Decomposition of air pollution emissions from Swedish manufacturing

Starting from the ’90s, Swedish manufacturing output has been constantly growing, while emissions of some major air pollutants have been declining. This paper decomposes manufacturing pollution emissions to identify the forces associated with the abatement. It uses a newly available dataset on actual annual emissions from Swedish manufacturing and creates an index of emission intensities for the major local air pollutants to directly estimate the technique effect for the period 2007–2017. The results suggest that the main driver of the clean-up was improvements in emission intensities, while the composition of output actually moved towards more pollution-intensive goods. In the absence of changes in scale and technique, manufacturing pollution emissions would have increased in a range between 3 (particulate matter) and 20% (non-methane volatile compounds) between 2007 and 2017.

Has Korean growth become greener? Spatial econometric evidence for energy use and renewable energy

Using province-level data for South Korea, we analyze the dynamic relationship between economic growth and several energy parameters. Specifically, we decompose the growth effect into scale, composition, and technique effects, and control for regional spillovers through the use of a dynamic GMM estimator for spatial panel data models. The analyzed period, ranging from 2000 to 2017, allows us to look for changes in the regional growth effects following the implementation of the National Strategy for Green Growth in 2009. Our estimates show that the scale and composition effect tended to increase both per capita final energy use and energy intensity, outweighing reductions through the technique effect. In contrast, when considering renewable energy production, the scale and technique effect increased and the composition effect decreased the corresponding figures. Thereby, the technique effect was the main driver of increases in renewable energy production. Despite the larger, yet comparatively small share of renewables in Korea’s energy mix, no considerable change of the growth effects can be observed since 2009. Therefore, to reduce the risks for the economy and achieve the political objectives of the green growth strategy throughout the whole country and in a timely manner, a stronger commitment seems to be required.

Investigating the Nexus among Sulfur Dioxide Emission, Energy Consumption and Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence from Pakistan

Developing countries like Pakistan majorly depends on fossil fuels for achieving higher economic growth but have sloppy environmental rules and regulations in order to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). As a result, energy consumption is considered as the primary cause of environmental degradation. Besides CO2 emission, environmental degradation is also associated with emission of sulfur dioxide (SO2). The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among SO2 emissions, energy consumption, economic growth and FDI in Pakistan. By applying the 3SLS method study has estimated the scale effect, composition effect and technique effect. The scale effect and technique effect findings indicated that capital stock, FDI, and SO2 emissions all had a significant impact on GDP. When the capital accumulation effects of FDI were considered, the relationship between FDI and stock of capital was found to be positive. According to the technique effect results, FDI, population density, and energy consumption were all significantly related to SO2 emissions. The study came to a conclusion with significant policy implications.