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This paper develops an Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare for Spain from 1970 to 2012 and seeks to update valuation approaches to a number of items. Two approaches have proven particularly controversial over recent decades; the costs of energy depletion and of climate change. The valuation implications in measuring present welfare have proven problematic, as both include future sustainability consequences arising from resource depletion and environmental impacts. This study includes a ‘ transition cost ’ approach to energy depletion, a modified approach to costs of climate change and water pollution, and removes the cost of ozone depletion. The results illustrate that while GDP per capita increased significantly, the ISEW per capita shows a widening gap. Household labour contributes strongly, but income distribution, energy depletion and costs of climate change limit improvement. Sensitivity analysis shows that accumulating climate change costs and escalating energy depletion costs have significant effects. Nevertheless, the new valuation approaches do not alter conclusions that welfare has shown little improvement. The ISEW provides a useful alternative to current indicators such as GDP subject to awareness of limitations. It is a measure of welfare that uses sustainability accounting methods when estimating costs, but is not an indicator of whether welfare is actually sustainable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper links theoretical perspectives from energy efficiency economics with those observed from corporate environmental strategy to develop a framework for explaining energy efficiency strategies by firms in response to national policies and local regulations in China. The framework is refined through analytic generalization of 20 cases from four industries and four cities in Jiangsu Province, and reveals two strategies: 1) firms with moderate institutional pressure seek incremental competitiveness by adopting energy-saving technologies, which is reinforced by their informational, organizational, and financing capabilities, and facilitated by voluntary policies and industrial competition; 2) firms with survival risk or development constraints under regulation seek a position favored by local governments by replacing old plant and equipment with larger, more efficient ones and contributing to the local community. The Chinese case studies reveal a strong institutional impact on firms' choice of business strategies and particularly the positioning strategy. The identified business strategies shed additional light on the effectiveness and implications of different policy instruments for energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fossil fuel-driven transport sector has been one of the major contributors to CO 2 emission across the world keeping it on the energy policy agenda for the past three decades. Canada ranks second in gasoline consumption among OECD countries and Canadian gasoline expenditure share has been increasing since the 1990s. Fuel efficiency policies aim to decrease gasoline consumption; however, the effect can be mitigated by changes in consumer behavior such as traveling more distances — a rebound effect. Thus, the effectiveness of fuel efficiency policy is dependent on the magnitude of the rebound effect. In this paper, we estimate the rebound effect for personal transportation in Canada using data from the household spending survey for the period 1997–2009. The model includes a system of expenditure share equations for gasoline, other energy goods, and non-energy goods specified by AIDS and QUAIDS models and estimated by the nonlinear SUR method. Our estimation results show a rather high average rebound effect of 82–88% but with significant heterogeneity across income groups, provinces, and gasoline prices. Specifically, the rebound effect ranges from 63 to 96% across income groups and provinces and increases with gasoline prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]