Convergence in per capita energy use among OECD countries

Unlike previous studies which mainly focus on the integration properties of energy consumption and production, this study examines the convergence of per capita energy use among 25 OECD countries over the period 1960 to 2010. In particular, newly developed LM and RALS-LM unit root tests with allowance for two endogenously determined structural breaks are employed. The results indicate significant support for per capita energy use convergence among OECD countries.     

Stochastic convergence in per capita fossil fuel consumption in U.S. states

This study examines the stochastic convergence of per capita fossil fuel consumption across U.S. states (including the District of Columbia) utilizing LM and RALS-LM unit root tests with allowance for endogenously determined structural breaks. Our results indicate that with the exception of Nevada, the evidence from two-break and one-break LM and RALS-LM unit root tests rejects the null hypothesis of a unit root in the relative per capita fossil fuel consumption in the U.S. This finding indicates the presence of stochastic convergence in relative per capita fossil fuel consumption in the U.S. states.     

Convergence in energy consumption per capita among ASEAN countries

We test for convergence in energy consumption per capita among ASEAN countries over the period 1971 to 2011 using the panel KPSS stationarity test and panel Lagrange multiplier (LM) unit root test. The results for the panel stationarity and unit root tests with structural breaks find support for energy convergence in ASEAN.     

On the convergence in China's provincial per capita energy consumption: New evidence from a spatial econometric analysis

The rapid increase in per capita energy consumption is likely to be an important factor affecting the sustainable development of China's economy. In this study, the convergence of per capita energy consumption, which is an important inherent characteristic of China's energy consumption, is investigated using panel data for the period 1994–2014 for 30 Chinese provinces. To control for the potential spatial dependence in energy consumption per capita and introduce dynamics, appropriate spatial dynamic econometric models are employed. The empirical results indicate that there are both absolute and conditional β-convergences in per capita energy consumption across provinces. In addition, there is also evidence for an inverted U-shaped relationship between per capita energy consumption and per capita GDP. Therefore, per capita energy consumption would increase when economic development is relatively low. However, per capita energy consumption may decrease after a threshold level of economic development is reached. Among the factors that potential influence provincial energy consumption, the ratio of secondary industry value-added to GDP and the spatial correlation of energy consumptions in neighboring provinces are positively related to energy consumption per capita, while population density and per capita foreign direct investment do not affect energy consumption per capita significantly.     

Toward a better understanding of energy consumption—I. The distribution of per capita energy consumption in the world

This paper deals with the inputs that are necessary for investigating future energy demands in various countries.With the view of providing inputs that are indispensable for writing scenarios, we have investigated how energy is linked to the state of the economy and how the life styles of individuals relate to the state of technology achieved, to name two important issues.The information will be presented in three parts. This Part I deals with the distribution of energy consumption in the world. The simple distribution curve of the world's per capita consumption provides considerable insight into the importance of energy for different life styles. In Part II, factor analysis will be used to compare energy consumption with other economic indices and to relate it to the structure of energy consumption. Part III will be devoted to energy analysis, the concept and its applicability. Energy analysis will also be discussed from the points of view of engineering and statistics.The quantitative information presented here provides a crude picture as to how energy is used today, by whom and what for. The figures, which were mainly derived from statistical data, are largely self-explanatory and should be generally useful.     

Is energy consumption per capita broken stationary? New evidence from regional-based panels

For the first time, a new panel unit root testing procedure, developed by [51]Carrion-i-Silvestre et al. [2005. Breaking the panels: an application to GDP per capita. Econometrics Journal 8, 159–175], is applied to re-investigate the stationarity of energy consumption per capita for 7 regional panel sets covering the 1971–2002 period. With structural breaks and cross-sectional correlations introduced into the model, it becomes clear that all regional-based panels of energy consumption per capita are stationary. The structural breakpoints identify the likely causes of major changes in energy consumption in the past. The findings underscore the importance of accounting for exogenous shocks to a series and offer several important implications for policy makers and energy economists.     

Revisiting world energy intensity convergence for regional differences

World convergence in energy intensity is revisited using two new large data sets: a 111-country sample spanning 1971–2006, and a 134-country sample spanning 1990–2006. Both data sets confirm continued convergence. However, the larger data set, which adds the former Soviet Union republics and additional Balkan countries, indicates greater convergence over its more recent time-frame. Further investigation of geographical differences reveals that the OECD and Eurasian countries have shown considerable, continued convergence, while the Sub-Saharan African countries have converged amongst themselves, but at a slower rate than the OECD and Eurasian countries; by contrast, Latin American and Caribbean and Middle East and North African countries have exhibited no convergence to divergence in energy intensity.     

Persistence in per capita energy consumption: A fractional integration approach with a Fourier function

In this study, we investigate the degree of persistence for aggregate energy consumption per capita for 113 countries over the period 1960–2014 through a recently introduced fractional unit root test with a Fourier function to allow multiple smooth structural breaks. We also employ the ADF unit root test, the efficient Wald test for fractional unit-roots, and the Fourier ADF test to make a comparison and to enrich the study. The empirical results considering the fractional Fourier unit root test indicate two crucial points. First, shocks have only temporary effects on energy consumption per capita, and it will vanish slowly as a result of the long memory characteristic. Therefore even transitory shocks have persistence effects, which require permanent policies due to their nature. This inference is different from what would be erroneously suggested by the dichotomous approach for stationarity and nonstationarity that temporary shocks will have transitory effects. Second, the integration degree of energy consumption per capita may change due to the existence of a structural break; therefore, policymakers must be aware of the varying integration degree to design and implement the best policies.     

Co-fluctuation patterns of per capita carbon dioxide emissions: The role of energy markets

This paper applies principal component analysis to investigate the linkages, or dominant co-fluctuation patterns, of per capita carbon dioxide emissions across countries for the time period 1950–2000. Energy resource world markets are investigated as an offsetting mechanism possibly coordinating emission fluctuations between countries. The results of the analysis provide evidence that world energy resource markets are acting as a coordinating mechanism for emission fluctuations in most cases. The results also suggest that until recently the dominant emission co-fluctuation pattern for developed countries differs from the dominant emission co-fluctuation pattern for developing countries. The common fluctuation pattern found in the 1984–2000 time period suggests that an offsetting mechanism does exist and will help contain global per capita emissions into the future. The strong degree that emissions are linked between countries and energy markets acting as an offsetting mechanism suggests that to be successful a global agreement to address climate change must require emission reductions by all major emitters, not just the developed countries.     

Global energy use: Decoupling or convergence?

We examine the key factors driving change in energy use globally over the past four decades. We test for both strong decoupling where economic growth has less effect on energy use as income increases, and weak decoupling where energy use declines overtime in richer countries, ceteris paribus. Our econometric approach is robust to the presence of unit roots, unobserved time effects, and spatial effects. Our key findings are that the growth of per capita energy use has been primarily driven by economic growth, convergence in energy intensity, and weak decoupling. There is no sign of strong decoupling.     

Dynamics and drivers of per capita CO2 emissions in Asia

The aim of this paper is to document recent trends in Asia's CO₂ emissions and explore the mechanisms that drive those emissions for fourteen countries over the period 1971 to 2017. We apply a sequential method which has a strong relationship to policy indicators. First, an analysis of the dynamics is undertaken to identify if convergence is occurring, followed by a study of the determinants of those dynamics. This approach overcomes some of the limitations of previous work analyzing emission convergence by focusing on country specific characteristics such as energy mix and energy efficiency. The analysis reveals per capita CO₂ emissions, energy intensity, carbonization and per capita incomes are slowly converging over the full sample. Yet this behavior is not uniform; there were differences in transition paths prior to and after the Asian Financial Crisis. The per capita income driver was the most important driver in explaining the dynamics and variation of emissions while carbonization and energy intensity drivers were less pronounced. The analysis reveals that the energy needs of the region's extraordinary economic growth favored fossil fuels and a surprising revelation is that despite having different per capita income levels China, Korea, and Vietnam all share a common convergence path. This paper provides further evidence against using carbon intensity solely as a target for climate policy.     

New evidence on the convergence of per capita carbon dioxide emissions from panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented Dickey–Fuller tests

Using the data for per capita carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions relative to the average per capita emissions for 21 countries in the organisation for economic co-operation and development (OECD) covering the period 1960–2000, this paper seeks to determine whether the stochastic convergence and β-convergence of CO₂ emissions are supported in countries with the same level of development. In other words, are shocks to relative per capita CO₂ emissions temporary in industrialized countries? We respond to this question by utilizing Breuer et al.'s [Breuer JB, McNown R, Wallace MS. Misleading inferences from panel unit-root tests with an illustration from purchasing power parity. Review of International Economics 2001;9(3):482–93; Breuer JB, McNown R, Wallace MS. Series-specific unit-root tests with panel data. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics 2002 64(5):527–46] panel seemingly unrelated regressions augmented Dickey–Fuller (SURADF) unit-root tests, which allow us to account for possible cross-sectional effects and to identify how many and which members of the panel contain a unit root. Our empirical findings provide evidence that relative per capita CO₂ emissions in OECD countries are a mixture of I(0) and I(1) processes, in which 14 out of 21 OECD countries exhibit divergence. The results reveal that conventional panel unit-root tests can lead to misleading inferences biased towards stationarity even if only one series in the panel is strongly stationary.     

Artificial neural network analysis of world green energy use

This paper focuses on the analysis of world green energy consumption through artificial neural networks (ANN). In addition, the consumption is also analyzed of world primary energy including fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas. A feed-forward back-propagation ANN is used for training and learning processes by taking into consideration data from the literature of world energy consumption from 1965 to 2004. Also, an ANN approach for forecasting world green energy consumption to the year 2050 is presented, and the consumption equations for different energy sources are derived. The environmental aspects of green energy and fossil fuels are discussed in detail. The resulting ANN-based equation curve profiles verify that the available economic reserves of fossil fuel resources are limited, and become “depleted” in the near future. It is expected that world green energy consumption will reach almost 62.74 EJ by 2010, and be on average 32.29% of total energy use between 2005 and 2025. However, world green energy and natural gas consumption will continue increasing after 2050, while world oil and coal consumption are expected to remain relatively stable after 2025 and 2045, respectively. The ANN approach appears to be a suitable method for forecasting energy consumption data, should be utilized in efforts to model world energy consumption.     

Decomposing international polarization of per capita CO2 emissions

The aim of this paper is to analyze the international polarization of per capita CO₂ emissions with exogenous groups based on the Z–K measure (Zhang and Kanbur, 2001), whose main differential advantage lies on its factor-decomposability. In particular, we propose to use the factor decomposition based on Kaya (1989) by applying the methodology suggested by Duro and Padilla (2006). The main empirical results derived can be summarized as follows. First, the international polarization of emissions has significantly decreased over time during the period 1971–2006, when regional sets of nations based on the IEA structure are used; secondly, this decrease can be almost exclusively based on the reduction of the average dissimilarities among sets of countries and not due to a within-group cohesion process. Lastly, this reduction can be mainly attributed to the role of the affluence factor, and to a lesser extent, to the energy intensities. Thus, and given the values achieved for the different components, it seems that further reductions in the international polarization will continue be based on the economic convergence among groups.     

Convergence in energy consumption per capita across the US states, 1970–2013: An exploration through selected parametric and non-parametric methods

Noting the paucity of studies of convergence in energy consumption across the US states, and the usefulness of a study that shares the spirit of the enormous research on convergence in energy-related variables in cross-country contexts, this paper explores convergence in per-capita energy consumption across the US states over the 44-year period 1970–2013. Several well-known parametric and non-parametric approaches are explored partly to shed light on the substantive question and partly to provide a comparative methodological perspective on these approaches. Several statements summarize the outcome of our explorations. First, the widely-used Barro-type regressions do not indicate beta-convergence during the entire period or any of several sub-periods. Second, lack of sigma-convergence is also noted in terms of standard deviation of logarithms and coefficient of variation which do not show a decline between 1970 and 2013, but show slight upward trends. Third, kernel density function plots indicate some flattening of the distribution which is consistent with the results from sigma-convergence scenario. Fourth, intra-distribution mobility (“gamma convergence”) in terms of an index of rank concordance suggests a slow decline in the index. Fifth, the general impression from several types of panel and time-series unit-root tests is that of non-stationarity of the series and thus the lack of stochastic convergence during the period. Sixth, therefore, the overall impression seems to be that of the lack of convergence across states in per-capita energy consumption. The present interstate inequality in per-capita energy consumption may, therefore, reflect variations in structural factors and might not be expected to diminish.     

Energy metrics for driving competitiveness of countries: Energy weakness magnitude,GDP per barrel and barrels per capita

Energy metrics is the development of a whole new theoretical framework for the conception and measurement of energy and economic system performances, energy efficiency and productivity improvements with important political economy implications consistent with the best use of all natural and economic resources. The purpose of this research is to present some vital energy indicators based on magnitude and scale of energy weakness, GDP per barrel of oil that is an indicator of energy productivity and barrels (of oil) per capita that is an indicator of energy efficiency. Energy metrics can support the monitoring of energy and economic system performances in order to design effective energy strategy and political economy interventions focused on the “competitive advantage” increase of countries in modern economies.     

The effect of carbon tax on per capita CO2 emissions

As the most efficient market-based mitigation instrument, carbon tax is highly recommended by economists and international organizations. Countries like Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands and Norway were the first adopters of carbon tax and as such, research on the impacts and problems of carbon tax implementation in these countries will provide great practical significance as well as caution for countries that are to levy the tax. Different from the existing studies that adopt the model simulation approaches, in this article, we comprehensively estimate the real mitigation effects of the five north European countries by employing the method of difference-in-difference (DID). The results indicate that carbon tax in Finland imposes a significant and negative impact on the growth of its per capita CO₂ emissions. Meanwhile, the effects of carbon tax in Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands are negative but not significant. The mitigation effects of carbon tax are weakened due to the tax exemption policies on certain energy intensive industries in these countries. Notwithstanding, in Norway, as the rapid growth of energy products drives a substantial increase of CO₂ emissions in oil drilling and natural gas exploitation sectors, carbon tax actually has not realized its mitigation effects.     

Stochastic wave energy calculation formulation

The wave energy potential is directly proportional to the wave period and second power of wave height averaged over a suitable time period. The wave height and period have temporal and spatial stochastic variations. It is the main purpose of this paper to derive the most general wave energy formulation by considering simultaneously the temporal variations both in the wave height and period. The correction factor is derived explicitly in terms of cross-correlation and the coefficients of variation. The application of the methodology is performed for wave measurement stations located in the Pacific Ocean off the west coast of the US.     

Offshore wind energy in the world context

The interest for the exploitation of the offshore wind energy is growing in Europe, where man land use is very high resulting in strong limitation to the installation of onshore wind farms. The today offshore operating wind power is 12 MW, with two wind farms in Denmark and one in Netherlands; it starts to be significant (0.6%) in terms of the onshore power, 2000 MW in Europe.In the world the onshore installed wind power is exceeding 4000 MW, but not so much up to now has been done on the offshore area outside Europe.The European four years experience on the prototypical offshore wind farms looks significantly promising and suggests to promote a similar approach in many densely populated coastal countries in the world with high electricity demand.Results of studies are presented on the offshore wind potential in the European countries and of the tentative evaluation for the Mediterranean basin, and the seas of USA and China. A review is made of the offshore applications, particularly for the Nothern European seas.Economy and environmental trends are illustrated in parallel to those of maturing offshore technology. It is suggested to prepare an action plan to promote the development of the offshore applications in the world context.     

Global overview for energy use of the world economy: Household-consumption-based accounting based on the world input-output database (WIOD)

Globalization has integrated nations into a world economy. Based on the world input-output database (WIOD), this paper explored the energy use of the world economy under a household-consumption-based MRIO (multi-region input-output) accounting scheme. Pertaining to normative economics, the household-consumption-based MRIO accounting scheme corresponds to the value judgement of household consumption being the ultimate driver of the economy, which complements existing accounting methods based on different viewpoints. The energy use associated with the internationally traded products is calculated to be around one-fifth of the global total energy consumption. For China as the largest exporter and also the biggest deficit economy in terms of energy use, its trade imbalance is nearly the summation of that of the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Germany. Energy self-sufficiency rates by supply and by demand are respectively proposed. While the United States economy as the largest importer maintains the majority of the energy welfare denoted by the onsite energy use at home, China exports large quantities of energy use abroad. For economies like Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, they could be regarded as hubs that export a considerable amount of energy use abroad and absorb massive energy use from outside simultaneously. For sustainable use of energy resources, economies are suggested to carefully identify their roles in the global trading network of energy use.