Does Environmental Tax Affect Energy Efficiency? An Empirical Study of Energy Efficiency in OECD Countries Based on DEA and Logit Model

Corporate political acuity and carbon - efficiency synergies

RESEARCH QUESTION

In the context of global low-carbon emission reduction, how to achieve green and high-quality development has become a major issue for the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese government recently. Based on the data of China's listed companies from 2013 to 2020, this paper uses Python to implement text analysis of annual reports, and explores the relationship between political acuity and carbon-efficiency synergies (CES) from the perspective of enterprise initiative.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

We found that (1) political acuity positively affects carbon-efficiency synergies. (2) Increased political acuity can reduce carbon emissions, but the effect on economic efficiency is not obvious. That is, low carbon takes the lead in raising the level of carbon-efficiency synergies. (3) Environmental regulations can positively regulate the relationship between political acuity and carbon-efficiency synergies. (4) Political acuity in southern China, carbon neutral and non-state-owned enterprises (NSOEs) will have a more pronounced effect on carbon-efficiency synergies.

ACADEMIC IMPLICATIONS

From the perspective of the root causes of political linkages, we find the synergies between formal and informal institutions, and the key factors for policy implementation.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

This paper is helpful for enterprises to improve the synergies of emission reduction and efficiency promotion, and has practical implications for the government to promote green and high-quality development.

Does sectoral energy consumption depend on trade, monetary, and fiscal policy uncertainty? Policy recommendations using novel bootstrap ARDL approach

Since the inception of the twenty-first century, there has been a profound upsurge in economic policy uncertainty (EPU) with several economic and environmental impacts. Although there exists a growing body of literature that probes the economic effects of EPU, the EPU-energy nexus yet remains understudied. To fill this gap, the current study probes the impact of disaggregated EPU (i.e., monetary, fiscal, and trade policy uncertainty) on energy consumption (EC) in the USA covering the period 1990M1-2020M12. In particular, we use sectoral EC (i.e., energy consumed by the residential sector, the industrial sector, the transport sector, the electric power sector, and the commercial sector) in consort with total EC. The findings from the bootstrap ARDL approach document that monetary policy uncertainty (MP) plunges EC, whereas trade (TP) and fiscal policy uncertainty (FP) escalate EC in the long run. On the contrary, there is a heterogeneous impact of FP and MP across sectors in the short run, while TP does not affect EC. Keeping in view the findings, we propose policy recommendations to achieve numerous Sustainable Development Goals.

Impact of Environmental Regulations on Energy Efficiency: A Case Study of China’s Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan

Scientific environmental policies promote energy efficiency improvement by influencing the industrial structure and investment in R&D and innovation. In view of the insufficient impact of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (Action Plan for short) on energy efficiency, this paper takes 30 provinces and municipalities of the Chinese Mainland during 2004–2017 as samples and investigates the impact of China’s Action Plan on energy efficiency as well as the impact path by means of the DID method. This paper finds a significant statistical relationship between the two. The following conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the Action Plan significantly promotes the improvement of provincial energy efficiency. Secondly, the Action Plan has heterogeneous impacts on the energy efficiency in different provinces. This heterogeneity is mainly reflected in the differences in resource endowments and the different intensities of environmental governance in different provinces. Thirdly, the upgrading and rationalization of the industrial structure and the investment in R&D and innovation have significantly different moderating effects on the Action Plan’s impact on energy efficiency. The industrial structure rationalization and the investment in R&D and innovation will enhance the promotion effect of the Action Plan on energy efficiency, while the “quantity” of the industrial structure upgrading will weaken this promotion effect, and the moderating effect of the “quality” of the industrial structure upgrading is not significant.

Energy Efficiency Management across EU Countries: A DEA Approach

We examine energy efficiency in the European Union (EU) using an integrated model that connects labor and capital as production factors with energy consumption to produce GDP with a limited amount of environmental emissions. The model is a linear output-oriented BCC data envelopment analysis (DEA) that employs variables with non-negative values to calculate efficiency scores for a sample of 28 EU member states in the period 2010–2018. We assume variable returns to scale (VRS) considering the natural inclination of countries to adopt technologies that allow them to produce higher outputs over extended periods of time, which we observed through the trends of increasing labor productivity and decreasing energy intensity over the analyzed period. The average EU inefficiency margin in the sample period is 16.0%, with old member states being significantly more efficient (4.2%) than new member states (29.5%). Energy efficiency management does not improve over time, especially in new member states that had substantially worse efficiency by 2018 than in 2010. New member states could increase energy efficiency through the liberalization of the energy market, the support of energy-saving and technologically advanced industries, and the introduction of measures aimed at increasing the productivity levels in the economy.

Analysis of environmental taxes publications: a bibliometric and systematic literature review

This study aims to provide a systematic literature review based on bibliometric analysis for scientific articles published between 1999 and 2019 extracted from Clarivate Analytics' Web of Science (WOS) database. The current research project provides an overview of scientific publications, influential authors, and research journals. Our analysis reveals that the USA leads the academic research contribution, whereas China has provided the most research publications in recent years. Environmental and Resource Economics, University of London, and Barcena-Ruiz are the most productive journal, academic institution, and author in the field of environmental taxes, respectively. The degree of research contribution among researchers, institutional and national level, has an upward trend in recent years; however, the research contribution at the author level is higher than the institutional and national level. Furthermore, cocitation analysis suggests that research articles in the dataset are closely related. Pigou's "The economics of welfare" published in 1920, is considered as the basic literature, and the "In defence of degrowth" authored by Giorgis Kallis is the most cited article. Our analysis of abstracts and keywords indicates that climate change, environmental taxes, double dividend, carbon tax, and environmental pollution are the hotspots within academic literature. We suggest that research collaboration between developed and developing nations and further coordination among environmental agencies such as IEA and IPCC will enhance the effectiveness of environmental reforms.

China’s Eco-Efficiency: Regional Differences and Influencing Factors Based on a Spatial Panel Data Approach

From the Kyoto Protocol to the Copenhagen Conference and the Paris Agreement, eco-environmental problems have gradually become a matter of common concern worldwide. Eco-efficiency (EE) is an essential indicator for measuring levels of sustainable development. This study uses an epsilon-based measure (EBM) model with undesirable outputs to evaluate the EEs of 30 Chinese provinces during the research period 2008 to 2017, and a spatial Durbin model (SDM) to search for the impact factors of EE. The results indicate that most provinces in China have a low EE level. The EE value of the eastern area is higher than are those for the central, western, or northeastern areas. The EE in China as a whole demonstrates an inverted V-shaped trend with a high point in 2011. The SDM shows that economic development level, foreign trade dependence, and technological progress exert significant positive effects on EE, while population density exerts significant negative influences on EE. This paper provides scientific bases for the formulation of policies resulting in sustainable development.

Do Environment-Related Policy Instruments and Technologies Facilitate Renewable Energy Generation? Exploring the Contextual Evidence from Developed Economies

Attaining sustainable development and cleaner production is a major challenge both for developed and developing economies; income, institutional regulations, institutional quality and international trade are the key determinants of environmental externalities. The current work attempts to study the role of environmental taxes and regulations on renewable energy generation for developed economies. For that, the authors have used the annual dataset for the period 1994 to 2018. More specifically, the study investigates the impacts of environmental taxes, environment-related technologies and the environmental policy stringency index on renewable electricity generation in 29 developed countries. Given the short available data of these countries, the authors have developed panel cointegration and panel regressions models (fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS), quantile regressions). The heterogeneous panel empirics stated that environmental regulations and income level support renewable electricity generation. The conclusions further mention that bureaucratic qualities such as decision making and trade openness tend to reduce renewable energy generation. The empirical findings allowed us to draw new narrative and implications. Overall, the conclusions argue that innovative regulations and policies can be useful for attaining specific sustainable development goals (e.g., SDG-7: cleaner and cheap energy).

Exploring the Role of Carbon Taxation Policies on CO2 Emissions: Contextual Evidence from Tax Implementation and Non-Implementation European Countries

During the past decades, environmental related taxes, energy, and carbon taxes has been recommended by environmental scientists as a policy tool to mitigate pollutant emissions in developed and developing economies. Among developed nations, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, the Netherlands, and Norway were the first regions to adopt a tax on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and research into the impacts of carbon tax on carbon emissions bring significant implications. The prime objective and goal of this work is to explore the role of carbon tax reforms for environmental quality in European economies. This is probably the first study to conduct a comparative study in European context for carbon-tax implementation and non-implementation policies. To this end, the present study reports new conclusions and implications regarding the effectiveness of environmental regulations and policies for climate change and sustainability. In the present study, the authors exhaustively explore the impacts of the carbon-tax on the mitigation of CO2 emissions. Using the propensity score matching method, the results of the estimation of the different matching methods allow us to observe a positive and significant impact of the adoption of the carbon-tax on stimulating the reduction of carbon emissions.

Energy Efficiency Evaluation Based on Data Envelopment Analysis: A Literature Review

The importance and urgency of energy efficiency in sustainable development are increasing. Accurate assessment of energy efficiency is of considerable significance and necessity. The data envelopment analysis (DEA) method has been widely used to study energy efficiency as a total factor efficiency assessment method. In order to summarize the latest research on DEA in the field of energy efficiency, this article first analyzes the overall situation of related literature published in 2011–2019. Subsequently, the definition, measurement and evaluation variables of energy efficiency are introduced. After that, this article reviews the current DEA model and its extension models and applications based on different scenarios. Finally, considering the shortcomings of the existing DEA model, possible future research topics are proposed.

Environmental taxes, energy consumption, and environmental quality: Theoretical survey with policy implications

Improving energy efficiency and mitigating environmental problems through environmental regulations and taxes are considered as fundamental driving forces of climate change policies. However, the current literature on the theoretical and empirical evidence focusing on the inter-linkages between environmental taxes, energy consumption, and environmental quality is rather meager. This article attempts to provide a detailed survey on the earlier literature for developed, developing, and emerging countries analysis by covering the literature up to 2020. The prime objective of this survey is the coverage of different level of economies, modeling, methodologies, time periods as well as empirical outcomes. The study mainly covers three types of causality direction: (i) environmental taxes, energy consumption, and energy efficiency; (ii) environmental taxes and environmental quality; (iii) energy consumption (renewables, non-renewable, and fossil fuels) and environment deterioration. Most of the empirical studies reported that the energy usage for economic activities significantly affects the pollutant emissions. However, the role of environmental taxes is still ambiguous and demands a more in-depth investigation. Comprehending the literature survey has provided the basis to address the policymaking, designing as well as the implementation of environmental regulations.

Energy Efficiency and Health Efficiency of Old and New EU Member States

Environmental protection and health issues have always been of great concern. This study employed modified Meta-Frontier Dynamic Network Data Envelopment Analysis to explore the environmental pollution effects from energy consumption on the mortality of children and adults, tuberculosis rate, survival rate, and health expenditure efficiencies in 15 old EU states and 13 new EU states from 2010 to 2014. We calculated the overall efficiency scores and technology gap ratios for each old EU and new EU states as well as the efficiencies of non-renewable energy, renewable energy, PM2.5, CO₂, labor, GDP, tuberculosis, child mortality, adult mortality, health expenditure efficiency, and survival efficiency at the health stage. The average annual overall efficiencies of the old EU states are higher than that of the new EU states. Whether in terms of energy efficiencies or health efficiencies, the inputs and outputs of the old EU states are always higher than that of the new EU states. Overall, developing countries in Eastern Europe are lagging behind in terms of energy and health efficiencies. At the same time, the efficiency of child mortality is lower than that of adult mortality, and the efficiency of PM2.5 is higher than that of CO₂ in both old and new EU states.

Environmental Tax Reform and the "Double Dividend" Hypothesis in a Small Open Economy

In this paper, we build and analyze a general equilibrium model to evaluate the effects of environment tax reform on a small open economy in a “suboptimal environment” with existing tax distortions. We then use the macroeconomic data from the Chongqing Municipality in China to conduct simulations to empirically test our analytic results. Our main findings include the followings. First, an increase in environmental tax rate can effectively reduce the use of polluting consumer goods by households as well as investment in polluting factors by enterprises. Hence, an increase in environmental tax rate can improve environmental quality and obtain “environmental dividend”. Second, an increase in environmental tax rate can negatively impact employment, family income and economic growth. Hence, there is no “non-environmental dividend” effect. Third, an increased environmental tax rate has both substitution effect and income effect on household consumption. On the one hand, it motivates households to substitute polluting consumer goods with clean consumer goods. On the other hand, it lowers the total consumption level of households. Fourth, we show that the “double dividend” hypothesis on environmental tax is invalid. And the optimal environmental tax under the suboptimal environment is lower than the Pigouvian tax rate. Finally, we discuss the policy implications of our results.