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Improving energy efficiency quickly is key to mitigating climate change and requires improvements implemented in firms. As these require upfront investments, good access to external finance is important. Theory suggests that information asymmetries may prevent lenders from including energy efficiency into their lending assessment, even though higher energy efficiency increases firm cost-competitiveness and its collateral value. Empirically, little is known about the impact of energy efficiency on access to external finance. For the first time, we examine empirically the effect of a firm's higher energy efficiency on their ability to obtain loans in European Union countries by exploiting a unique firm-level dataset. We find that energy efficiency has no effect on the ability of a firm to obtain external financing compared to other indicators on the financial or operational health of the firm. The results reveal an unexploited potential for energy efficiency policy to signal when firms are energy efficient. Keywords: Energy efficiency, Access to external finance, EU firms, Information asymmetry, Building energy consumption, 1. INTRODUCTION Greater energy efficiency is a key projected contribution to mitigating climate change. In particular, it is seen as essential for performing the near-term change in the trend of [...]

Where electric vehicles are located and when they are recharged matters more than you might think. There are several reasons to support the growth of electric vehicles (EVs) worldwide, but [...]

Climate change is affecting Canada's boreal zone, which includes most of the country's managed forests. The impacts of climate change in this zone are expected to be pervasive and will require adaptation of Canada's forest management system. This paper reviews potential climate change adaptation actions and strategies for the forest management system, considering current and projected climate change impacts and their related vulnerabilities. These impacts and vulnerabilities include regional increases in disturbance rates, regional changes in forest productivity, increased variability in timber supply, decreased socioeconomic resilience, and increased severity of safety and health issues for forest communities. Potential climate change adaptation actions of the forest management system are categorized as those that reduce nonclimatic stressors, those that reduce sensitivity to climate change, or those that maintain or enhance adaptive capacity in the biophysical and human subsystems of the forest management system. Efficient adaptation of the forest management system will revolve around the inclusion of risk management in planning processes, the selection of robust, diversified, and no-regret adaptation actions, and the adoption of an adaptive management framework. Monitoring is highlighted as a no-regret action that is central to the implementation of adaptive forest management. Key words: adaptation, adaptive capacity, boreal forest, climate change, resilience, vulnerability. Le changement climatique affecte la zone boreale du Canada dans laquelle on retrouve la plupart des forets amenagees du pays. Les impacts du changement climatique dans cette zone devraient etre assez importants pour que l'on y voie la necessite d'adapter les systemes d'amenagement forestier au Canada. Ce document examine les mesures et strategies potentielles d'adaptation a mettre en place pour les systemes d'amenagement forestier, compte tenu des impacts actuels et futurs des changements climatiques et de la vulnerabilite qui leur sont associes. Ces impacts et ces vulnerabilites comprennent les augmentations regionales des taux de perturbation, les changements regionaux dans la productivite des forets, la variabilite accrue de l'approvisionnement en bois, la diminution de la resilience socio-economique et l'augmentation de la gravite des problemes de securite et de sante pour les communautes forestieres. Les actions potentielles d'adaptation du systeme d'amenagement forestier sont categorisees selon qu'elles reduisent les facteurs de stress non climatiques, qu'elles reduisent la sensibilite au changement climatique ou qu'elles maintiennent ou ameliorent la capacite d'adaptation des sous-systemes biophysique et humain du systeme d'amenagement forestier. Une adaptation efficace du systeme d'amenagement forestier s'articulera autour de l'inclusion de la gestion des risques dans les processus de planification, de la selection d'actions d'adaptation robustes, diversifiees et sans regret, et de l'adoption d'un cadre de gestion adaptative. Le suivi (monitoring) est mis en evidence comme une action sans regret qui est au creur de la mise en reuvre de la gestion adaptative des forets. Mots-cles: adaptation, capacite d'adaptation, foret boreale, changement climatique, resilience, vulnerabilite., 1. Introduction The mean global temperature has increased by almost 1 °C since 1900 (Hansen et al. 2006), owing in large part to human influences, and is expected to continue [...]

In the face of accelerating climate change and the parlous state of its politics, despair is tempting. This paper analyses two manifestations of despair about climate change related to (1) the inefficacy of personal emissions reductions, and (2) the inability to make a difference to climate change through personal emissions reductions. On the back of an analysis of despair as a loss of hope, the paper argues that the judgements grounding each form of despair are unsound. The paper concludes with consideration of the instrumental value of hope in effective agency to tackle climate change. Overall, the paper's assessment of personal despair about climate change as philosophically unjustified provides a fresh perspective on aspects of the debate about how to frame climate change in public debate., 1. INTRODUCTION Facing the facts about climate change and our failure to tackle it is an uncomfortable experience. For many people, these facts and our failures to date justify despair [...]

In the final hours of the United Nations climate change conference held in Durban, South Africa, in late 2011, senior negotiators from wealthy and developing countries clustered in a widely [...]

In 'A Course Adjustment for Climate Talks' (Issues, Winter 2012), Ruth Greenspan Bell and Barry Blechman join other analysts in expressing frustration with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate [...]

Nearly four decades have passed since the phrase 'global warming' first appeared in a scientific journal. Writing in Science in 1975, geochemist Wallace Broecker warned that rising atmospheric carbon dioxide [...]