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The 4th industrial revolution (4IR) is in its early stage, and the exploitation of all its potential benefits is the challenge of the future. This revolution involves product information for consumers, which is relevant for addressing circular economy (CE) principles. The consumer is crucial for CE development, buying or not buying new, sustainable products designed according to CE principles and 4IR technologies. This is especially true for the new generations who will be the future consumers. We analyze the importance of younger generations in supporting these new products. In particular, the aim is to evaluate to what extent the market is able to sustain durability and repairability of CE characteristics of products included in the 4IR. Using a contingent valuation approach according to the theory of planned behavior, we investigate the willingness of university students to pay for smartphones produced with ecolabels that indicate such characteristics, attested by either paper-based scheme or blockchain technology. Results reveal that some variables, such as parental education, household income, and age, positively affect both participation and willingness to pay (WTP) the stated amount. Durability is always preferred to repairability, and paper-based scheme is preferred to blockchain technology. Interestingly, a good percentage of respondents are willing to support blockchain transition. Other results contribute to several strategic suggestions for developing sustainable products attaining CE and 4IR technologies.

Addressing environmental problems requires large-scale transition efforts in the transport sector. Many governments, encouraging sustainable mobility, see alternative fuel vehicles as an important part of a technology portfolio targeted at reducing polluting emissions. However, consumers' adoption of alternative fuel vehicles is hindered by complex technical and socio-economic aspects. The novelty of this study is to explicitly explore the impact of age on consumers' attitudes towards alternative fuel vehicles with an original questionnaire survey, targeting a sample of high-educated Italian consumers. We identify the main concerns related to alternative fuel vehicles and suggest measures to overcome these concerns. A better understanding of the effects of different ages on attitude processes is crucial for designing more effective private and public strategies for alternative fuel vehicles' development across a variety of consumers.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the main determinants of the economic acceptability of four Green Technologies (GTs): alternative fuel vehicles, energy savings in residential buildings, smart meters and renewable electricity, using a meta-analysis on a sample of 35 selected papers, which provided 245 primary data. This approach allows detecting relationships across heterogeneous studies, avoiding the subjectivity of qualitative surveys. We implement a new two-step procedure. First, we compute a measure of the implicit price for a kilogram of CO2 avoided (PCO2), homogenizing the usable information for the GTs considered. Second, we conduct a meta-regression using the computed PCO2 values to estimate the socio-economic determinants' impact. In general, our results show a wide degree of acceptability for GTs which is stronger among European citizens. In particular, it emerges that, on average, the estimated PCO2 is positive for the GTs considered, and additional positive effects exist when respondents are confronted with an explicit reference to quantitative targets in terms of CO2 abatement, a clear proposal for payment timing, and a specific renewable electricity mix. These results indicate that information and transparency are crucial to spur GTs deployment. Therefore, to support GTs’ market penetration, public and private institutional stakeholders, have to provide “ad hoc” information to the end users, setting a clear and suitable system of prices to increase the economic value end users place on GTs.

In 2014, the European Commission proposed a new renewable energy sources (RES) target in energy consumption by 2030 “to be delivered collectively” by the European Union as a whole, leaving unresolved the question of allocation among member countries. The aim of this paper is to propose and simulate a model of coordinated action among member countries based on two pillars, RES national binding targets and a quantitative cost minimization procedure based on a general translog function. We have considered RES national targets in three sectors: electricity, heating and cooling, transport. RES costs are differentiated according to learning-by-doing and RES productivity diffusion processes at the various RES production sites in the European Union. Three different scenarios are simulated and compared with the baseline case constituted by the 2020 cumulative RES target. The results show that, compared with the baseline, the costs of achieving RES binding targets, with the proposed decision process, can be reduced by up to 13% by 2030. These cost evaluations indicate that it is more efficient to produce RES in those countries that face lower technology costs, according to the comparative advantages of their territorial localization and the importance of the initial RES policy efforts.

The relationship between tourism development and environmental degradation is one of the policy agenda for sustainable tourism. Tourism in protected areas is a complex phenomenon, which brings both positive and negative effects on the environment and local communities. The transition toward forms of sustainable mobility, such as electric boats, allows to reconcile tourist activities with preservation of protected areas, strengthening the links between land use and transport. The aim of this paper has been the investigation tourists’ preferences to elicit their willingness to pay for the introduction of electric boat fleet in the Regional Park of Trasimeno Lake, a protected area in Italy, in order to reduce CO2 emissions. Data were collected by means of questionnaires. The impact of uncertainty on contingent valuation responses using three different approaches has been used. Also the effects of pricing CO2 emissions from boating activities have been investigated. The research results show that variables such as sex, age and visits’ duration of stay have an impact on the respondents’ willingness to pay and the related uncertainty. Considering two electrification options of the fleet, simulation results indicate that both price premiums and a subsidy policy are needed for electric boats deployment. This paper showed the need for public and private authorities to implement instruments including an important role for education to achieve a new tourism model based on natural features and sustainability.

Sustainable mobility has received increasing attention in recent years. The transport sector contributes to almost a quarter of Europe&rsquo, s greenhouse gas emissions. The development of electric vehicles (EVs) may help the shift toward sustainable mobility, reducing oil vulnerability and greenhouse gas emissions in road transport. Poor penetration of EVs might be explained, moreover, by consumer resistance to EVs. The aim of our paper is to determine consumers&rsquo, attitude and preferences for EVs, investigating which conditions influence consumer decision-making to purchase an EV. Using a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis of 421 highly-educated individuals, involving students and faculty members, we identify several configurations of conditions of the variables which lead to the outcomes, supporting their equifinality and asymmetric nature. Our findings indicate attitudes related to EVs differ across age and groups. Our paper offers public decision makers new useful insights for understanding the importance of specific determinants, and for designing effective strategies for EVs&rsquo, development worldwide.

The promotion of renewable energy sources (RES) by governments is one way of helping countries to meet their energy needs while lowering greenhouse gas emissions. In this paper, we examine the role of energy policy in RES promotion, based on a carbon tax and RES price subsidy, at a time of technological and demand shocks in the European Union (E.U.) 15 countries, the United States (U.S.) and China, focusing on the macroeconomic implications. Using a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model for RES and fossil fuels, our results suggest that, in the presence of a total factor productivity shock in the fossil fuel sector, such an energy policy can also be a driving force for smoothing the reduction of RES in the energy market (and vice versa). Additionally, we show that the E.U.15 grouping has a comparative advantage in terms of reaching grid parity compared with the other countries we considered which are more fossil fuel dependent.

This study analyzes the attitude of Italian youngsters toward the adoption of alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs), using the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. An internet and face-to face questionnaire survey collects the intensity of knowledge, perceptions, and attitudes toward alternative fuel vehicles of Italian university students. A survey among youngster allows understanding the view of the future generation regarding alternative fuel vehicles technologies. The findings from the survey (n = 330) indicate the relevant determinants that spur the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles, the type of technology preferred among such vehicles, the specific related environmental benefits and the related barriers that youngsters perceive. Consumers' acceptance is crucial in the development of AFVs. This article also includes practical implications for both policymakers and manufacturers.

The electrical system is experiencing many challenges, including the increasing use of renewable energy sources characterized by high variability, the need to take action to mitigate climate change, the need to restructure the aged infrastructure, and then the development of smart grids. New ways of interplay between consumers and producers have emerged, but their implications have not been fully analyzed. This article analyzes the most relevant barriers that are perceived by consumers as obstacles to the development of smart grids, using a literature review. Our findings indicate that there are four relevant barriers: costs, privacy, cyber security, and regulatory aspects. Consumers must be informed in a transparent and convincing way. Indeed, electricity consumers play a key role in the development of smart grid technologies, since they will play the crucial role in the future electricity market.

The aim of this paper is to assess consumers’ attitudes in monetary terms toward the avoidance of CO2 emissions in the transport sector, using a meta-analysis approach drawing on 30 primary studies. We compute the implicit price for the avoidance of a kilogram of CO2 emissions, named PCO2. Our novel approach combines results from revealed preferences of conventional vehicle drivers for fuel price variation and stated preferences expressed by consumers for alternative fuel vehicles. We compare data collected from two strands of literature. Operationally, we recover the opportunity cost of achieving CO2 emissions reduction from the price elasticity of demand for traditional fossil fuels transport. We interpret the fuel market price response as a signal to estimate the opportunity cost of driving reduction and the related CO2 emissions. Then, we analyze the willingness to pay (willingness to accept) for alternative fuel vehicles, estimating a measure of the cost of CO2 avoidance. Our findings show that contextual and individual characteristics influence the implicit price for CO2 emissions avoidance. This implicit price is on average positive in the case of revealed preferences studies, whereas it is negative in the stated preferences studies. Although there are some important geographical differences, our results show that fuel taxes can be considered as an important additional instrument for environmental policy.

The evolution of energy production in the European Union (EU) is going through a big change in recent years: the incidence of traditional fuels is diminishing gradually for increasing renewable energy sources (RES), due to international concerns over climate change and for energy security reasons. The aim of this paper is to construct a simulation model that identifies and estimates costs that may arise for a community of negotiating countries from opportunistic behavior of some country when defining environmental policies. In this paper, the model is applied specifically to the new 2030 Framework for Climate and Energy Policies (COM(2014) 0015) (EC, 2014 11) on the promotion of RES that commits EU governments to a common goal to increase the share of RES in final consumption to 27% by 2030. Costs faced by EU countries to achieve the RES target are different due to their endowment heterogeneity, the availability of RES, the diffusion process of cost improvements and the different instruments to support the development of the RES technologies. Given the still undefined participation agreement to reach the new overall RES target by 2030, we want to assess the potential cost penalty induced by free riding behavior. This could stem from some EU country, which avoids complying with the RES Directive. Our policy simulation exercise shows that costs increase more than proportionally with the non-participating country size, measured with GDP and CO2 emissions. Furthermore, we provide a model to analytically assess the likelihood each EU country may have to behave opportunistically within the negotiation process of the new proposal on EU RES targets (COM(2014) 0015).

The paper presents recent and future trends of the world energy market, as highlighted by medium- and long-term projections. Energy demand and energy consumptions projected by IEA (International Energy Agency) are examined, in comparison with projections provided by other international agencies and companies in the energy sector. In particular, energy resources, energy consumption and economic growth both in developing and developed countries are presented, with a particular attention to the role of energy efficiency, nuclear power, unconventional fossil resources and renewable energies. Sustainable development issues, according to the global climate agreement signed at COP21, are also presented. The outlook period extends up to 2040. The results confirm a worldwide interest in renewable and unconventional resources for the forthcoming decades, as well as efforts to increase the energy efficiency potential in all end-use sectors to reduce the overall environmental impact of energy production.

Summarization: Environmental policy measures to reduce greenhouse gases emission to mitigate climate change are common practice in many developed countries, encompassing both technology-push measures and demand-pull measures. The effectiveness of such policies continues to need investigation, especially when shortsighted measures lead to suboptimal investments in the absence of a credible government commitment. The aim of this paper is to assess the effectiveness of a comprehensive strategy for renewable energy sources in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model estimated for the Euro area using Bayesian estimation techniques, which includes carbon tax and subsidy measures. To this end, we compare the cost-effectiveness of technology-push measures and demand-pull measures. Our findings show that the environmental policy based on technology-push measures may produce better dynamic effects than demand-pull measures based on a subsidy policy of equal monetary amount. In fact, RES price parity is estimated to occur sooner by implementing technology-push measures than demand-pull measures. Παρουσιάστηκε στο: Renewable Energy