ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT
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Published By Franco Angeli

2280-7667, 2280-7659

Author(s):  
Leezna Saleem ◽  
Imran Ahmad Siddiqui ◽  
Intikhab Ulfat

Pakistan is the world's sixth most populous country, currently facing the worst energy crisis. Although rich in renewable resources, Pakistan's energy system relies mainly on fossil fuels and imported energy for its energy needs. This study aims to use an analytical hierarchy pro-cess to prioritize six renewable technologies for Pakistan, with four criteria and thirteen subcriteria. The results indicate that solar power is particularly well suited for Pakistan, as it gained 42% priority weightage in the final aggregation. Wind energy is ranked second with a priority weight of 24%, followed by hydro 13%, biomass 9%, ocean 8% and geothermal en-ergy 3%. Solar and wind energies accounted for nearly 66% of the total weightage. This result highlighted the significance of economic criteria for the selection of renewable technologies in Pakistan, with around 43% priority weightage. Environmental criteria gained 19% whereas socio-political criteria registered 14% and technical criteria 23% priority weightage. During the potential assessment of the research, it was concluded that although renewable resource development has not been allocated sufficient attention in Pakistan in the past, if the correct decisions are taken regarding the exploitation of these resources, this can remedy the country's hazardous dependence on fossil fuel and imported energy.


Author(s):  
Duc-Truong Dinh ◽  
Thu-Nga Do ◽  
Thi-Thoa Le ◽  
Ngoc-Bao Pham ◽  
Anh-Duc Trinh ◽  
...  

In Asia, Vietnam is one of the countries severely affected by energy shortages and climate change. Development of renewable energy from livestock wastes, e.g., production of electricity from biogas, is a solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and pollution from untreated livestock wastes, as well as energy shortages. So that, biogas technology has been researched and applied in Vietnam since the 1960s. The development and state-of-art issue of household biogas, specifically, the opportunities and constraints of household biogas are presented in this paper. There are several opportunities for household biogas development, including, the availability of biogas fermentation materials, energy shortage issues, and policy support from the Government of Vietnam and international organizations. Besides, barriers encountered in household biogas development in Vietnam included technical barriers, financial policy barriers, awareness and capacity limitations. The capacity building should include the dissemination and update of policy to maintain transparency and credibility for attracting potential domestic investors. Training courses should be provided to technical staff of biogas digester on operation and maintenance. Measures should be taken to improve the policy and mechanisms, especially, financial mechanisms.


Author(s):  
Francesco Colelli ◽  
Edoardo Croci

The paper quantifies social costs and social benefits of packaging waste management system in Italy from 2015 to 2030. Future social costs and benefits are estimated based on the growth of waste generated and on the stringency of recycling and landfilling targets. Packaging waste generation is projected based on macroeconomic factors, consumer practices and technological eco-innovations. Social benefits are derived by the reduction of externalities' correspondent to the achievement of packaging waste management targets. We quantify two environmental ben-efits: avoided emissions and raw materials saved. We find that social costs may rise substan-tially in the future, as total system's operations costs in 2030 may increase by 48% with re-spect to 2015, due to the growth in the quantities of packaging waste generated. Meeting recy-cling and landfilling targets set by the new Circular Economy Package would imply a further 5% increase in total social costs in 2015. This latter increase is more than compensated by so-cial benefits related to the reduction in externalities due to more stringent targets.


Author(s):  
Jacques Percebois ◽  
Stanislas Pommeret

The penetration of intermittent renewable energies in the electricity mixes impact the wholesale price. In the absence of electricity storing capacities at reasonable costs, the back-up of the intermittent renewable energies is ensured by fossil or nuclear power plants. In 2016 the French Nuclear Safety Authority has ordered the shutdown of a large part of nuclear units for safety reasons. This paper analyses the impact of such a decision both on the evolution of the whole-sale price of electricity and on the French commercial balance. Although the resulting mix from the partial shutdown of the nuclear power plants was able to produce the electrical energy consumed, it was unable to keep up with demand. This has resulted in a very sharp increase in the price of electricity on the spot market and in massive electricity imports at peak times. Moreover the carbon electricity footprint produced in France is much lower than the one pro-duced by its neighbors. Consequently, the nuclear partial shutdown has a negative climatic impact resulting in a deterioration of the citizen welfare. Thus, the French experience of 2016 teaches us that in the absence of electricity storage facilities, there is no point in trying to re-duce the share of nuclear and fossil fuels in the electricity mix. If the policymakers want to do so, they must ensure that massive electricity storage facilities are present and promote electrici-ty demand flexibility on a large scale. This study highlights also the divergence that can exist between the interest of the nuclear producer (higher revenues) and the collective interest (lower welfare and negative impact on the trade balance).


Author(s):  
Parakram Pyakurel

The raging debate between green growth and degrowth continues. Technology is a focal point in this debate as the advocates of green growth and degrowth have contradictory views on the roles and impacts of technology on environment and society. Green growth advocates believe that technology can allow indefinite growth while simultaneously ensuring environmental and societal sustainability, whereas the degrowth advocates argue that technological progress cannot allow indefinite growth. These views are largely opinion based rather than informed by objective and systematic analyses because comprehensive tools to evaluate the roles and impacts of technology on environment and society do not yet exist. This paper develops a much-needed framework to comprehensively evaluate the roles of technology on environment and society by analysing the interactions among the dimensions of technology, environment, economy and society. Key parameters that characterise technology are proposed for its evaluation and the policy implications of technological evaluations are examined. Finally, potential future research directions are explored. The technological evaluation approach proposed in this paper has a potential to significantly advance the green growth versus degrowth debate.


Author(s):  
Emmanuel Uche ◽  
Lionel Effiom

The pass-through of oil price to various macroeconomic aggregates, including the exchange rates and stock prices have been vigorously studied in the past albeit varying submissions. More so, these studies considered the relationship only within the conditional mean. To pro-vide fresh insights about the heterogeneous impacts, this study re-examines the dynamic pass-through of international oil prices to exchange rates and stock prices in Nigeria using the Quantile ARDL model. The quantile ARDL accounts for locational asymmetries among varia-bles. Findings indicate that the spillover effects of oil price shocks on both the exchange rate and stock prices in Nigeria are heterogeneous and differ significantly across the quantile dis-tributions of the foreign exchange and stock markets. The impact increases over time with greater impacts recorded at quantiles below the median. On this background, specific policies targeting the peculiar effects at each quantile of exchange rate and stock prices will ensure op-timal performance leading to higher returns to investors and market practitioners.


Author(s):  
Avijit Karmakar ◽  
Pradip Kumar Sadhu ◽  
Soumya Das

The conversion of solar energy into electrical energy by the design of energy-efficient way is the key objective of this paper, which can be used as a main source of power for the main building of Polytechnic Institute to meet its daily energy requirement by replacing the all exist-ing fluorescent lighting loads to LEDs. The main purpose to choose a standalone photovoltaic system is due to the huge power cut in this location. This institute is situated in a rural area of West Bengal, India. The use of photovoltaic power relies upon assortment factors, such as structuring, topographical area, climate condition, sun-based irradiance, and burden utilization. Point by point use examinations including the two sorts of lighting burden, establishment, and upkeep of sun-based PV framework amid its life expectancy has been completed. Moreover, the analysis has two dimensions, one is cost comparison and payback calculation with respect to energy by replacement of load and another is, though the initial investment is high in a off-grid photovoltaic system, during the life span of the scheme, it not only returns this capital in-vestment but also gains substantial dividend.


Author(s):  
Antonia Gkergki

This paper examines the relationship between the energy consumption and economic growth from 1968 to 2019 in Greece, by employing the vector error-correction model estimation. A series of econometric tests are employed concerning the stationary of the data, and the co-integration and the relationship among the variables during the long- and short-term. The em-pirical results suggest that there is no bidirectional relationship between economic growth and energy consumption. More specifically, GDP per capita does not affect the energy consump-tion of the three primary sources either in the long-term or the short-term. In other words, the economic crisis and its implications for GDP do not affect energy consumption, and they are not responsible for the considerable decrease in energy sources' consumption. On the other hand, the energy consumption of oil and coal negatively affect the GDP per capita. These re-sults are different from previous studies' conclusions for Greece; this is because the never been experienced before. These findings raise new research questions and also show the limi-tations of the Greek market, as it is regulated and controlled by the government.


Author(s):  
Krishna Muniyoor

Rajasthan, the largest state in India, occupies 10.5 per cent of the total geographical area of the country, although about two-thirds of its area is arid. The state has a predominantly agrarian economy, and agriculture is the mainstay of about two-thirds of the workforce. Interestingly, only 28 per cent of the net cultivable area in the state is irrigated, compared to the national average of 49.8 per cent. With the aim to improve irrigation facilities and increase agricultural productivity, the state government implemented the solar photovoltaic water pumping system (SPVWPS) in 2008-09 as an appropriate alternative to grid-connected water pumping. The aim of this paper is to assess the costs and benefits of adopting the SPVWPS using data from a field survey of 126 households. The findings show that use of the SPVWPS offers substantial benefits to adopters in the long run. In addition, government subsidy plays a major role in determining the payback period of adopters' investment in the scheme. The paper suggests that, alongside timely implementation of the scheme, the government should facilitate domestic manufacturing of solar cells and panels to fully harness social benefits of the SPVWPS.


Author(s):  
Antonio Massarutto

Since 2018, the economic regulation of Italian municipal waste utilities is attributed to an inde-pendent authority, ARERA. This original model is supposed to facilitate the transition towards the circular economy paradigm, that associates demanding public service obligations to recy-cling and valorization of waste, in the context of a vertically-integrated industry with a wide differentiation of conditions and maturity throughout the country. This paper analyzes the ex-perience of the first two years and discusses the outcomes reached. We start from a discussion of the fundamental economic characteristics of the waste management industry and of how the circular economy paradigm has radically changed it, raising rather new regulatory issues. We next analyze the structure of the Italian municipal waste management industry and its trajecto-ries of evolution face to the challenge to achieve the demanding targets imposed by the EU Circular Economy Package. We present then the regulatory approach adopted by ARERA in the first regulatory period (2020-2021) and discuss its advantages and drawbacks, based on the experience made in the early phase of its implementation.


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