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1. Modes of governance for municipal energy efficiency services – The case of LED street lighting in Germany.

Author

Polzin, Friedemann, von Flotow, Paschen, and Nolden, Colin

Subjects
*STREET lighting, *ENERGY consumption, *CORPORATE governance, *ENERGY industries, *LIGHT emitting diodes
Abstract

Energy efficiency retrofits are often impeded by high perceived investment risks, long payback periods and a lack of skills. At the municipal level these issues are particularly pronounced as procuring, implementing, and managing retrofits can exceed existing municipal governance capacities. The diffusion of municipal LED street lighting as a replacement for conventional lighting serves as an example. This paper argues that technological (e.g. complexity and maturity), economic (e.g. selling services vs. products and financing costs), institutional (e.g. property situation and contracts) and competency barriers to retrofitting (e.g. lack of measurement capacity and qualified facilitators) translate into transaction costs. We develop a taxonomy of appropriate modes of municipal retrofitting governance based on transaction costs economics. The findings indicate that more market-based solutions, energy performance contracts in particular, can facilitate the procurement of innovative energy efficiency retrofitting solutions and associated investments among municipalities if neutral tenders, open-book accounting, municipal ownership and intermediary organisations allow municipalities to choose appropriate governance structures for particular technologies and retrofits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Published
2016
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2. Impact of environmental regulations on industrial structure upgrading: An empirical study on Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in China

Author

Zhe George Zhang, Peide Zhang, Guoxing Zhang, and Jiexun Li

Subjects
Structure (mathematical logic), Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment, Natural resource economics, 020209 energy, Strategy and Management, Corporate governance, 05 social sciences, Beijing tianjin hebei, 02 engineering and technology, Building and Construction, Energy consumption, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering, Econometric model, Empirical research, Regional integration, 050501 criminology, 0202 electrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineering, Business, China, 0505 law, General Environmental Science
Abstract

Environmental problems are among the world's major challenges. To alleviate the environmental pressure caused by rapid economic growth, many governments have implemented a series of environmental regulation policies to reduce energy consumption and pollutant emissions. While existing studies have shown that environmental regulations can affect industrial development, the impact of environmental regulations on industrial structure upgrading in regional development remains unclear. This paper studies such an impact by quantitatively analyzing the environmental policies of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region in China and provides insightful recommendations for regional integration governance. By analyzing the policy texts from 2003 to 2014, this paper defines a series of indices to quantify the policy objective of industrial structure upgrading and six types of policy measures. Based on these quantitative indices, this paper builds econometric models to study the spatial effect and time-lag effect of environmental regulations on industrial structures. The main findings include: (1) the environmental regulations in these three regions have no influence on each other, yet the upgrading of industrial structures shows significant negative spatial dependence; (2) environmental regulations have direct and indirect spatial effects on industrial structures across regions; and (3) environmental regulations have a long-term promotion effect on industrial structure upgrading, and economic measures tend to be more effective than noneconomic measures. This paper provides insights into the importance of the integrated development across regions of environmental regulations and industrial development. This paper also shows the significant effectiveness of economic measures of environmental regulations for industrial structure upgrading.

Published
2019