Search

The common ground of both critics and proponents of green productivity is arguably hinged on the main role of environmental technological advancement. Considering the drive for climate-neutral economy among the Nordic states, the current study examines the role of climate change technological development within the countries and technological spillovers across countries in the pursuit for green economy. By using a combination of pooled mean group approach of autoregressive distributed lag (for coefficient estimation) and the recently developed Granger non-causality approach by Juodis et al. (2021) for the panel dataset analysis over the period 1990–2018, the results reveal that both domestic technological development and spillovers from abroad promote long-run green productivity growth in the panel and country-specific estimations. In both estimations, the impact of international diffusion of climate change technologies on green productivity is found to be larger. Additionally, the influence of these two dynamics of climate change-related technologies on attaining greening economy is the most impactful in Sweden. In the remaining Nordic economies, climate change technology spillovers in Denmark are more impactful than in Finland and least in Norway, while climate change technological development in Norway drives green productivity more than in Finland and least in Denmark. As a robust insight, the Granger causality techniques revealed causality from climate change technologies within the countries, climate change technology spillovers, and population to green productivity. Consequently, public policies should promote green innovativeness and especially learning and knowledge transfer from other countries to achieve climate neutrality targets. • The drivers of green productivity in the Nordic countries are investigated. • Domestic and foreign spillovers of green technology promote green productivity. • Green productivity responds more strongly to foreign technology spillovers. • The impact of climate change-related technologies is the highest in Sweden. • Financial development and population also drive green productivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transfer of industrial clean technology can contribute to the transformation of industry sustainable development to address the dual challenges of climate change and environmental pollution. Although its importance is widely acknowledged, there is still a lack of scientific and quantitative assessment framework to precisely and effectively identify high-potential cooperation targets in the context of countries with diverse backgrounds. To fill this gap, this study proposed a multidimensional assessment framework for industrial clean technology transfer potential with application in 58 BRI developing countries. This study reviewed existing literature on the main barriers and drivers of clean technology transfer and extracted four assessment dimensions as primary indicators, namely the recipient country's macro environment, industry development, clean technology demand, and clean technology transfer guarantee, with 13 secondary indicators, 52 tertiary indicators based on the open-source database and common assessment index. The established framework was then used to assess the potential for China's industrial clean technology transfer to 58 developing countries under the Belt and Road Initiative, with the weights of indicators at all levels determined by the analytic hierarchy process method based on expert questionnaires and equal weighting method. The findings demonstrate that there are significant differences in clean technology transfer potential among studied countries. Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Malaysia are the best options for China, while Bolivia, Cameroon, and Algeria have the lowest technology transfer potential. Our work can not only assist technology providers with overall country selection in industrial cleaner technology transfer cooperation and strengthen their risk prevention capacity, but also help countries with low cooperation potential or obvious weaknesses to identify deficiencies and make targeted improvements, as well as serve as a reference for other international technology cooperation assessments. • The study develops a novel framework to quantify the potential for industrial clean technology transfer for the first time. • The framework can guide country selection of clean technology transfers, and identify defiencies for low-potential countries. • The framework evaluated 58 BRI developing countries, revealing Qatar, UAE, and Malaysia as the top 3 with high potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of intellectual property rights (IPR) on the transfer of environmentally sound technologies (ESTs) has resulted in discursive contestation. On the one hand, the IPR regime is regarded as a catalyst to ESTs transfer. On the other hand, the IPR regime itself is argued to work as a barrier to the transfer of ESTs to developing countries. This contestation moved to another layer of discussion concerning what to do about the current IPR regime and the climate change regime that overlap on the subject matter of technology transfer. The IPR-as-a-catalyst approach prefers the IPR regime to remain as the status quo and that the climate change regime construct an enabling environment by lowering the transaction costs of technology transfer and enhancing the regulatory capacity of developing countries. On the contrary, skeptics of the role of the IPR regime in ESTs transfer prefer an active utilization of the flexible mechanisms of the IPR regime and more interventionist actions by the climate change regime for effective IPR-sharing. Regarding this bi-polar contestation, this paper analyzes why and where this discursive contestation occurs based on the economic theories of market failure. The benefits and difficulties of remedial institutional approaches to tackle market failures are explored; then, complementary institutional designs in compatibility with the IPR regime and in response to market failures are explored with exemplary cases under the climate change regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the fight against global climate change, improving energy efficiency and reducing related emissions are critical to mitigating sustainability issues such as global warming. In this regard, technological progress is known to improve energy efficiency and reduce related emissions. However, previous sustainability studies on Africa have paid less attention to energy and emission efficiency convergence among countries, along with the contribution of technological progress to the continent's sustainability. Accordingly, this paper develops a novel framework that assesses energy and emission efficiency convergence, gauges technology inequality, identifies the barriers to technology diffusion, and explores the factors influencing energy and emission efficiency convergence in Africa. The proposed framework incorporates Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), several economic convergence concepts, a K-means clustering model, the concept of efficiency Gini coefficient, and a group-based inequality decomposition method. We empirically covered 39 African countries from 2006 to 2018. The results show that African countries are, on average, 71.1% energy efficient and 65.3% CO 2 emission efficient, leaving more room for energy saving and emissions reduction. Second, there is strong evidence of convergence in energy and emission efficiencies in Africa. Third, despite the observed convergence process, there is significant heterogeneity between two research groups (i.e., low-and high-efficiency groups of countries) in terms of energy and emission efficiencies, with persistent technology inequality suggesting a lower contribution of environmental technological advancements to the continent's sustainability. Furthermore, cross-group inequality is the primary barrier to technology diffusion. Fourth, regional cooperation accelerates the convergence process in the two efficiency indicators. While economic development, industrial structure, and renewable energy consumption (REC) tend to favor energy and emission efficiency growth, rising foreign direct investment (FDI) and energy prices have a negative impact. Meanwhile, the effects of energy prices, FDI, and REC on emission efficiency are insignificant. Based on our findings, we discussed policy implications to promote energy and emission efficiency convergence and narrow environmental technology gaps. • Convergence in Total-factor energy and emission efficiency in Africa is explored. • Technology inequality across African countries is measured. • There is strong evidence of convergence in TFEE and TFCEE in Africa. • A persistent technology inequality is found among African countries. • Cross-group efficiency inequality is the main barrier to technology diffusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Africa is predicted to be the region most affected by climate change and water is one of the sectors with anticipated severe impacts. Innovations in this sector are being promoted as part of the adaptation solutions to this problem. In this paper, we use available data on water-related climate change adaptation technological developments to examine the degree to which the vulnerability to climate change in the water sector is motivating these innovations. Using pooled data for African countries between 1990 and 2016, we estimate the relationship between climate-induced vulnerability in the water sector and water-related innovations, controlling for country size and proxies for technology transfer environment, institutional and regulatory quality, knowledge base, and research and development activity. Data on innovative activity shows evidence of over-dispersion; thus we use the negative binomial distribution with robust standard errors for estimation of our model. We find evidence that countries most exposed to water stress are innovating at lower rates. Though counterintuitive, this result is explained by the fact that such vulnerable countries also tend to have little research and development infrastructure needed to develop the kind of high quality innovations that usually necessitate patenting. Our result suggests that African countries experiencing water stress may need to reconsider priorities in the design of water-related adaptation to climate change. We also find that a country's knowledge base and openness to trade are important determinants of adaptation technologies in the water sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]