Accelerating the global transition to renewable electricity is critical for achieving climate targets, yet progress remains uneven across countries. This study examines the role of political institutional quality in shaping renewable electricity deployment. A review of recent literature identifies key conceptual and empirical gaps. Using a panel of 75 developed and emerging and developing countries from 1990 to 2018, we conduct an in-depth empirical analysis incorporating both composite and disaggregated measures of political institutional quality, alongside the moderating effect of regional political-administrative authority. We further compare the effects of institutional improvements across different development contexts. Our findings indicate that aggregate measures of institutional quality obscure heterogeneous effects among their components. In emerging and developing economies, corruption control is positively associated with renewable electricity deployment, particularly under low to moderate levels of regional authority. Conversely, higher bureaucratic quality may hinder deployment, potentially due to regulatory complexity. In developed countries, democratic accountability emerges as a key driver, especially in moderately decentralized systems. These results underscore the conditional and context-specific nature of institutional effects, suggesting that policy interventions must align institutional reforms with governance structures to effectively support renewable electricity expansion.
Author: admin
Assessing residents’ support for environmentally-friendly public transportation upgrades across Europe
The European Union (EU) has targeted the adoption of environmentally-friendly public transportation (EFPT) system as a strategic initiative to improve local ambient air quality, reduce road congestion, and contribute to the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. In support of these policy goals, this study assesses and compares public support for EFPT across 31 European nations. We use a Bayesian logit model with identified scale to estimate the willingness to pay (WTP) for local EFPT upgrades, utilizing data from 6,520 contingent valuation survey responses. Our findings indicate that WTP is primarily driven by expected improvements in public goods, such as air quality and GHG abatement, rather than private ridership benefits. On average, individuals across all nations demonstrate a WTP of € 7.48 per month. The consistently positive WTP distributions across all nations suggest implicit public support for EFPT at the EU-level.
Climate Change-Induced Inflation Uncertainty in Temperate and Tropical Regions: Does Renewable Energy Offer a Solution?
This study examines the impact of key climate change indicators, including maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation, on inflation uncertainty across tropical and temperate regions. Using data from 53 countries between 1990 and 2020, the analysis applies Panel Structural Vector Autoregression to uncover regional differences. The findings reveal that maximum temperature significantly contributes to inflation uncertainty in tropical regions, while precipitation plays a major role in temperate regions. The study highlights the critical role of renewable energy in reducing climate-induced inflation volatility, particularly
in tropical areas. The results emphasize the need for region-specific monetary policies that focus on stabilizing food prices, promoting renewable energy in tropical regions, and strengthening infrastructure resilience and water management in temperate regions. Integrating renewable energy into economic strategies is essential for lowering inflation uncertainty and fostering sustainable growth in the face of climate challenges.
Parental education and household cooking energy choice behaviour in Ghana
Despite efforts and advocacy in favour of transitioning to cleaner cooking fuels, traditional, highly polluting fuels remain dominant in many developing countries. This has prompted the need for further research and evidence to support policies to increase clean energy adoption and accelerate the energy transition agenda in these countries. This study investigates the role of social origin, proxied by parental education, in the choice of cooking fuel in Ghana. Parental education is treated exogenously; hence, linear probability estimation is employed to examine the relationship between parental education and energy choice. The study finds that parental education significantly positively affects clean cooking fuel adoption, with more potent effects found in fathers’ education than in mothers’ education. Heterogeneity analyses show the impact of dampening among lower-income groups and rural residents. With a noticeable shift in educational attainment trends in recent times, as more persons attain higher education, the findings suggest that policies that infuse the socialisation of children with clean energy and sustainability issues will accelerate the clean energy transition.
Low-Carbon Governmental Policies and Cost of Debt: Evidence from China
This paper uses the staggered difference-in-differences design to investigate the effects of the low-carbon city pilot (LCCP) policy on the cost and underlying mechanisms of debt financing for enterprises. Our findings show that the LCCP significantly decreases the debt cost of enterprises through enhancements in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) performance and the reduction of information asymmetry. Additional analysis indicates that the LCCP’s ability to reduce the cost of debt is particularly pronounced for firms with higher agency costs and those located in China’s eastern regions. This study offers evidence for assessing the effectiveness of low-carbon policies and suggests recommendations to policymakers seeking to enhance the design and implementation of LCCP, thereby contributing to the green development of enterprises and regions.
Abate or Exit? The Impact of Mercury Regulation on Coal Generator Retirements
Between 2001 and 2019, coal-fired electricity generation fell by more than half due to generator retirements and reduced usage of remaining generators. Concurrently, technological advancements made previously unrecoverable shale gas reserves economically viable, thus causing downward pressure on natural gas prices. This made them competitive to coal-fired generators that were aging and becoming less efficient. Moreover, states and the federal government began regulating mercury emissions from the electric power sector, since such pollution harms human health. Little is known about how environmental regulation affects firm exit decisions, or in this case, coal generator retirements. Employing a staggered adoption difference-in- differences identification strategy in a two-way fixed effects model as well as a stacked model, I find that state-level mercury regulation that occurred before compliance of the federal-level Mercury and Air Toxics Standards had an insignificant impact on coal-fired generator retirement. Instead, generator-level abatement
investments, power plant efficiency, and state-level natural gas capacity growth help to account for the impressive departure of coal-fired generators from the grid.
Analyzing the Mechanism of Decentralized Energy Governance Strategy to Reduce Carbon Emissions: Evidence from China
The transition to new energy sources is critical for addressing global carbon emissions. However, there is limited study on how decentralized energy governance (DEG) strategies can effectively promote this transition and mitigate carbon emissions. This study investigates the impact and mechanism of China’s New Energy Demonstration City (NEDC) policy, a prominent DEG strategy, on reducing carbon emissions. Using city-level data from 283 Chinese cities spanning 2006 to 2021, we employ the difference-in-differences method to analyze the policy’s effects. The results suggest that the DEG strategy significantly reduces carbon emissions, primarily through renewable energy innovation and energy transitions. Heterogeneity analysis further highlights that the policy’s effectiveness is more pronounced in non-resource- based cities, R&D-intensive cities, and those with strong environmental regulations. These findings underline the importance of expanding DEG strategies and investing in resources to foster innovation and accelerate energy transitions, providing valuable policy recommendations for achieving carbon neutrality.
Regulation and Standards for a Resilient European Energy System
Increasing climate-related hazards demand a more resilient system that can withstand, adapt, and quickly recover from such shocks. Simultaneously, the drive towards a cleaner energy system, a rapid rise in renewables, and increased sector integration have led to a less stable system that is more volatile than before and more vulnerable to shocks. This development calls for more and better energy-network system services. EU energy legislation addresses specific sides of resilience. Grid planning involves specific resilience assessment requirements for regulators as part of the network development plans. However, resilience must be better integrated and defined as a mandatory assessment requirement. Some national regulatory authorities have already incorporated resilience in their frameworks, but we argue that a targeted regulatory and legislative approach at the EU level is also needed. The benefits of resilience investments must be measured and monetised to be adequately incentivised and included in CBA analyses. In particular, due to the increased coupling between the gas and electricity sectors, new resilience metrics that reflect the growing interdependence and feedback between the two sectors are needed. We examine several approaches to measuring resilience and suggest an approach to monetisation.
Navigating Industrial Energy Vulnerability Effects on Export Competitiveness –Evidence of Small Open Economies
The low-carbon transition and the energy crisis pose new challenges for sustainableeconomic growth in the European Union. The high import dependency and the still insufficient share of renewable energy sources threaten the competitiveness of the European economy, especially in small open economies. The article aims to introduce the term “industrial energy vulnerability” to investigate impact…
Investigation of Mechanisms for Grid-Serving Utilization of Prosumer Household Flexibility
As part of the energy transition, private households become prosumer households
with modern devices like photovoltaic systems, battery storage systems, and electric
vehicles. This research tries to reduce the prosumers’ negative impact on the
local power grid by assessing the impact of different incentivation and control
mechanisms in a simulative, interactive scheduling scheme for households and a
central grid instance. Results show a positive impact on grid operation by iterative
mechanisms adding incentives or limitations for time steps with congestions in an
iterative procedure. Although no single mechanism stands out in the investigation,
the conditional power and daily peak pricing seem to offer a trade-off
between grid
relief and added costs for households without a need for communication. Further
research on prosumer integration is needed for them to contribute to a resilient
grid operation.