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In this paper, we have investigated the implications of the threshold effect of changes in FDI inflows for the nexus between energy consumption and economic growth in eight under-researched sub-Saharan African countries for the period 1971--2016. The countries are Benin, Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, and Zambia. Using the lag-augmented VAR (LAVAR) model (corrected for cross-sectional dependence), we develop an empirical framework tightly linked to the endogenous growth model that allows for a threshold effect of changes (strength and weakness) in FDI inflows on the nexus. Our findings show that the FDI inflows matter for the causal link between energy consumption and economic growth in some countries, although, for the cross-section as a whole, our bootstrap simulation supports the neutrality hypothesis. The overall results suggest that an energy demand policy, such as an energy conservation policy, should not cause any significant adverse side-effects to economic growth in those sub-Saharan African countries. Policy implications of the threshold effect for the nexus for individual sub-Saharan African countries are also provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expanding the supplies of new energy can not only reduce CO2 emissions, but also alleviate energy shortage. This paper applies the quantile regression to investigate the new energy industry in China. The results show that economic growth exerts the greatest effect on the new energy industry in the lower 10th quantile province. This is because these provinces have the developed economies, demand for a higher ecological environment and new energy resources. Foreign energy dependence has a minimal impact on the new energy industry in the 25th-50th quantile province, due to their minimal oil importation. The contribution of technological progress to the upper 90th quantile province is the lowest, because their R&D capabilities are the weakest. The impact of energy consumption structure decreases in steps from the lower 10th quantile provinces to the upper 90th quantile provinces. The agricultural sector promotes the new energy industry in most provinces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of inequality in the distribution of CO2 emissions across U.S. regions. We implement a factorial decomposition of CO2 per capita based on extended Kaya factors, that is, carbon intensity of fossil fuel consumption, energy mix, energy intensity of GDP, economic growth in terms of labor productivity and employment rate. Results reveal that U.S. states display marked differences in most factors. We identify energy intensity as the main source of emissions inequality. Based on the within and between group inequality components we also explore the effect of geographical, geological, climatic and human development partitions of U.S. states' groups. Findings indicate that the within-group inequality had been the main contributor to the whole inequality. Finally, some economic policy implications are also discussed; explaining the unequal distribution of emissions is vital to establish differentiated targets and work towards successful mitigation proposals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the impact of women's intra-household bargaining power on household cooking fuel choice. It further analyzes the determinants of household energy spending after the decision to use a given fuel has been made. The results reinforce the important role women play in the household cooking fuel choice and energy transition from traditional to modern fuel. In addition, income and education are found to be crucial factors that influence both household cooking fuel choice and energy expenditure. These findings imply that energy transition policies need to consider gender dimension and women's intra-household bargaining power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imperfect information on future energy costs can lower the demand for more energy efficient technologies, with clear implications for energy supply, emissions and climate change. These hypotheses are explored using a randomised discrete choice experiment for property rental decisions. Results show that when energy consumption is expressed in physical units (as per the current EU labels) the willingness- to-pay for energy efficiency improvements is small and marginally significant. While bimonthly energy cost information displayed in monetary terms has no effect on the valuation of energy efficiency, annual monetary energy cost information led to a significant increase. This is the first paper to compare short and long-term point of sale energy cost information for household property decisions. There are clear implications for labelling policy for properties--framing energy consumption according to long-term monetary cost increases the demand for energy efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to investigate bi-directional spillovers into residential and industrial sectors induced by energy efficiency improvement (EEI) in both the short- and long-term, and the impact of nesting structure as well as the size of elasticities of substitution of production and utility functions on the magnitude and the transitional dynamic of rebound effect. Developing a dynamic general equilibrium model, we demonstrate that residential EEIs spillover into the industrial sector through the labor supply channel and industrial EEIs spillover into the residential sector through the conventional income channel. Numerical simulations calibrated on the U.S. suggest that not taking into account these spillover effects could lead to misestimating the rebound effect notably of residential sector EEIs. We also demonstrate how the size and the duration of the rebound effect depend on the elasticities of substitution’s values. Numerical simulations suggest that alternative sets of value for the elasticities of substitution may give different sizable patterns of rebound effects in both the short- and long-term. In policy terms, our results support the idea that energy efficiency policies should be implemented simultaneously with rebound effect offsetting policies by considering short- and long-term economy feedbacks. As a consequence, they require considering debates about what type of policy pathways are more effective in mitigating the rebound effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global climate change has caused governments worldwide to take actions to improve their energy efficiency. This paper investigates how China's Top-1000 program, a command-and-control type of energy-saving mandate, has affected the operational choices of firms, and in turn, their profitability. We apply the propensity score matching method to find "identical twins" for the participants in the Top- 1000 program, then conduct a difference-in-differences analysis on the matched sample. Our findings suggest that the profitability of the enterprises targeted for energy savings decreased by one-third, mainly due to increased production costs. The targeted enterprises tended to increase their fixed assets per capita, which was associated with improvements in energy efficiency. Furthermore, compared to similar untargeted enterprises, there was a significant slowdown in the production growths of the targeted enterprises, raising concerns about carbon leakage due to increased production by less efficient producers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the European Union's implementation of Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) for buildings, the capitalization of energy efficiency in transaction prices and rents has been subject to much research. This paper uses different identification strategies for the Norwegian residential sales (N = 750,000) and rental (N = 670,000) markets to highlight the endogeneity and methodological limitations associated with assessing the price effects of energy efficiency and the signaling effect of label adoption. We find that the valuation of energy efficiency is subject to unobserved location and quality bias, that labeling has immediate, short-run, and long-run price effects and that different effects are observed in different submarkets. We provide evidence that sample selection issues related to location and time, with methodological and data limitations, are essential factors that must be considered when assessing the effects of the EPC implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the first to investigate the relationship between the energy efficiency of dwellings, measured by the energy performance certificate (EPC), and utility cost inclusion in rental prices. First, we investigate potential drivers behind the decision to include utility costs in rents. We find that labeled dwellings are more likely to include utility costs and that this likelihood is higher among energy-effi- cient dwellings than among inefficient dwellings. Next, we surprisingly find that utility costs seem to be under-capitalized in energy-inefficient dwellings. These results are confirmed with the counterfactual decomposition approach. Overall, the findings indicate that the EPC labeling policy may be important for both landlord and tenant decision-making and may enhance market efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing tariff schemes often fail to achieve basic economic objectives. They set prices per unit that either exceed or fall short the social marginal cost and produce unfair distributional outcomes. In many cases, electricity rates also contribute to unsustainable fiscal deficits due to the (almost) generalized electricity subsidies. Moreover, inefficient residential tariffs do not favor the adoption of green technologies and the investment in energy efficiency improvements. We argue that the efficient deployment of green technologies, and more generally, the clean energy transition, will require electricity tariff reforms. In this paper, we use household level data and hourly industry data from Mexico to show how more efficient pricing mechanisms (such as a two-part tariff scheme in the context of efficient nodal pricing), combined with well-design environmental regulations (e.g., net-metering schemes) and correctly targeted transfer programs (e.g., means testing mechanisms) can improve economic, social, and environmental outcomes significantly, all at once. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distributional impact of the low-carbon transition is an increasingly important topic both for academics and policymakers. Quantifying where the costs and benefits fall can provide greater insight into the equity and cost-effectiveness of government policies, and improve our understanding of household investment decisions. This paper provides new evidence on the distribution of returns from energy efficiency measures both over time and across household-type. A range of econometric techniques are applied to a database of over four million households over an eight year period to quantify heterogeneity, persistence and how these factors impact the relative cost-effectiveness of measures. Results suggest that more deprived households experience lower energy savings, the difference persists over time, and that significantly heterogeneity may be present across levels of deprivation and income deciles that can not be explained by differences in baseline consumption. Measures have been largely cost-effective but savings are much lower than previous policy evaluations using ex-ante estimates would suggest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to difficulties in accessing detailed energy modelling and usage data that are required to estimate energy needs that are responsive to local circumstances, we propose an equivalence scale approach to the determination of required energy consumption. Our method requires the estimation of energy equivalence scales that are used to rescale reference household energy consumption and, thus, yield household-specific energy requirements. We apply the method using readily available income and expenditure data, finding that estimated required energy is well above actual energy expenditure for low- and middle-income households, which is consistent with an expectation that basic energy needs for poor households may not be met. The proposed approach is general enough to incorporate other features that might be deemed relevant and available in other settings, and, therefore, can be used to examine the affordability component of SDG 7, undertake energy poverty analysis or design appropriate policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate and energy policies use to be embedded in joint packages with seeming coherent goals on which the electricity sector is targeted. However, the complexity of power systems is rarely fully apprehended while setting up such packages, particularly when technical externalities from variable renewable energies (VRE) become widespread and different sources of flexibility need to be considered. We use a detailed power system model subject to a combination of RE goals and CO2 caps to seize their interplays and propose a methodology to rank the resulting equilibriums in terms of environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency. We show that: only modest levels of VRE develop without subsidies regardless the level of the CO2 cap; technical externalities create trade-offs between VRE penetration and environmental effectiveness; new flexibility technologies may correct or exacerbate these externalities, impacting effectiveness, costs, and coherence of such packages, requiring a sensitive target hierarchization and fine-tuning of such instruments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The energy environmental Kuznets curve is effectively an environmental Kuznets curve augmented by adding one or more energy-related variables. We suggest that the energy Kuznets curve (EKC) can be estimated separately from the conventional environmental Kuznets curve as a quadratic function of income. It is demonstrated that the environmental Kuznets curve implies and is implied by the EKC. The empirical results show consistently that both the environmental and EKC are valid for developed (high income) countries but not so for developing (low income) countries where the relations are positive and monotonic. The importance of considering energy consumption in conjunction with the environmental Kuznets curve is that economic growth on its own does not put an end to environmental degradation unless the underlying country is on the downward-sloping sections of both the environmental and EKC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To comprehensively model the macroeconomic impacts that result from changes in long-term energy-economy forecasts, the United States (U.S.) Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) partnered with West Virginia University (WVU)'s Regional Research Institute to develop the NETL/WVU econometric input-output (ECIO) model. The NETL/WVU ECIO model is an impacts forecasting model that functions as an extension of the U.S. energy-economic models available from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Market Allocation (MARKAL) model. The ECIO model integrates a macroeconomic econometric forecasting model and an input-output accounting framework along derived forecast scenarios detailing a baseline of the U.S. energy-economy and an alternative forecast on how power generation resources can meet future levels of energy demand to generate estimates of the impacts to gross domestic product, employment, and labor income. This manuscript provides an overview of the model design, assumptions, and standard outputs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, using hourly data from a representative sample of Swedish households on standard tariffs, we investigate the welfare and emission implications of moving to a mandatory dynamic pricing scheme. We allow demand during different hours of a day to affect utility differently, and account for the derived nature of electricity demand by explicitly accounting for the services (end-use demands) that drive hourly electricity demand. We use the flexible Exact Affine Stone Index (EASI) demand system, which accommodates both observed and unobserved heterogeneity in preferences, to understand changes in load consequent to hourly retail pricing. Our findings suggest that, following hourly retail pricing, changes in load patterns across hours are relatively small: total load changes by less than one percent. There are correspondingly small reductions in welfare and carbon emissions, of less than 0.2 percent and 0.47 percent, respectively. Overall, in the context of a decentralized, competitive retail electricity market-setting, our results suggest that the benefits to ensuring that the retail price of electricity reflects the hourly marginal cost is small, at least in the short run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]