Academic literature on the topic 'Political Economy, Energy, Environment, Spatial Econometrics'

Abstract In this article, I develop a political ecology analysis of Vanuatu’s grid electricity policies, with a specific focus on Espiritu Santo Island. I show how the global political economy looms large in shaping the island’s energy geographies. Colonial legacies, ideologically conflictive donor aid programmes, multinational corporate legal discords, parliamentary political caprices and the vicissitudes of the local environment all intersect to shape the spatial dynamics of electricity access that raises numerous energy justice concerns. The development of the island’s electricity infrastructure is not neutral; rather, it is a socio-technical product of these political economy mediations.

The development of energy production from renewable sources includes the production of energy from photovoltaic installations by prosumers. In Europe, RES development is driven by political goals and requires subsidies during the deployment period, at least as long as the cost of renewable electricity does not reaches grid parity. The study attempts to determine the importance of factors in the development of energy production by prosumers from PV installations in Polish regions. In 2019, the ‘Moj Prad’ program was introduced, applying subsidies to investment costs and the settlement of energy production in the net-metering system. Almost 900 thousand prosumer PV installations were built by the end of 2021, with a total capacity of 5.9 GW. Solar energy share grew from 0.1 to 2.1%. Spatial econometrics models were use in research to determine factors of prosumer PV systems development in Poland (at NUTS-2). Spatial regimes were found in the studied regions, as indicated by a positive autocorrelation (0.75). Considering the pseudo-R-square co-efficient, we can conclude that the spatial error, i.e., factors not included in the GNS model, constitutes approximately 10%. The economic variables included in the Mansky model, i.e., level of salaries and GDP, explain 90% of the variability of installed PV capacity (Nagelkerke pseudo-R-squared value is 0.906). The level of development of prosumer photovoltaic installations (in W per capita) in regions depends primarily on economic factors represented by the level of salaries in a given region. With the increase in salaries by one unit, we also have an increase in installed power capacity in watts per person by 3.52. Surprisingly, the region’s overall wealth did not matter, as the relative number of installations in regions with lower GDP was higher than in others. One can explain that the individual income of households is more important for increasing the number of prosumer installations than the income of the regional economy. The increase in the number of installations in one region contributed to the subsequent increase in their number in neighboring regions.

The report of the 20th national congress of the communist party of China (NCCPC) announced the long-term goal of promoting green development by adhering to ecological priorities and expanding green areas. Ensuring forestry ecological security is necessary to achieve this. This article studies the impact of environmental regulations (ER) on forestry ecological security efficiency (FESE) based on provincial panel data from 2005 to 2019 using a spatial econometric model, which evaluates the spatial spillover effect of FESE and analyzes the improvement path of FESE. This study shows the following: (1) China’s FESE is at a low level. (2) The current increase in FESE is heavily based on scale expansion; it is necessary to further release the technological dividend, and the coordinated development of technical efficiency and scale efficiency promotes forestry development. (3) FESE has a negative spatial spillover effect, emphasizing spatial linkage effects and achieving optimal allocation of production factors. (4) The indirect effect of ER on FESE is linear in the positive direction and the direct effect of the quadratic term ER on FESE is inverted “U” shaped. The provincial governments separately formulate ER to form a horizontal linkage for pollution control, improve the forestry ecological compensation system, incorporate a green economy assessment into political performance, and comprehensively coordinate environmental policy implementation to promote FESE.

Globalisation, urbanisation, human neglect, socio-economic conditions, discontinuity, weather and climate have been identified from literature studies as the root causes hindering the vernacular architecture. The objective of this article is to explore such causes and impacts on vernacular architecture. For this purpose, ‘Kavunji’a village near Kodaikanal, Tamilnadu is identified. Due to the geographical location and the landform, the vernacular architecture in this village is recently undergoing modifications and extensions. To comprehend the salient characteristics of vernacular architecture, six typologies were identified. The thrust of this paper is to explore the reasons that contributed to modifications and additions in dwelling units and effects on the people’s attitude towards the maintenance of the built environment and form at regular intervals is declining rapidly as it requires tremendous efforts, fiscal resources, energy, and time. As a result, people are utilising modern materials to modify and extend the existing dwelling units, completely ignoring the essence of the context. The authors have identified syntactic analysis as a potential tool to comprehend the changes in the spatial relationship. With this as the focus, dwelling units limited to two-storeys with and without modifications were identified for an in-depth study. The semi-public space thinnai at the main entrance from the street is converted into a bathing space. Besides, additions of rooms occur only on the rear side of the dwelling unit. From this study, the authors reinstate that syntactic analysis effectively explores and interprets the efficiency of the spatial layout in dwelling units that have undergone modifications and additions.

The topic of economic convergence is still crucial in the European Union (EU) as promoting regional growth and the reduction of disparities remains a key objective. In this paper we investigate development and economic growth across EU regions. Particular attention is given to σ-convergence and β-convergence. These analyses are carried out for regional units corresponding to the third level of the NUTS (Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) classification. Focusing on a refined geographical scale could offer a detailed picture of the regional growth dynamics within the EU. Additionally, we use a spatial augmented version of the conditional β-convergence model to take into account the spatial interdependencies among regions. Findings shed light on the impact of spatial interaction effects and on the need of territorial policies to achieve convergence in the EU. This aspect highlights how coordinating the regional development policies between regions is pivotal to achieve economic, as well as social and political stability within the EU.

Population growth and growing incomes in developing and developed countries are leading to increased demand for energy and food, placing significant stress on the environment. At the same time, the increased scarcity of natural resources, and especially concerns about climate change and other environmental side effects, are constraining the traditional supplies of food and fuel. Failure to provide both energy and food in an affordable as well as in an environmentally sustainable manner, as well as climate change, will negatively affect our society, especially the global poor. Finding solutions to food energy problems is both a policy and technological challenge.

This study examines the dynamic relationship between political environment and the use of energy resources in Nigeria covering the period from 1978-2017 using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach. The results reveal that democracy has a significant long run and short run positive influence on energy consumption in Nigeria. However, the positive effect decreases significantly with an increase in the level of oil dependence in the short run. The results of this study in general support the view that high dependence of political democratic structures on oil wealth influences the positive effects of democracy in making public goods available in developing net oil-exporting economies. Economic diversification in Nigeria may therefore require formulating policies that will enhance access to clean energy sources in the economy.

China is now the world's second largest economy, and it is expected to overtake the United States to become the largest by 2020. What are the implications for the global environment and climate change if China surpasses the United States? There are major concerns with China's rapid rise because its economic and industrial structure is increasingly dependent on the consumption of energy, raw materials, and electricity. In 2010, China's GDP was approximately 40 percent of the United States' GDP, yet it was the world's largest polluter and the biggest consumer of energy and electricity. This implies that the energy efficiency of the Chinese economy measured by energy consumption per unit of GDP is about one-third of that of the United States and one-fourth that of the EU and Japan. If the Chinese economy continues to grow as fast as it has in the past, without changing its structure and improving energy efficiency, China's growth will cause severe damage to the global environment. This paper analyzes the evolution of energy efficiency in the Chinese economy and stresses the importance of transforming China's economic structure.

The improvement in city-level carbon efficiency (CE) is crucial for China to achieve its CO2 emission targets. Based on the panel data from 2003 to 2017, total factor CE values of 283 prefecture-level cities were measured using the super-efficiency SBM model. Through the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), we found that the average city-level CE from 2003 to 2017 showed a “W”-type growth trend. Additionally, there are significant spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependency characteristics of city-level CE. The results of local spatial correlation analysis showed that the Low–Low clusters are distributed in all cities of Shanxi and Northern Shaanxi, and gradually expand to Inner Mongolia, Gansu, Ningxia, and Hebei over time, and the High–High clusters are mainly located in the southeast coastal cities and central and eastern Sichuan. High–Low clusters are generally scattered in cities with relatively superior political–economic status in Northeast China, North China, and Northwest China, and gradually concentrated in North China during 2003–2017. Additionally, the dynamic spatial econometric model was employed to investigate the influencing factors of CE, and we found that the city-level CE has the characteristic of path dependence on time. Factors such as industrial structure upgrading and environmental regulation have significant improvement effects on city-level CE, while technological progress, financial development, energy intensity, and government intervention can significantly inhibit city-level CE. Compared with short-term effects, the long-term effects are insignificant with higher absolute values, indicating the long-term persistence and gradual strengthening characteristics of driving factors on city-level CE; however, the acting long-term mechanism has not been formed. Additionally, the regional spillover effect of driving factors on CE is more significant in the short term. Based on the empirical results, some policy implications for cities to improve CE are proposed.

The impact of climate change on the economy and environment humans live in has increased, leading to a relatively quick intensification of the effort to reduce the environmental footprint of the civilisation. The push to establish a sustainable energy economy has become one of the primary challenges today. A sustainable energy economy should ensure energy security, reduce energy poverty, and contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions. Poland is facing considerable challenges relevant to the objectives of EU policy, particularly the Fit for 55 package, which cannot be achieved without renewable energy sources. The most popular renewable energy source in Poland is solar energy. Apart from its obvious advantages, the use of distributed photovoltaic generation (including microgeneration) entails the need for transmission grid upgrades. The paper’s objective was to assess the RES potential of Poland through an analysis of the steps the state took and the progress of its targets. The empirical part focuses on the assessment of the use of the solar energy potential (in photovoltaic microgeneration) in cities with district rights in Silesian Voivodeship, Poland, from 2014 to 2020. The study employs selected cartographic representation, comparative analysis, in-depth case study, and spatial analysis methods. The calculations involved data from Tauron Dystrybucja SA on the number of microgeneration systems in the cities, Database of Topographic Objects, Local Data Bank of the Central Statistical Office of Poland and Eurostat.

Energy and Environment are two very complex and interconnected systems. Both are extremely important for economic development and for societies' quality of life. The natural environment favours and supports the production of energy resources. Non-renewable primary energy sources, such as oil, coal and natural gas are the results of long natural processes which take millions of years before the resources can be extracted and used. These resources have been and they are still fundamental drivers of economic process and progress, however their production and consumption pose highly costs to natural environment and ultimately on human beings. Oil and coal are the world's leading fuels: oil accounts for a third of global energy consumption and coal equals to 28.1 % (BP report, 2017) but they are also the main responsible for climate change (COP21). Renewable energies are clean resources which are naturally produced such as sunlight, wind, geothermal heat, etc., they represent an important opportunity for energy-shifting, fundamental for the mitigation of climate change. Renewable resources contribution to world energy production is growing, but it is still negligible with respect to the traditional resources. This thesis aims at contributing to the debate on the link of energy and environment from a political economy point of view. From one perspective, energy production and consumption are dangerous for the environment and policy decision makers need to incentivise internalization of energy externalities. On the other hand, the transition towards renewable resources need to be facilitated by appropriate policy instruments promoting sustainable energy paths. Conventional resources represent a threat for the environment, renewables energies are a concrete clean alternative. On the fossil fuel side, policy interventions are designed to address environmental damages; on the renewable energies side policy makers need to incentivize the development and diffusion of clean technologies. The thesis is structured in three different chapters representing three independent essays. On one hand the three chapters share the same topics of interest and they are linked to one another; on the other hand, they could be singularly read, as autonomous papers. The common topic shared by the three chapters is the analysis of the relationship between energy technologies and environmental aspects, for which this research would like to support the policy decision makers in designing the appropriate policy instruments. Further, the three chapters present empirical techniques adequate to answer the case-to-case research questions.