scholarly journals Firm's Imperfect Compliance and Pollution Emissions: Theory and Evidence from South Africa

Author(s):  
Yu Kun Wang ◽  
Xiaoyong Zhang

Carbon emissions exacerbate global climate change. Transitioning away from coal is a cost-effective path to a low-carbon economy. Although many articles have considered the issue of manufacturers' production and emission of pollution. Few papers have discussed the impact of environmental tax and fuel tax on the cost of environmental degradation. This paper seeks to fill this gap by developing a theoretical model to discuss the relationship between environmental pollution and economic growth. Furthermore, in order to support the theoretical results and testify the relationship between carbon emissions and taxation, we take South Africa as a case for discussing the effect of environmental taxation and fuel levy on firms' carbon emissions. We show that the impact of environmental taxes on carbon dioxide emissions is greater than that of fuel taxes on carbon dioxide emissions. In addition, we find that the GDP level of South Africa is on the left of the inflection points of Kuznets Curve. In other words, the current growth of South Africa's economy is at the cost of worsening the environmental degradation.

Energies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (21) ◽  
pp. 7430
Author(s):  
Yang Ding ◽  
Qing Yang ◽  
Lanjuan Cao

This study examines the relationship between urbanization, economic growth, industrial transformation, technological change, public services, demographical change, urban and natural environmental changes, and carbon emissions using a dataset of 182 prefecture-level cities in China between 2001 and 2010. Specifically, this paper differs from previous studies in two aspects. First, the extant literature has focused on how economic processes accompanying rapid urbanization affect carbon emissions in urban areas but gives little attention to the other dimensions of urbanization, including social and environmental changes, which may have important effects on carbon emissions. We assessed the effects of 17 key processes accompanying urbanization in a full range of economic, social, and environmental dimensions on carbon dioxide emissions in urban areas. The results showed that social processes accompanied with rapid urbanization had distinct effects on carbon emissions, compared to economic and environmental processes. Specifically, improvement in public services, indicated by education and cultural developments, reduces the increase in carbon emissions during urbanization, while economic growth and urban construction reinforces the growth in carbon emissions. Second, we examined the impact of various urbanization processes on carbon dioxide emissions using a unique dataset of 182 prefecture-level cities that covers a wide span of regions in China. The results of our analyses on the city level have important implications for the formulation of comprehensive policies aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emission in urban areas, focusing on different urbanization processes in economic, social, and environmental phases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (13) ◽  
pp. 7148
Author(s):  
Wenjie Zhang ◽  
Mingyong Hong ◽  
Juan Li ◽  
Fuhong Li

The implementation of green finance is a powerful measure to promote global carbon emissions reduction that has been highly valued by academic circles in recent years. However, the role of green credit in carbon emissions reduction in China is still lacking testing. Using a set of panel data including 30 provinces and cities, this study focused on the impact of green credit on carbon dioxide emissions in China from 2006 to 2016. The empirical results indicated that green credit has a significantly negative effect on carbon dioxide emissions intensity. Furthermore, after the mechanism examination, we found that the promotion impacts of green credit on industrial structure upgrading and technological innovation are two effective channels to help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Heterogeneity analysis found that there are regional differences in the effect of green credit. In the western and northeastern regions, the effect of green credit is invalid. Quantile regression results implied that the greater the carbon emissions intensity, the better the effect of green credit. Finally, a further discussion revealed there exists a nonlinear correlation between green credit and carbon dioxide emissions intensity. These findings suggest that the core measures to promote carbon emission reduction in China are to continue to expand the scale of green credit, increase the technology R&D investment of enterprises, and to vigorously develop the tertiary industry.


2022 ◽  
Vol 1 (15) ◽  
pp. 71-75
Author(s):  
Dmitriy Kononov

The strategy of low-carbon development of the economy and energy of Russia provides for the introduction of a fee (tax) for carbon dioxide emissions by power plants. This will seriously affect their prospective structure and lead to an increase in electricity prices. The expected neg-ative consequences for national and energy security are great. But serious and multilateral research is needed to properly assess these strategic threats


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matheus Koengkan

This article analyzes the impact of renewable energy policies on carbon dioxide emissions (CO2) in nine Latin American countries, in a period of 1991 to 2012. The Panel Vector Auto-Regressive (PVAR) was utilized. The results revealed that the renewable energy policies reduce the environmental degradation (CO2 emissions) in -0.0109, and the consumption of renewable energy -0.0231, while the economic growth and consumption oil increase the emissions in 0.9082 and 0.1437 respectively. These empirical findings will help the policymakers develop appropriate renewable energy policies, as well as help to advance the literature that approaches the impact of renewable energy policies on environmental degradation in the Latin America region.


2005 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-40
Author(s):  
S Moodley ◽  
RM Mabugu ◽  
R Hassan

Global environmental pressure dictates that South Africa reduces its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, while national objectives focus on economic development. South Africa is faced with the dilemma of simultaneously alleviating poverty, reducing unemployment, growing the economy and responding to international pressure to reduce GHG emissions. As a result, policies that promote energy emissions reduction without being harmful to economic growth and national developmental priorities are needed. Environmental fiscal reform presents one such option. The impact of this is still unclear for South Africa, and this paper explores this issue. Energy balance data on energy consumption, energy emissions and input-output data for South Africa are used to assess the economic and environmental effects of environmental reform in the energy sector. Despite the high reduction in energy emissions, a tax on coal is not selected as the best alternative given the high negative impact on the economy. A tax on oil results in a low reduction in energy emissions, which limits its use as an environmental policy. The scenario using a petroleum products tax results in small decreases in economic growth but it has low energy emissions reduction, hence, this alternative is not selected as an option. Energy subsidy reform offers the second highest reduction in real energy emissions and a low decrease in economic growth, and this scenario is therefore recognised as the best option for carbon dioxide reduction in South Africa. The electricity tax offers moderate reductions in real energy emissions and a moderate decrease in economic growth, and therefore, it is deduced that the electricity tax option could be another option for carbon dioxide emissions reduction in South Africa.


Author(s):  
Shantayanan Devarajan ◽  
Delfin S Go ◽  
Sherman Robinson ◽  
Karen Thierfelder

Abstract Noting that developing countries may not have the administrative capacity to levy a “pure” carbon tax, we compare the impact of alternative energy taxes with that of a carbon tax in an economy with multiple distortions. We use a disaggregated computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the South African economy and simulate a range of tax policies that reduce CO2 emissions by 15 percent. Consistent with a “first-best” economy, a carbon tax will have the lowest marginal cost of abatement. But the relationship between a tax on energy commodities and one on pollution-intensive commodities depends critically on other distortions in the system and on structural rigidities in the economy. We demonstrate that if South Africa were able to remove distortions in the labor market, the cost of carbon taxation would be negligible. We conclude that the welfare costs of taxing carbon emissions in developing countries depend more on other distortions than on the country’s own carbon emissions.


2013 ◽  
Vol 779-780 ◽  
pp. 1476-1481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chang He Jiang ◽  
Wen Ru Zang ◽  
Lei Lei Hu

In order to achieve the carbon reduction targets committed by China, Liaoning Province must take the way of low-carbon economy. Based on the related Statistical Yearbook data, applying the IPCC carbon emissions equation and Kaya model, this paper analyses the influencing factors of the carbon dioxide emissions produced from the power consumption of Liaoning Province. and then put forward some suggestion on reducing carbon emissions. The results show that Liaoning Province can achieve the goal, but unit GDP CO2 emissions reduction is mainly due tothe investment expansion of the second industry and construction industry investment expansion. As a result, it puts forward some suggestions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 17-23
Author(s):  
Szira Zoltán ◽  
Bárdos Kinga Ilona ◽  
Alghamdi Hani ◽  
Enkhjav Tumentsetseg ◽  
Erika Varga

2019 was Earth's second warmest year since 1850. In 2019 the global mean temperature was cooler than in 2016, but warmer than any other year explicitly measured. Consequently, 2016 is still the warmest year in historical observation history. Year-to-year rankings are likely to reflect natural fluctuations in the short term, but the overall pattern remains consistent with a long-term global warming trend. This would be predicted from global warming caused by greenhouse gases, temperature increase across the globe is broadly spread, impacting almost all areas of land and oceans. Climate change" and "global warming" are often used interchangeably but are of distinct significance. Global warming is the long-term heating of the Earth's climate system observed since the pre-industrial period as a result of human activities, mainly the combustion of fossil fuel, which raises the heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in the Earth's air. The term is often used interchangeably with the term climate change, as the latter applies to warming caused both humanly and naturally, and the impact it has on our planet. This is most generally calculated as the average increase in global surface temperature on Earth. Carbon dioxide emission is one of the main reasons for global warming. Since the Industrial Revolution, human sources of carbon dioxide emissions have been growing. Human activities such as the burning of oil, coal and gas, as well as deforestation are the primary cause of the increased carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. In our research, let’s examine the relationship between the amount of carbon dioxide emissions and the GDP/capita in developed and developing countries.


2011 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 302-305
Author(s):  
Xiao Fei Zhu ◽  
Da Wei Lv

There are more and more low-carbon architectures around us gradually. Low-carbon architectures is to decrease the use of renewable energy, improving energy efficiency, reduce carbon dioxide emissions during materials and equipment manufacturing, construction and the whole life of building use. According to calculating carbon emissions of the building materials in production, construction, using and removal, and the process of calculation, the total sum of carbon emissions in the life cycle was calculated.


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