Financial subsidies, tax incentives, and new energy vehicle enterprises' innovation efficiency: Evidence from Chinese listed enterprises.

Financial subsidies and tax incentives play essential roles in the innovation efficiency of enterprises. This paper selects Chinese listed NEV enterprises from 2010 to 2022 as a research sample and investigates various impacts under various circumstances. We find that both financial subsidies and tax incentives can promote the innovation efficiency of NEV enterprises. Compared to financial subsidies, tax incentives are more effective; the interaction between financial subsidies and tax incentives has a weaker impact on the innovation efficiency of NEV enterprises. Both financial subsidies and tax incentives have more potent innovation effects on enterprises with higher financing constraints. In addition, financial subsidies and tax incentives have a stronger innovation efficiency effect on private enterprises than state-owned enterprises. Further research shows that marketization and market distortion affect the innovation efficiency of NEV enterprises. This study provides a new perspective for understanding the effects of financial subsidies, tax incentives, and innovation efficiency of NEV enterprises, and the conclusions and suggestions are relevant references for the government to improve the quality of policy-making.

Impact of financial decentralization on energy poverty and energy demand tendencies in Chinese settings.

This study intends to test the connection between fiscal decentralization, energy demand dynamics, and energy poverty status from the context of China. The study has collected large datasets ranging from 2001 to 2019 to justify the empirical findings. The long-run analysis economic techniques were considered and applied for this. The results indicated that a 1% adverse change in energy demand dynamics causes 13% of energy poverty. Supportively, a 1% positive rise in energy supply to fulfill energy demand reduces energy poverty by 9.4% in the study context. Moreover, empirical findings show that a 7% rise in fiscal decentralization accelerates 19% fulfillment in energy demand and mitigates energy poverty up to 10.5%. We demonstrate that if enterprises can only alter their technology choices in the long run, the short-run reaction of energy demand must be less than the long-run response. Second, we demonstrate that the elasticity of demand approaches its long-run level exponentially at the rate defined by the capital depreciation rate and the economy's growth rate, using a putty-clay model with induced technical development. According to the model, it takes more than 8 years for half of the long-run impact of induced technological change on energy consumption to be realized in industrialized nations once the carbon price is implemented. This research document also gives multiple policy directions for policy developers.

The clean energy claims of BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell: A mismatch between discourse, actions and investments.

The energy products of oil and gas majors have contributed significantly to global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and planetary warming over the past century. Decarbonizing the global economy by mid-century to avoid dangerous climate change thus cannot occur without a profound transformation of their fossil fuel-based business models. Recently, several majors are increasingly discussing clean energy and climate change, pledging decarbonization strategies, and investing in alternative energies. Some even claim to be transforming into clean energy companies. Given a history of obstructive climate actions and "greenwashing", there is a need to objectively evaluate current and historical decarbonization efforts and investment behavior. This study focuses on two American (Chevron, ExxonMobil) and two European majors (BP, Shell). Using data collected over 2009-2020, we comparatively examine the extent of decarbonization and clean energy transition activity from three perspectives: (1) keyword use in annual reports (discourse); (2) business strategies (pledges and actions); and (3) production, expenditures and earnings for fossil fuels along with investments in clean energy (investments). We found a strong increase in discourse related to "climate", "low-carbon" and "transition", especially by BP and Shell. Similarly, we observed increasing tendencies toward strategies related to decarbonization and clean energy. But these are dominated by pledges rather than concrete actions. Moreover, the financial analysis reveals a continuing business model dependence on fossil fuels along with insignificant and opaque spending on clean energy. We thus conclude that the transition to clean energy business models is not occurring, since the magnitude of investments and actions does not match discourse. Until actions and investment behavior are brought into alignment with discourse, accusations of greenwashing appear well-founded.

Estimating a social cost of carbon for global energy consumption.

Estimates of global economic damage caused by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can inform climate policy1-3. The social cost of carbon (SCC) quantifies these damages by characterizing how additional CO2 emissions today impact future economic outcomes through altering the climate4-6. Previous estimates have suggested that large, warming-driven increases in energy expenditures could dominate the SCC7,8, but they rely on models9-11 that are spatially coarse and not tightly linked to data2,3,6,7,12,13. Here we show that the release of one ton of CO2 today is projected to reduce total future energy expenditures, with most estimates valued between -US$3 and -US$1, depending on discount rates. Our results are based on an architecture that integrates global data, econometrics and climate science to estimate local damages worldwide. Notably, we project that emerging economies in the tropics will dramatically increase electricity consumption owing to warming, which requires critical infrastructure planning. However, heating reductions in colder countries offset this increase globally. We estimate that 2099 annual global electricity consumption increases by about 4.5 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST), whereas direct consumption of other fuels declines by about 11.3 exajoules (7 per cent of current global consumption) per one-degree-Celsius increase in GMST. Our finding of net savings contradicts previous research7,8, because global data indicate that many populations will remain too poor for most of the twenty-first century to substantially increase energy consumption in response to warming. Importantly, damage estimates would differ if poorer populations were given greater weight14.

China's outward foreign direct investment in energy sector: The role of "intimate" relations between countries.

Based on the data of China's outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in energy sector to 133 countries from 2005 to 2014, this paper uses a gravity model to investigate the impact of "intimate" relations on China's OFDI locations in energy sector. We find that the "intimate" relations have significant effects on China's OFDI locations in energy sector, namely: bilateral senior leaders' visits, institutional distance, genetic distance, and immigration. Holding other factors fixed, for each one more bilateral senior leaders' visit between China and the host country, China's OFDI in energy sector for the host country will increase by 5.44%. If the genetic distance from China and host country increases by 1%, China's OFDI in energy sector will fall by 1.69%. For every 1% increase in the institutional distance between China and host country, China's energy OFDI will decrease by 1.09%. For every 1% increase in a country's immigration to China, China's energy OFDI will increase by 0.46%. Further, after distinguishing developed and developing countries, we find that compared with developed countries, "intimate" relations have greater impacts on China's energy OFDI in developing countries. Finally, based on the dominance analysis, considering China's "intimate" relations with countries along the "Belt and Road" and current locations of China's OFDI, we find that China should further expand energy investment in countries along the "Belt and Road".

Energy carbon emission structure and reduction potential focused on the supply-side and demand-side.

In recent years, the environmental problems caused by excessive carbon emissions from energy sources have become increasingly serious, which not only aggravates the climate change caused by the greenhouse effect but also seriously restricts the sustainable development of Chinese economy. An attempt is made in this paper to use energy consumption method and input-output method to study the carbon emission structure of China's energy system and industry in 2015 from two perspectives, namely China's energy supply side and energy demand side, by taking into account the two factors of energy invest in gross capital formation and export. The results show that neglecting these two factors will lead to underestimation of intermediate use carbon emissions and overestimation of final use carbon emissions. On energy supply side, the carbon emission structure of China's energy system is still dominated by high-carbon energy (raw coal, coke, diesel, and fuel oil, etc.), accounting for more than 70% of total energy carbon emissions; on the contrary, the natural gas such as clean energy accounts for only 3.45% of total energy carbon emissions, indicating that the energy consumption structure optimization and emission reduction gap of China's energy supply side are still substantial. On energy demand side, the final use (direct consumption by residents and government) produces less carbon emissions, while the intermediate use (production by enterprises) produces more than 90% of the total energy carbon emissions. Fossil energy, power sector, heavy industry, chemical industry, and transportation belong to industries with larger carbon emissions and lower carbon emission efficiency, while agriculture, construction, light industry, and service belong to industries with fewer carbon emissions and higher carbon emission efficiency. This means that the optimization of industrial structure is conducive to slowing down the growth of energy carbon emissions on the demand side.

Past world economic production constrains current energy demands: Persistent scaling with implications for economic growth and climate change mitigation.

Climate change has become intertwined with the global economy. Here, we describe the contribution of inertia to future trends. Drawing from thermodynamic principles, and using 38 years of available statistics between 1980 to 2017, we find a constant scaling between current rates of world primary energy consumption [Formula: see text] and the historical time integral W of past world inflation-adjusted economic production Y, or [Formula: see text]. In each year, over a period during which both [Formula: see text] and W more than doubled, the ratio of the two remained nearly unchanged, that is [Formula: see text] Gigawatts per trillion 2010 US dollars. What this near constant implies is that current growth trends in energy consumption, population, and standard of living, perhaps counterintuitively, are determined by past innovations that have improved the economic production efficiency, or enabled use of less energy to transform raw materials into the makeup of civilization. Current observed growth rates agree well with predictions derived from available historical data. Future efforts to stabilize carbon dioxide emissions are likely also to be constrained by the contributions of past innovation to growth. Assuming no further efficiency gains, options look limited to rapid decarbonization of energy consumption through sustained implementation of at least one Gigawatt of renewable or nuclear power capacity per day. Alternatively, with continued reliance on fossil fuels, civilization could shift to a steady-state economy, one that devotes economic production exclusively to maintining ongoing metabolic needs rather than to material expansion. Even if such actions could be achieved immediately, energy consumption would continue at its current level, and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations would only begin to balance natural sinks at concentrations exceeding 500 ppmv.

Economic growth, financial development, and trade in nexuses of CO2 emissions for Southeast Asia.

In energy economics literature, we found few studies on the association between environmental quality energy consumption and financial development. The current study is an attempt to contribute in literature by examining the link between carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, financial development, energy consumption, and economic growth, in South East Asian economies for the period 1980-2017 using annual time series data. For empirical analysis, Bound tests for cointegration and error correction approach are used. The estimated results confirm that financial development has positive impact on environmental quality. On the other hand, in the long run, the rise in energy consumption economic growth and trade openness is unfavorable for environment quality. Our results confirm U-shaped relationship between economic growth and environmental quality that is a proof of environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). Additionally, the government needs to design different modes of energy consumption to solve the problem of environmental degradation. Moreover, the major conclusion extends new insight for authority to make a comprehensive trade and financial policies to improve environmental quality.

Anatomy and resilience of the global production ecosystem.

Much of the Earth's biosphere has been appropriated for the production of harvestable biomass in the form of food, fuel and fibre. Here we show that the simplification and intensification of these systems and their growing connection to international markets has yielded a global production ecosystem that is homogenous, highly connected and characterized by weakened internal feedbacks. We argue that these features converge to yield high and predictable supplies of biomass in the short term, but create conditions for novel and pervasive risks to emerge and interact in the longer term. Steering the global production ecosystem towards a sustainable trajectory will require the redirection of finance, increased transparency and traceability in supply chains, and the participation of a multitude of players, including integrated 'keystone actors' such as multinational corporations.

Determinants of Decoupling Economic Output from Carbon Emission in the Transport Sector: A Comparison Study of Four Municipalities in China.

Quantitative analysis on decoupling between economic output, carbon emission, and the driving factors behind decoupling states can serve to make the economy grow without increasing carbon emission in China's transport sector. In this work, we investigate the decoupling states and driving factors of decoupling states in the transport sector of China's four municipalities (Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, and Chongqing) through combining the Tapio decoupling approach with the decomposition technique. The results show that (i) the decoupling state of Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin improved; Beijing stabilized in weak decoupling; Shanghai and Tianjin appeared to have strong decoupling, but the decoupling state of Chongqing deteriorated from decoupling to negative decoupling. (ii) The energy-saving effect was the primary contributor to decoupling in these four municipalities, promoting transport's economic growth strongly decouple from carbon emission. The economic scale effect was not optimized enough in Chongqing, facilitating expansive coupling, and expansive negative decoupling emerged. But it had a rather positive impact on decoupling process in Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, promoting economic growth to weakly decouple from carbon emission. (iii) The carbon-reduction effect promoted strong decoupling, which emerged in Shanghai's transport sector, more so than in the other three municipalities, in which weak decoupling emerged. Finally, several relevant policy recommendations were offered to promote the decoupling of carbon emission from economic growth and low-carbon transport.

Qualitative evaluation of an intervention to reduce energy poverty.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the " Energía, la justa " program, aimed at reducing energy poverty in the city of Barcelona, from the point of view of the target population and the workers involved in the intervention. METHODS: A qualitative, descriptive and exploratory pilot study was carried out, with a phenomenological approach. Twelve semi-structured interviews were conducted: to three users, three energy agents who performed interventions in the homes, and six professionals who participated in the program coordination. A thematic content analysis was carried out using Atlas-ti software . Interviews were conducted between October 2016 and March 2017. RESULTS: Trust in a contact person (e.g. social workers) facilitated the participation, although there were difficulties reaching people who had illegal energy supplies, immigrant women or immigrants who subrent properties. Regarding implementation, home visits, energy efficiency advice and the relationship with energy agents were the best assessed aspects. However, not being able to carry out reforms in deteriorated dwellings was considered a limitation. The program also contributed to raise awareness on energy rights, to save on utility bills and to generate tranquility and social support. CONCLUSIONS: Programs such as this one can promote energy empowerment and improve psychosocial status. However, strategies with a gender and equity perspective should be considered to reach other vulnerable groups.

Nexus between financial development, energy consumption, income level, and ecological footprint in CEE countries: do human capital and biocapacity matter?

In recent decades, climate change and environmental pollution have been at the center of global environmental debates. Nowadays, researchers have turned their attention to the linkage between real output and environmental quality and test the environmental Kuznets curve. Majority of the studies focus on a single pollutant aspect and measure the deterioration of the environment through carbon emission (CO2) only. In contrary, the current study uses a comprehensive proxy, ecological footprint, to measure the environmental quality of the sixteen Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs). The aim of this paper is to discover the impact of financial development, economic growth, and energy consumption (renewable and non-renewable) on the environment. In addition, for the first time, the current study includes biocapacity and human capital in the growth-energy-environment nexus in the case of CEECs. In doing so, we used annual data of sixteen CEE countries in perspective of the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative and cover the period of 1991-2014. For reliable findings, this study focuses on second-generation econometric approaches to check stationarity, cross-sectional dependency, and co-integration among the model parameters. The long-run estimations of the "Dynamic Seemingly Unrelated-co-integration Regression" (DSUR) signify that the effect of economic growth on ecological footprint is not stable and validate N-shaped relationship for cubic functional form between per capita income and ecological footprint (environmental quality). Empirical evidence divulges that financial development and energy use significantly contribute to environmental degradation while renewable energy improves environmental quality by declining ecological footprint significantly. Moreover, the significant effects of biocapacity and human capital are positive and negative on the ecological footprint, respectively. In robustness check through the "Feasible Generalized Least Square" (FGLS) and "Generalized Method of Moment" (GMM) models, we found consistent result. Lastly, the "Dumitrescu-Hurlin (D-H) Panel Causality Test" demonstrates that two-way causal relationship exists between EF and GDP, EF and FD, EF and EU, EF and BC, and EF and HC, while one-way causality is running from RE to EF. This study puts the present scenario of CEE economies in front of the policymakers and suggests that they should consider the vital role of renewable energy and human capital to get sustainability.

Economic growth, energy consumption, and carbon emission nexus: fresh evidence from developing countries.

The developing countries and emerging economies are crucially contributing to global economic development, energy transition, and climate governance. This paper employs panel cointegration technique to investigate the long-run relationship between carbon emissions and five impacting factors (per capita GDP, primary energy consumption, international trade, fossil proportion, and quadratic per capita GDP) in 50 representative developing countries during 1995-2017. The empirical findings confirm the existence of long-run equilibrium, and the regressing coefficients of fully-modified OLS (FMOLS) indicate that (a) impacting features of the inverted U-shaped curve of Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) theory appear in a few countries, such as Mexico, Croatia, Kazakhstan, Iran, Algeria, Indonesia, and Thailand; (b) the energy consumption has statistically positive and significant impacts on boosting the carbon emissions; (c) the negative effect of international trade emerges in the developing nations enjoying trade surpluses; and (d) fossil energy share poses a mixed impact. This paper reveals that the vast and inspiring contribution of developing countries to global carbon emission reduction should attract more international attention and assistance.

Functional Data Analysis of high-frequency load curves reveals drivers of residential electricity consumption.

Smart energy meters generate real time, high frequency data which can foster demand management and response of consumers and firms, with potential private and social benefits. However, proper statistical techniques are needed to make sense of this large amount of data and translate them into usable recommendations. Here, we apply Functional Data Analysis (FDA), a novel branch of Statistics that analyses functions-to identify drivers of residential electricity load curves. We evaluate a real time feedback intervention which involved about 1000 Italian households for a period of three years. Results of the FDA modelling reveal, for the first time, daytime-indexed patterns of residential electricity consumption which depend on the ownership of specific clusters of electrical appliances and an overall reduction of consumption after the introduction of real time feedback, unrelated to appliance ownership characteristics.

The role of financial sector in energy demand and climate changes: evidence from the developed and developing countries.

This paper searches the role of financial sector development in energy sector and therefore in climate changes in the case of developing and developed countries. Panel data ranging from 1960 to 2014 on an annual basis has been selected from 176 countries. Results suggest that carbon dioxide emissions in developed and developing countries are in long-term equilibrium relationship with financial sector; trade and finance sectors have long-term significant impacts on carbon emissions and therefore carbon emissions converge to their long-term equilibrium levels through the channels of finance and trade sectors. Impulse response analyses proved that finance and trade sectors have negative (reducing) impact on the emission levels in the case of developed economies while they have positive impact in the case of developing economies. These sectors exert significant effects on energy consumption of countries as well. Results confirm that developed countries are more successful in energy conservation policies compared to developing countries. Therefore, authorities in developing countries need to implement conservation policies effectively by mainly encouraging and supporting investments in alternative energy uses in order to prevent increases in emission levels through expansion in financial and trade sectors.

The causal nexus between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth: New evidence from China, India and G7 countries using convergent cross mapping.

Understanding the causality between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is helpful for policymakers to formulate energy, environmental and economic policies. For the first time, based on nonlinear dynamics, this paper employs multispatial convergent cross mapping (CCM) to revisit the energy-carbon-economy causation for China, India and the G7 countries using both aggregate data and per capita data. The findings indicate that there are significant differences between developing countries and developed countries. A bidirectional nexus between energy consumption, carbon emissions and economic growth is found in China and India, but various causal relationships are identified in the G7 countries, including bidirectional, unidirectional and neutral nexus. The results confirm that the decoupling phenomenon is common in most G7 countries. By leveraging a variety of samples and a new approach, this study provides new evidence for policy authorities to formulate country-specific policies to obtain better environmental quality while achieving sustainable economic growth.

Does globalization increase the ecological footprint? Empirical evidence from Malaysia.

This study focuses to investigate the relationship between globalization and the ecological footprint for Malaysia from 1971 to 2014. The results of the Bayer and Hanck cointegration test and the ARDL bound test show the existence of cointegration among variables. The findings disclose that globalization is not a significant determinant of the ecological footprint; however, it significantly increases the ecological carbon footprint. Energy consumption and economic growth stimulate the ecological footprint and carbon footprint in Malaysia. Population density reduces the ecological footprint and carbon footprint. Further, financial development mitigates the ecological footprint. The causality results disclose the feedback hypothesis between energy consumption and economic growth in the long run and short run.

Does tourism investment improve the energy efficiency in transportation and residential sectors? Evidence from the OECD economies.

This paper investigates the impact of tourism investments on energy efficiency across the transportation and residential sectors of 32 Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development economies. Using annual data from 1995 to 2012, we employ various panel econometric techniques to achieve the study objectives. Given the nature of variables, the paper applies panel autoregressive distributed lag models to estimate the long-run elasticities of energy intensity. The long-run estimates confirm that tourism investments play an essential role in improving energy efficiency across the transportation and residential sectors. Furthermore, the results show that both the foreign direct investment inflows and trade openness also play a considerable role in reducing energy uses across these sectors. Finally, the findings suggest that the tourism investments Granger cause energy efficiency of transportation and residential sectors in the short-run. Given these findings, the paper adds considerable value to the empirical literature and also provides various policy- and practical implications.

Extended STIRPAT model-based driving factor analysis of energy-related CO2 emissions in Kazakhstan.

Extended stochastic impact by regression on population, affluence, and technology model incorporating ridge regression was used to analyze the driving mechanism of energy-related CO2 emissions in Kazakhstan during 1992-2014. The research period was divided into two stages based on GDP of Kazakhstan in 1991 (85.70 × 109 dollars), the first stage (1992-2002), GDP < 85.70 × 109 dollars, the stage of economic recovery; the second stage (2003-2014), GDP > 85.70 × 109 dollars, the stable economic development stage. The results demonstrated that (1) population scale and the technological improvement were the dominant contributors to promote the growth of the CO2 emissions during 1992-2014 in Kazakhstan. (2) Economic growth and industrialization played more positive effect on the increase of the CO2 emissions in the stable economic development stage (2003-2014) than those in the stage of economic recovery (1992-2002). The proportion of the tertiary industry, the trade openness, and foreign direct investment were transformed from negative factors into positive factors in the stable economic development stage (2003-2014). (3) Due to the over-urbanization of Kazakhstan before the independence, the level of urbanization continued to decline, urbanization was the first factor to curb CO2 emissions during 1992-2014. Finally, some policy recommendations are put forward to reduce energy-related carbon emissions.