy Economics最新文献

Understanding the relationship of economic growth, energy consumption, and pollution is critical for forecasting energy demand and environmental impacts. Energy technology innovations create opportunities for low- and middle-income countries to “leapfrog” over older technologies that dominated the development paths of today’s industrialized countries. Yet technology change may also increase consumption at earlier development stages, and institutions and policy choices can hinder energy-efficient development. Extending a recent paper by van Benthem (2015), I build a panel dataset over 136 countries and nearly 60 years to show that over this wider and longer panel, the long-run energy intensity of economic growth is substantially lower for today’s developing countries than in developing countries in the past.

In federally organized countries the allocation of renewable energy (RE) deployment is regulated by national and subnational governments. We analyze the efficiency of this federal co-regulation when different types of policy instruments – price and quantity – are applied at different government levels. Using an analytical model with two government levels, we show that efficient federal co-regulation crucially depends on the burden sharing of national subsidy costs among subnational jurisdictions. We find that national price-based regulation, i.e. feed-in tariff, is efficient if burden shares of subnational jurisdictions are distributed in proportion to their population. This holds regardless of the policy instrument applied at the subnational level as long as RE deployment causes regional costs instead of regional benefits. Under national quantity-based regulation, i.e. tenders, efficient burden sharing depends on the policy instrument applied at the subnational level. Subnational price-based regulation, e.g. state-level levies, combined with national quantity-based regulation requires burden shares to be oriented towards first-best RE deployment shares. By contrast, subnational quantity-based regulation, i.e. spatial planning, combined with national quantity-based regulation, under certain conditions, requires population-oriented burden sharing, namely, if RE deployment only causes negative regional effects. If so, we also show that national quantity-based regulation ends up to be de-facto price-based.

In the real-world of political opposition and complex market failures, carbon pricing alone will not achieve deep GHG mitigation targets. Hence, we search for the most cost-effective “second-best” policies. Focusing on the light-duty vehicle sector in the case of Canada, we compare several policies in terms of effectiveness (regarding 2030 GHG goals) and mitigation costs, namely: (i) a carbon tax; (ii) a vehicle emission standard (or VES); (iii) a zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) mandate, and (iv) combinations of all three at various stringencies. In this effort, we apply the AUtomaker-consumer Model (AUM), which endogenously simulates consumer and automaker decisions and technological change. Comparing individual policies, the regulations are about three times more expensive than the carbon tax. Among “second-best” policies, the VES is cheaper than a ZEV mandate at lower stringencies, but at higher stringencies the two are similarly efficient (both incentivize widespread ZEV deployment). In policy mixes, cost-effectiveness is improved by a carbon tax. Specifically, inclusion of a CDN$100–150/tonne tax can achieve targets while being 30–40% less costly than a regulation alone. We suggest that policymakers implement carbon pricing as stringently as politically feasible (for efficiency), complemented by regulations as needed (for efficacy) to meet GHG targets.

Theoretical models often assume the environment to be a normal good, irrespective of one’s income. However, a priori, nothing prohibits an environmental good from being normal for some individuals and inferior for others. We develop a conceptual framework in which private consumption and an environmental public good act as substitutes or complements for satisfying different needs. Subsequently, the environment can switch between normal and inferior depending on one’s income and environment and corresponding prevalent needs. If the environment is inferior for some range of income, then the willingness to pay for environmental preservation becomes non-monotonic with respect to income. We discuss the relevance of our framework in the context of (income-adjusted) unit benefit transfers, dual-rate discounting and the Environmental Kuznets curve.

This paper examines the implications of environmental corporate social responsibility (CSR) for the environment-growth tradeoff and social optimum in a dynamic general equilibrium growth model. We show that environmental CSR activity loosens the tradeoff between the environment and growth, but it cannot achieve the social optimum. Firm participation in environmental CSR induces the perceived CSR of green consumers and increases their willingness to pay. Because the environmental CSR promotes more consumption and increases growth, the environment-growth tradeoff loosens up in the competitive equilibrium. However, to translate the CSR perceived benefits into their profits, firms need some degree of monopoly power to set their prices to capture the stronger demand. CSR is thus promoted as a marketing strategy to help companies achieve their competitive advantage, and becomes a way of product differentiation in the environment of monopolistic competition. Since monopoly power serves as a catalyst, CSR alone cannot achieve the first-best optimum in terms of the environment and growth by fully removing the distortions caused by market imperfection.

We examine the relationship between different types of power investments and regional economic dynamics. We construct a novel panel dataset combining data on regional GDP and power capacity additions for different technologies between 1960 and 2015, which covers 65% of the global power capacity that has been installed in this period. We use an event study design to identify the effect of power capacity addition on GDP per capita, exploiting the fact that the exact amount of power capacity coming online each year is determined by random construction delays. We find evidence that GDP per capita increases by 0.2% in the 6 years around the coming online of 100 MW coal-fired power capacity. We find similar effects for hydropower capacity, but not for any other type of power capacity. The positive effects are regionally bounded and stronger for projects on new sites (green-field). The magnitude of this effect might not be comparable to the total external costs of building new coal-fired power capacity, yet our results help to explain why policymakers favor coal investments for spurring regional growth.

In this article, we use a contextualized lab experiment to test the effect of non-monetary incentives that can guide harvest professionals into adopting new sustainable harvesting practices. First, we test the effect of signing a declaration that commits wood buyers who voluntarily sign it to act in a sustainable manner. Second, we test the effect of priming by activating a concept of sustainability on subjects’ behaviour. Our results provide evidence that presenting a declaration to sign is effective in inducing subjects to act in a sustainable manner when personal and collective interests are not aligned and there are financial incentives to make decisions that are against environmental sustainability. However, sustainability priming does not have a significant impact on subjects’ behaviour. From a public policy point of view, a declaration is an effective tool and easy to implement by institutions aiming at fostering pro-environmental behaviour.

Higher battery storage capacity in electric vehicles (EV) implies less need for inconvenient recharging during long trips and increases the potential gains from vehicle-to-grid (V2G) electricity supply. We present an analytical model for the intertwinement of the consumers’ choice of battery capacity and the electricity market. We show that V2G increases the consumers’ choice of battery capacity, and it may reduce the cost of owning an EV vis-à-vis a traditional car. Furthermore, V2G alleviates the capacity pressure on peak hours, and thereby reduces the need for investment in generating capacity, saving social costs. Moreover, V2G may make the difference in electricity prices between peak and off-peak hours smaller, potentially increasing social surplus further. Based on a future scenario for the Belgian electricity market, we provide a numerical illustration indicating that the savings might be substantial.

This paper identifies the impact of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) on firm productivity. We estimate a stylized version of the neo-Schumpeterian productivity model to differentiate dynamic forces of productivity convergence from the policy effect of the EU ETS depending on the level of firms’ technological advancement. The identification is based on a difference-in-differences approach exploiting the incomplete participation requirements of the EU ETS and the rich panel structure of a representative dataset for firm-level total factor productivity (TFP) in eight EU countries from 2002 to 2012. We show that the policy effect on TFP is nonlinear in the distance to the technological frontier within the industry. The EU ETS spurs productivity among firms close to the frontier but slows down catch-up growth among laggard firms.

It is important to dedicate substantial parts of the global land supply to public good uses in the 21st century, for purposes of climate change management and biodiversity provision. But will it also be possible to meet the food requirements of 12 billion people while doing so? Using a macroeconomic model (MAVA), we demonstrate that it may be possible to provide both for food requirements and environmental services in the long run. We first show that it may be possible to provide for food requirements with very substantial constraints on the amount of land used in agriculture with relatively minor welfare losses. We then show that global policies that re-allocate labour across sectors may have the capacity for directing the economy toward reduced reliance on land in agriculture. Focusing on land management, research and development, and fertility choices may be the best way to meet these combined goals.