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Inspired by empirical evidence from the oil market, we build a model of an oligopoly facing a fringe as well as competition from renewable resources. We explore different subclasses of HARA utility functions (Cobb–Douglas, power and quadratic utility) to check the robustness of results found in the previous literature. For isoelastic demand, we characterize the equilibrium extraction rates of the fringe and the oligopolists. There always exists a phase of simultaneous supply of the oligopolists and the fringe, implying an inefficient order of use of resources since the oligopolists have smaller unit extraction costs and carbon emissions than the fringe. We calibrate our model to the oil market to quantify this sequence effect. In our benchmark calibration, we find for the three HARA subclasses that the sequence effect is responsible for almost all of the welfare loss compared to the first-best. It becomes smaller as market power decreases. Furthermore, we show that climate damage and Green Paradox effects depend non-monotonically on the degree of market power.

Seit einiger Zeit wird erbittert um die Frage gestritten, ob Elektroautos gegenüber konventionellen Fahrzeugen CO2 einsparen oder nicht. Dieser Streit wird allerdings in einer sehr unglücklichen Form ausgetragen. Vor allem basieren die Studien zu diesem Thema auf sehr unterschiedlichen und zum Teil unrealistischen Annahmen. Zudem vernachlässigen sie zwei zentrale Aspekte für die Beurteilung der Elektromobilität sträflich: den Emissionshandel und die Frage der Kosteneffizienz. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass die Förderung von Elektroautos die vermutlich ineffizienteste Form von Klimapolitik ist, die weltweit zurzeit betrieben wird. The discussion about electro mobility revolves primarily around the question of whether electric cars (BEV) emit less CO2 than modern internal combustion vehicles. This demonstrates that there are many degrees of freedom in the comparison, which favor either one side or the other, making the situation very confusing. Weighty aspects in the discussion are either not considered at all or only marginally. For example, the fact that substituting BEVs for combustors would mean that the replacement of coal-fired power would proceed more slowly. Furthermore, the influence of emissions trading is not considered and the question of cost efficiency is not addressed.

Decarbonizing the global energy matrix through investments in renewable energy (RE) is considered a pathway to mitigate the effects of global climate change. Auctions have become an increasingly popular policy instrument for this purpose. In the last few years, auctions have been rapidly adopted by low- and middle-income countries due to their flexibility and several theoretical advantages to mitigate risks deriving from poor business environments. Previous research has used data from higher-income countries and two-way fixed effects models to estimate the effects of auctions on RE capacity, mostly with favorable results. However, none of these studies accounted for heterogeneous treatment effects across units to explore whether auctions are effective in countries with unstable business environments. Here we analyze if auctions can foster RE in countries facing macroeconomic instability or poor institutional quality. For this purpose, we have drawn from multiple publicly available databases to build a panel dataset covering 98 countries for the period 2000-2020. Our definition of RE includes solar, wind, and biomass sources. We show results for each RE source separately and all of them combined. We first cluster countries in terms of the quality of their business environment and then perform a differences-in-differences analysis considering staggered treatment adoption. Our results show that auctions positively affect RE capacity, but average treatment effects are higher for countries with better business environments. Thus, caution is needed in adopting this instrument, especially in countries exposed to macroeconomic or institutional instability. At the same time, dynamic treatment effects suggest that the policy needs time to show results.

This paper deals with non-economic problems of biofuel development. Firstly we look at a complex of issues surrounding the food-fuel debate, which is concerned mainly with the efficiency of use of land resources for the production of biofuel feedstock rather than for production of food for human consumption. Secondly we look at other environment and health related problems of extensive biofuels production. Lastly we briefly acknowledge the existence of a large block of socio-economic impacts of biofuels.

Lack of cooling and cold-chain access is a critical development challenge that has significant implications for people's livelihoods, productivity, health, food, and nutritional security. While business-as-usual demand projections suggest 19 new cooling appliances will be sold every second by 2050, universal access to cooling is expected not to be a reality even at this rate of growth, leaving poor and vulnerable populations to suffer the consequences. The global demand for cooling is already pressuring the energy system and the environment and given all the social and economic benefits of cooling and cold-chain but also the environmental risks, there is now a major opportunity for governments and the private sector to develop and deploy sustainable, affordable, and resilient cooling solutions, and contribute to three internationally agreed goals simultaneously: the Paris Agreement; Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); and the Kigali Amendment to Montreal Protocol. Achieving this will require a radically different approach to cooling and cold-chain provision that starts by asking what energy services are needed and explores ways to meet them with minimum environmental impact and cost, taking into account available renewable, thermal, and waste energy resources, synergies between processes and systems, and aggregation opportunities, rather than defaulting to electricity to generate cooling. Such a system-level approach sits at the core of the Cold Economy.

This paper deals with technological and legislation features of biofuels development. We look at all 2nd generation (2G) end products, the three major conversion pathways and especially the feedstock, with differentiates 2G biofuels from the conventional, 1G fuels. In the legislation and policies review we provide a timeline pointing out the major changes and policies, as well as brief comments on their applications. We look at biofuels policies for the three top player in biofuels production, the U.S., Brazil and the European Union. Because the 1st generation is strongly associated with the food-fuel debate we then focus on its link to the 2G as well, showing how these links are weaker and manageable, although with some challenges still present.

Inspired by empirical evidence from the oil market, we build a model of an oligopoly facing a fringe as well as competition from renewable resources. We explore different subclasses of HARA utility functions (Cobb-Douglas, power and quadratic utility) to check the robustness of results found in the previous literature. For isoelastic demand, we characterize the equilibrium extraction rates of the fringe and the oligopolists. There always exists a phase of simultaneous supply of the oligopolists and the fringe, implying an inefficient order of use of resources since the oligopolists have smaller unit extraction costs and carbon emissions than the fringe. We calibrate our model to the oil market to quantify this sequence effect. In our benchmark calibration, we find for the three HARA subclasses that the sequence effect is responsible for almost all of the welfare loss compared to the first-best. It becomes smaller as market power decreases. Furthermore, we show that climate damage and Green Paradox effects depend non-monotonically on the degree of market power.

Die negativen Folgen des Klimawandels sind wissenschaftlich erwiesen. Der weitere Ausstoß von klimaschädlichen Gasen muss dringend stärker unterbunden werden. Das von der Bundesregierung beschlossene Klimaschutzprogramm ist ein Schritt in die richtige Richtung. Es ist aber zu wenig ambitioniert, um tatsächlich das von der Klimakonferenz in Paris avisierte Ziel, die Klimaerwärmung auf 1,5°C zu begrenzen, erreichen zu können. Die Autorinnen und Autoren untersuchen in den Bereichen Windkraft, Wohngebäude, Luft- und Straßenverkehr, welche Maßnahmen erforderlich sind und wie die gesetzten Ziele effizienter erreicht werden können. Sie sprechen sich vor allem für eine höhere Bepreisung der CO2-Emissionen aus.

Este documento analiza factores para el desarrollo y difusión de conocimiento e innovación para tecnologías asociadas a los Usos Directos de Energía Geotérmica en México, en el contexto de las políticas para la transición energética durante el periodo 2008-2020. Se utilizó el enfoque de los Sistemas de Innovación Tecnológica, por su utilidad para identificar los mecanismos que determinan el desarrollo y difusión de una tecnología emergente en un sistema. El análisis implicó la elaboración de dos modelos temáticos de Asignación Latente de Dirichlet, cuyos resultados mostraron que el sistema de innovación tecnológica para usos directos de energía geotérmica en México se encuentra en etapa formativa y responde al motor del empuje de la ciencia y la tecnología.

I analyze the effect of unilateral climate policies in a two‐country model where fossil fuel extraction costs depend on both current extraction and remaining stock and where a constant marginal‐cost clean substitute is available. An intensification of climate policy in the country with an initially stricter policy does not increase early fossil fuel extraction (i.e., there is no “weak green paradox”) or the present value of pollution costs (i.e., there is no “strong green paradox”) if energy demand in that country is initially met with a mix of fossil fuel and a substitute. Whether a stricter climate policy in the country with an initially laxer policy causes a weak green paradox depends on the price elasticity of energy demand and the strength of the flow and stock dependence of extraction costs. If the reduction of total extraction is sufficiently strong, it overcompensates for a weak green paradox with respect to pollution costs. Thus, a weak green paradox does not necessarily imply a strong green paradox, due to stock dependence. Politique climatique unilaterale et « paradoxe vert » : l’incidence des couts d’extraction. L’article analyse l’effet des politiques climatiques unilaterales dans un modele a deux pays ou les couts d’extraction de combustibles fossiles dependent a la fois de l’extraction actuelle et du stock residuel, et ou la disponibilite d’un substitut energetique propre et constant a cout marginal demeure. Une intensification des politiques climatiques dans le pays, de pair avec une politique initialement plus stricte, n’augmente ni l’extraction precoce des combustibles fossiles (c’est‐a‐dire qu’il n’y a pas de « paradoxe vert faible ») ni la valeur actuelles des couts de pollution (c’est a dire qu’il n’y a pas de « paradoxe vert accru #x00AB;) pour autant que la demande en energie dans ce pays est initialement satisfaite par une combinaison d’un combustible fossile et d’un substitut. Qu’une politique climatique plus stricte dans ce pays, dote d’une politique initialement plus laxiste, entrane un paradoxe vert moins prononce depend de l’elasticite par rapport au prix de la demande d’energie, de l’importance du flux et de la dependance en matiere de stock relativement aux couts d’extraction. Si une reduction de l’extraction totale est suffisamment forte, elle surcompensera un paradoxe vert limite relativement aux couts de pollution. Ainsi, un faible paradoxe vert n’engendre pas necessairement un fort paradoxe vert en raison de la dependance au stock.

This review report involves the analysis and synthesis of literatures on climate change, land use, energy, livelihoods and sustainable development in Nigeria. The methodology employed in the review involves searching keywords related to the study objectives on relevant literature search engines and platforms, including Google Scholar and Cross Referencing through triangulation of search results. The articles were screened and validated for inclusion or exclusion based on relevance, content and context. The review process follows the sustainable livelihoods framework. The search returns are complimented with published reports. The report provides information on the current status and guidance on appropriate interventions and innovative investments in Nigeria. Specifically, this report provides a systematic literature review on: 1) situation and trends in energy and land use changes, 2) observed and projected impacts of climate change, 3) technological, socioeconomic and policy actions for sustainable land management and climate change adaptation and mitigation, 4) evaluation of existing major policies and investments, and 5) conclusion and policy implications. Based on the assessment of literature in this study, the key trends and problems include inadequate attention to the agricultural sector over the years, which has caused a major setback in food security and productivity. Climate change has further exacerbated the problem through desertification, drought and flooding across the country. The literature further revealed inadequate energy supply, distribution and low per capita consumption in Nigeria. The use of fuel wood for heating and cooking has significantly contributed to deforestation by worsening land degradation. Resulting implications are that food security is threatened and economic growth is hampered. Land degradation negatively impacts the environment and the rural poor whose livelihoods depend on it. Opportunities in agriculture and renewable energy should be further harnessed and forest and land use policies should be enforced to ensure sustainable livelihoods. In Nigeria, policies and investment plans on land use, energy/electricity and agricultural livelihoods are not coherent and lack consistency in implementation. Thus, lack of strong institutions has resulted in the weak performance witnessed in programme and policy implementation on climate change mitigation, land use, energy and sustainable development in Nigeria. Therefore, there is a need for productive, viable, sustainable policy and programmes that support climate change mitigation, land use, energy and sustainable development in Nigeria. Another important suggestion is the need for provision of renewable energy mix (off-grid) in forms that are easily accessible and affordable by households. Adequate attention should be paid to the provision of bio-energy and the wider bio-economy framework, including the transformation of solid waste, wood waste and agricultural waste into bio-gas and energy. Overall, the investment landscape in Nigeria is improving, and various opportunities for investment in agricultural livelihoods and value chains, renewable energy, carbon trading and green bonds should be harnessed through public-private partnerships.

Ethiopia is the second most populous country in Sub-Saharan Africa with a population of more than 110 million. With over 10 percent growth rate, the Ethiopian economy has been one of the fastest growing economies in the world over the last one and half decades. By any measure agriculture is the dominant economic sector in the country accounting for a sizeable portion of the GDP growth, generating most of the export earnings and employing most of the labour force. The country has diverse agro-ecological conditions which are suitable for growing both temperate and tropical food and industrial crops. This study has tried to review the trends in environment conditions such as energy use, land cover and land use changes as well as the impact of climate change and the policy responses of the Government of Ethiopia. The review clearly shows that Ethiopia is still a poor country with more than one fifth of the population living below the national poverty line. Food insecurity continues to be a big challenge for millions of Ethiopians. Despite being the dominant economic sector, agricultural production is characterized as a low-input-low productivity sector. Land degradation is a very serious problem in Ethiopia due to the fact that many parts of the Ethiopian highlands are mountainous and rugged. Even though Ethiopia has huge potential for generating renewable energy, the majority of the Ethiopian population still relies on biomass energy sources such as wood, animal dung and crop residues. These environmental challenges are also exacerbated due to the effect of climate change. To mitigate the impact of land degradation, deforestation, and climate change, the Government of Ethiopia has formulated and implemented several policies. The Agricultural Growth Program (AGP), the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), the Sustainable Land Management Program (SLM) and the Climate Resilient Green Economy (CRGE) strategy are the major programs being implemented to address these environmental challenges. Indeed, these interventions have made noticeable contributions to curb the challenges.

In this working paper, the biophysical factors and socio-economic conditions that led to Land Use and Land Cover Changes (LULC) and land degradation in Burkina Faso are reviewed. It is found that the country is densely populated and population continues to rise at a rate of more than 3% a year. However, nearly half of the population still lives below the poverty line. The electrification relies heavily on fossil fuels as the country has limited hydropower potential and solar energy received little investment. The rate of electrification is still very low, triggering the use of other sources of energy derived from firewood in rural areas. In addition, Burkina Faso has experienced land degradation in the North as a consequence of the 1970s and 1980s droughts that struck all the Sahel. Subsequently, migration took place from the degraded areas to the central, western and southern regions of the country causing further LULC changes. Furthermore, the country suffers from the effects of climate change and climate variability through increasing temperature trends, highly variable precipitation regimes and intensification of extreme events. Projected changes reveal prevailing conditions that indicate an increased risk of disasters in the agriculture, water and health sectors, among others. Due to this situation, some technological responses and policy actions have been developed for sustainable land management and climate change adaptation and mitigation. The adopted technological approaches include, among others, irrigation expansion and efficiency, rainwater harvesting, crop diversification, adoption of drought-tolerant crop varieties and rotational grazing. Some policies have been put in place to facilitate the adoption of these technologies. They consist of carbon trading, land-use zoning and integrated landscape planning, payment for ecosystem services, providing access to markets and agricultural advisory services, securing land tenure and empowering women. These actions are part of broader programs and investment plans that include, but not limited to, the Strategic Framework for Poverty Reduction (SFPR), the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development (SCADD), the National Rural Sector Program (PNSR), the Resilience and Support Plan for Vulnerable Population (RSPVP) and the Cereals Price Stabilization Program (CPSP) among others.

Located in West Africa, Senegal is classified as a least-developed country that has historically had political stability and slow economic growth compared to the rest of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). However, from 2012 onward, a new government has adopted new policies (infrastructure investments, liberalization of the groundnut sector and opening of the energy sector) to enhance economic growth and governance. Senegal thus experienced significant improvements in the period from 2012 to 2015. Future economic growth in Senegal can be significantly shaped by the energy sector regarding the recent oil and gas discoveries if the common resource curse can be avoided. The country is characterized by a poverty rate of 38 percent and fairly stable food security, with only 7.2 percent of the population being food insecure. However, some localized pockets of acute food needs remain. This is in part linked to agricultural production (the main source of income and labor), which depends highly on climatic hazards. Moreover, production resources such as land are highly vulnerable to climatic and anthropogenic factors. The country has a good access rate to electricity and safe water. However, access to electricity is unequal, with rural lagging behind urban areas. [...] The evaluation of key policies, the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution for climate governance, the PRACAS (for agriculture and food security) and land-use policies highlights the main factors for success and failure and identifies key challenges that the government of Senegal needs to pay close attention to in order to ensure greater policy design and implementation success in the future. The main challenges are related to governance, funding and monitoring and evaluation. In terms of governance, it is important to ensure the participatory design and implementation of the policies to foster stakeholders' ownership and thus facilitate their implication. As for funding, the key is to avoid building policy objectives based on unsecured funding by making realistic plans based on already secured funding (if possible, from the national budget). Finally, in terms of monitoring and evaluation, it is key to ensure the sustained availability of good-quality statistical data to allow better targeting of areas in which to intervene, better allocation of financial resources and better assessment of gaps, progress, and impact.

The Sahel is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change in the world. Located in the central part, Niger is facing many complex and interconnected challenges which strongly hinder the achievement of the key sustainable development goals (SDGs). The high population growth rate (3.8% per year), weak infrastructure capacity, shortage of essential resources (including water, energy, food) coupled with the adverse impacts of variability and climate change threaten the population and reduce the country's economic growth efforts. With more than 77% of landmass area receiving less than 150 mm of precipitation yearly, and about 80% of the population depending on rainfed agriculture, water scarcity and dryness constitute serious constraints for the agriculture and livestock sectors. In addition, the unequal distribution of agricultural land and livestock worsens the poverty incidence among households, which is characterized by a GINI coefficient of 0.46 and 0.68 for land and livestock respectively. Access to drinking water remains very poor with high disparities between urban (64%) and rural areas (48%). Water sanitation amounting to only 2% in rural and 38% in urban areas, respectively, also remains a great issue. Elsewhere, several drought and flood episodes have negatively impacted agricultural productivity, causing recurrent famines and livestock losses. The situation is exacerbated by the impacts of land degradation, the advancement of desertification and also by climate change and variability threats, which are projected to increase in magnitude, intensity, duration and number over the country under all climate change scenarios. The country's high potential of renewable and non-renewable groundwater resources can be used for residential, agricultural and industrial purposes to overcome negative climate change impacts. Regarding the energy sector, the country is currently in an undesirable state, with very limited modern energy services (2% of the population), low electricity access (average rate of 18%, with around 10% in rural areas) and high dependency on traditional biomass (77% of primary energy consumption). However, the country is fortunate to have a tremendous amount of energy resources, including fossil fuels (oil, coal and gas) and renewables (solar, hydropower, and wind), that can be used to overcome many of the observed challenges and thereby contribute significantly in the achievement of various SDGs, including those related to affordable and clean energy, no poverty, and zero hunger. Indeed, in addition to resources for electricity production, Niger has a large surface water potential in the Niger River, with an average discharge of 6000 m3 /s and length of about 550 km, which can be mobilized for irrigation to enable food security. Therefore, socioeconomic development requires an integrated approach that brings all the key sectors into a common framework in order to solve the aforementioned challenges. Hence, in key development areas, several development policies and strategies from government, NGOs, and technical and financial partners have been initiated and implemented for inequality and poverty reduction to improve livelihoods in the country.

This paper examines how optimal renewable energy (RE) support (RES) policies need to be adjusted to account for carbon prices. We show theoretically and empirically that changing carbon prices requires adjusting RE production subsidies due to two different motives: First, RE premiums need to be reduced to reflect the carbon value embedded in the market price. Second, RE premiums and feed-in tariffs need to be adjusted once a fuel switch away from coal towards gas power occurs. This adjustment is necessary to account for changes in the marginal external benefit of RE. For the case of the UK, we estimate the optimal RE subsidies and their adjustments due to a fuel switch. Furthermore, we use numerical simulations to analyze the impact of varying carbon prices on optimal RES. We show that the necessary adjustment due to a fuel switch is empirically rather small, whereas RE premiums must be phased out with increasing carbon prices due to the increasing reflection of the carbon cost in the electricity market price. Finally, a fuel switch increases solar-induced abatement, whereas it wind-induced abatement is rather invariant to a fuel switch. Yet, the differentiation of RE subsidies between wind and solar power is modest.

Electricity generation based on renewable energy (RE) sources such as wind and solar replace the most expensive generators that often rely on fossil fuels. In response to RE promotion, wholesale electricity prices and carbon emissions are therefore expected to decrease. In interconnected electricity systems, this so-called merit- order effect stimulates a change in electricity trade ows. Therefore, conventional generation and prices in neighboring countries are also likely to decrease. The impact of these trade reactions on carbon offsets is ambiguous and depends on installed generation and interconnector capacities. Moreover, the cross-border merit-order effect causes opposing effects on consumers and producers: Generators' profits decline, while consumers benefit from lower electricity costs and an increase in the consumer surplus. Using a rich data set of hourly technology-specific generation and wholesale market price data for ten central European countries, we estimate the domestic and cross-border impacts of German RE for the years 2015 to 2020. We find that German RE generation offset 79 to 113 MtCO2 per year. The major emission effect took place in Germany (64 - 99 MtCO2). The average cost of emission offset of 212 to 321e/t were almost entirely borne by German market participants. Neighboring countries do not bear costs, but a significant shift from producer to consumer rents is observed.

Sudan is situated in Sub-Saharan Africa, covering an area of about 1.9 million km2 and has a population of 43 million. It is regarded as one of the countries in the world where human development is least advanced with a poverty rate of about 46%. Sudan's economy is based on agriculture, which contributes about one-third of the (GDP). Sudan's agriculture has three distinct crop and three distinct livestock production systems. The Crop production systems are: irrigated, traditional and mechanized rain-fed farming. The livestock production systems are: nomadic, transhumant and sedentary systems. The annual cultivated land is around 20 million hectares, more than 85% of which are rain-fed. The livestock population is estimated at 105 million heads concentrated in nomadic and transhumant production systems. Water resources in Sudan are: river Nile and its tributaries, seasonal streams, underground water and surface water. Sources of energy are: biomass; electricity (hydro and fossil fuels) and petroleum products, accounting for about 78,8% and 14%, respectively, of the total energy balance. Sudan has significant renewable energy resources. Particularly solar energy is well distributed all over the country thus having the potential to facilitate the provision of energy services to rural settlements. [...] Sudan has implemented several plans and policies which directly relate to climate change adaptation and development priorities. The focus of these plans and policies is: food security and raising productivity, reducing poverty and enhancing adaptation and resilience to climate change, protecting and developing natural resources, land tenure problems and strengthening governance and institutional capacity. These interventions had limited success in achieving their objectives. The main reasons are: a lack of political stability and fluctuating economic and financial policies as well as weak administrative and implementation capacity of the government institutions. The main lessons learnt are: agricultural-development programmes require increased and more effective public and private partnershipsinvolving the main stakeholders. The low flow of finance to the agricultural sector remains one of the obstacles of agricultural growth. In addition to the poor rural infrastructure, the ongoing conflicts and social unrest in many parts of the country are strongly impacting the performance of the economy and constraining the development plans and policies.

This study intends to evaluate the relationship between the use of feed-in tariffs and the deployment of renewable energies. We collected a sample of 28 EU countries for the period 1990-2017. Following a panel data approach, we performed a random effects estimation. Among the several explanatory variables, feed-in tariffs, discriminated by different renewable energies’ technologies, are defined as the variables of interest in explaining the share of the electricity capacity generated by non-hydro renewable sources. The results suggest that only Wind and Waste impact the dependent variable allied to the share of electricity produced from both nuclear and fossil fuel sources and the prices of traditional energy sources. The previous findings are robust for OECD member countries and also for countries where feed-in tariffs are applied at least once in the period considered. Este estudo pretende avaliar a relação entre as tarifas feed-in e o desenvolvimento das energias renováveis. Selecionamos uma amostra de 28 países da UE cobrindo o período de 1990-2017. Para analisar os dados, adotamos uma abordagem de dados em painel realizando uma estimativa de efeitos aleatórios. Entre as diversas variáveis explicativas, os valores de tarifas feed-in discriminadas pelos diferentes tipos de tecnologia são definidos como as variáveis de interesse em explicar a parcela da capacidade elétrica gerada a partir de uma fonte renovável não hídrica. Os resultados sugerem que, das diferentes tecnologias em análise, apenas o Vento e os Resíduos impactam variável dependente, aliados à parcela da eletricidade gerada a partir de uma fonte de combustível nuclear e fóssil e dos preços das fontes tradicionais de energia. As conclusões anteriores são robustas para os países membros da OCDE e também para os países onde a tarifa feed-in é aplicada a pelo menos uma das tecnologias em análise.