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Background: The aim of this paper is to reconsider the necessity for the green transition and the key preconditions for the implementation of a circular economy in Western Balkan countries. With the objective of the research in mind, the method of analysis and synthesis was applied to determine (1) regulatory and institutional prerequisites for the green transition; (2) the need for the Western Balkan countries to redefine the model of sustainable economic growth towards the green transition; (3) the development opportunities for recovery defined in the Green Agenda for the Western Balkans; and (4) the possibility of implementing the circular economy in the Western Balkans. Main text: The main findings of the research indicate that: (1) the countries of the Western Balkan region, following the example of the EU, should define a national strategic approach to the green transition with an accompanying action plan and regulatory framework; (2) the biggest challenge of the green transition is the reform of the energy sector and the restructuring of the energy-intensive economy; (3) the countries have untapped potential in renewable energy sources and report the improvement of energy efficiency; (4) the circular economy can boost the green transition, because the countries of the region have a five-time lower value of resource productivity than the average of the EU, while the generation of waste (excluding major mineral wastes) per GDP unit is lower compared to the EU; (5) cross-sectoral governance should be more coordinated. Conclusions: The green transition might be a development opportunity for the Western Balkans, which should enable sustainable economic growth as well as energy security and environmental protection. However, the implementation of the Green Agenda is not easy, because the region faces the problem of underdeveloped regulatory and institutional capacities that might provide not only the base for long-term planning but also financial resources for the efficient implementation of projects. In addition, it is essential to understand the principles of the Green Agenda and the interaction of all activities that should enable the achievement of defined goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bioenergy could have deep effects on economic, social, and environmental sustainability. Thus, the present research aims to review the potential risks and benefits of bioenergy production and consumption. For this purpose, we follow the approach of a systematic review and collect the 105 studies on bioenergy from the Scopus database. The literature suggests that bioenergy is the largest source of replacement of fossil fuels compared to other renewable energy sources and helps to conserve the environment. However, bioenergy production targeted at forest land could have environmental problems as forests are a big source of carbon sinks and biodiversity. Nevertheless, bioenergy consumption is environmentally friendly and releases the least emissions compared to all types of fossil fuels. Moreover, the installation and operational costs of bioenergy are lesser compared to other renewable energy sources. Thus, bioenergy is a cost-effective solution to replace fossil fuels compared to other renewable energy sources. However, bioenergy production replacing the existing crops could reduce the availability of land and water for other agricultural products, which can be responsible for food shortages and rising food prices. Thus, bioenergy production could cause food insecurity with the rapidly growing population worldwide. However, bioenergy could have many other benefits from economic and social dimensions. Thus, the literature has suggested government intervention to achieve net positive benefits from bioenergy production and consumption. Particularly, the literature has suggested public and private spending on R&D activities to find better sources and technologies for bioenergy production and to improve biomass and overall agriculture productivity. Moreover, literature has suggested using marginal lands, other unutilized lands, crop and forest residues, and wastes for biomass production to reduce the pressure on forests and croplands to ensure both food security and environmental conservation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose In response to increasing energy demand and financial constraints to invest in green infrastructure, behaviour change energy-saving interventions are increasingly being considered as a tool for encouraging pro-environmental behaviour in campus residences. This paper aims to report on a pilot programme aimed at reducing energy consumption via behaviour change interventions, variably applied in residences at Rhodes University, South Africa.Design/methodology/approach Data were collected via structured questionnaires, energy consumption records and post-intervention programme focus group discussions.Findings Participant residences that received a mix of different interventions in the forms of pamphlets, face-to-face discussions, incentives and feedback recorded more energy reductions of up to 9 per cent than residences that received a single or no intervention. In post-experiment discussions, students cited personal, institutional and structural barriers to pro-environmental energy-use behaviour.Practical implications Overall, the results of this study suggest that information provision of energy-saving tips combined with regular feedback and incentives can result in energy-use reductions in university residences, which may yield environmental and economic benefits for universities, but addressing barriers to pro-environmental behaviour might maximise the results.Originality/value Given the lack of literature on energy conservation in the global South universities, this study provides the basis for discussing the potential for using behavioural interventions in universities for stirring pathways towards sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Currently, the achievement of sustainable development goals (SDG) is the requirement of the entire globe and needs the attention of recent researchers and regulators. Thus, the current research also investigates the impact of human capital and environmental protection on the SDG of the developed economy like China. The researchers have explored the secondary data sources and collected the data from 1986 to 2019, and used the world development indicators (WDI) for this purpose. The current article also used the augmented dickey-fuller test (ADF) to check the stationarity and autoregressive distributed lag model (ARDL) to test the nexus among variables. The results indicated that all the predictors such as human capital index (human capital), renewable energy consumption and renewable energy production (environmental protection) have a negative association with carbon emission and a positive association with SDG. The outcomes also indicated that control variables such as economic growth and population growth have a positive association with carbon emission. These outcomes provide the guidelines to the regulators while developing policies related to sustainable development goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst resource loss and environmental protection constraints, achieving green development necessitates enhancing green total factor productivity (GTFP) as a means of promoting rational and efficient resource allocation, thereby balancing economic growth and environmental preservation. Meanwhile, literature on the subject matter of GTFP from a sustainability viewpoint is minimal. As a result, this study employs the panel dataset from 30 provinces of China spanning the period 2005 to 2020 and utilizes the method of moments quantile regression (MMQR) developed by Machado and Santos Silva (2019) to analyze the heterogeneous role of green innovation, environmental regulations, and fiscal expenditure on GTFP. Moreover, the controlling variable for this study includes renewable energy and economic growth. Furthermore, this study investigates the heterogeneous combined impact of green innovation and fiscal expenditure (GTE*FSE) on GTFP. The findings of the MMQR reveal that green innovation has a positive impact on GTFP, while fiscal expenditure, environmental regulations, and renewable energy consumption have a negative impact. GTE*FSE has a positive and significant effect on GTFP, indicating that FSE can reinforce and increase the positive impact of GTE on GTFP in the long run. The study also reveals that economic growth has a mixed effect on GTFP, depending on the quantiles. Furthermore, environmental regulation has a significant and negative impact on GTFP, contradicting the Porter hypothesis. Likewise, the robustness of the findings is confirmed by the results of the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) and dynamic OLS (DOLS) estimations, which indicate a similar impact of the determinants on GTFP as observed in the MMQR analysis. This reinforces the validity of the findings and suggests that the observed relationships are robust to different estimation techniques. Furthermore, the findings of the Dumitrescu and Hurlin (D-H) panel causality test reveal significant bidirectional causality between renewable energy consumption and GTFP and fiscal expenditure and GTFP. Policy-makers need to channel a large chuck of their fiscal spending into green innovation so as to boost sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a spatial approach to the analysis of the relationship between air pollution, economic growth, and renewable energy consumption. The economic growth of every country is based on the energy consumption that leads to an increase in national productivity. Using renewable energy is very important for the environmental protection and security of the earth's resources. Promoting environmentally friendly operations increases awareness of sustainable development, which is currently a major concern of state governments. In this study, we explored the influence of economic growth and the share of renewable energy out of total energy consumption on CO2 emissions. The study was based on the classical environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) and enriched with the spatial dependencies. In particular, we determined the spatial spillovers in the form of the indirect effects of changes in renewable energy consumption of a specific country on the CO2 emissions of neighboring countries. A neighborhood in this study was defined by ecological development similarity. The neighborhood matrix was constructed based on the values of the ecological footprint measure. We used the spatio-temporal Durbin model, with which the indirect effects were determined in relation to the spatially lagged renewable energy consumption. The results of our study also show the strength of the effects caused by imitating actions from the states with high levels of environmental protection. The study was conducted using data for 75 selected countries from the period of 2013–2019. Cumulative spatial and spatio-temporal effects allowed us to determine (1) the countries with the greatest impact on others and (2) the countries that follow the leading ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sustainable development and environmental protection are key concepts in the European energy policy. The Europe 2020 Strategy establishes the necessity of reducing environmental pressure and resource consumption to increase sustainable development in the EU. In this context, the aim of this paper is to develop an Environmental and Resource Pressure Aggregated Index that considers these two dimensions. This index provides information about the achievement of the targets in the member states as well as the achieved effects of the environmental policies on energy policy and sustainable development. Therefore, it would help policy-makers to plan future policy actions. The results show that, among EU countries, Portugal, Latvia, Italy, Austria and France have low environmental and resource pressure. Recommendations are made for member states with the worst results (Estonia, Poland, Cyprus, Czech Republic and Luxembourg) in order to improve their actions in climate change and energy policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EU targets for sustainable development call for strong changes in the current energy systems as well as committed protection of environmental resources. This target conflicts if a policy is not going to promote the compatible solutions to both the issues. This is the case of the additional renewable energy sources to be exploited for increasing the share in the electricity mix and in the gross final energy consumption. Solar energy is, currently, the cheapest solution in Southern European Countries, like Italy. In this paper, thanks to the availability of three open databases provided by National Institutions, the authors compared the historic trends and policy scenarios for soil consumption, electricity consumption, and renewable electricity production to check correlations. The provincial scale was chosen as resolution of the analysis. The deviations from the policy scenarios was then addressed to identify the demand for policy recommendations and pathways to promote in order to achieve the target for renewable electricity share as well as the reduction in soli consumption trend in 2030. The role of renewables integrated in the existing contexts, such as building integrated photovoltaics, is considered a key driver for solving this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Union's (EU) vision implies tremendous changes in the power systems. These should contribute to sustainable development and protection of the environment by enabling the EU to achieve its targets of a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, 20% increase in energy efficiency and 20% of renewable energy in final energy consumption by 2020. Encouraging of the renewable energy sources (RES) by the Romanian Government through different incentives lead since 2007 to a large volume of projects. Nowadays, the installed wind power in Romania is about 1140 MW, most of them (1103 MW) being concentrated in the south-eastern part of the country, called Dobrogea. Taking into account the different specificity of the WPP operation in different countries, based on recorded data in Romania, a couple of analyses have been performed in order to understand and try to better predict it for medium and long term network planning. These analyses were focused on full load hours, average loading of WPP, particularity of operation at night and depending on seasonal conditions, variability of WPP output for short time periods and implications on daily load curve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]