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Background and aims: Alcohol‐related mortality risk is almost always greater in lower than higher socio‐economic positions (SEPs). There is little information on the evolution of this SEP gradient and its relationship with the economic cycle. Some results suggest that during economic expansions, there is a hypersensitivity of low‐SEP people to harmful drinking. The main objective of this study was to measure the evolution of educational inequality in alcohol‐related and non‐alcohol related mortality by sex and age group in Spain during 2012–19. Design, Setting and Measurements: This is a repeated cross‐sectional study. This study includes all residents in Spain aged 25 years and over from 2012 to 2019. (1) We calculated age‐standardized mortality rates (ASMRs) from strongly/moderately alcohol‐related causes (directly alcohol‐attributable, unspecified liver cirrhosis, liver and upper aerodigestive tract cancers and moderately alcohol‐related), weakly alcohol‐related causes and other causes by educational level. (2) We used age‐adjusted relative index of inequality (RII) and slope index of inequality (SII) to measure relative and absolute educational inequality in mortality, respectively. (3) Age‐adjusted annual percentage change (APC) was also used to measure linear trends in mortality by educational level. RII, SII and APC were obtained from negative binomial regression. Findings: Between 2012–15 and 2016–19, economic growth accelerated, the RII in mortality from strongly/moderately alcohol‐related causes increased from 2.0 to 2.2 among men and from 1.1 to 1.3 among women, and the SII in deaths/100 000 person‐years from 181.4 to 190.9 among men and from 18.9 to 46.5 among women. It also increased relative and absolute inequality in mortality from weakly alcohol‐related and other causes of death in both men and women. These increases in inequality were due primarily to a flattening or even reversal of the downward mortality trend among low‐ and medium‐educated people. Conclusions: During the economic expansion of 2012–19 in Spain, changes in mortality risk from strongly/moderately alcohol‐related causes were especially unfavourable among low‐ and medium‐educated people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early 1960s, Franco's Spain began to experience a rapid process of economic growth, which was encouraged by US diplomacy as it would underpin the stability required by the US defence program in the country. However, American officials felt that such an accelerated economic development should be orderly since chaotic modernization might spark social turmoil that would compromise the US geo-strategic objectives in Spain. The article unravels the US public diplomacy programs to steer Spanish society along with a stable development path based on US-inspired capitalism and alliance with the Western bloc. It examines the cultural, educational, and informational means employed by the US government in a bid to channel the socio-economic upheaval occurring in Spain in a direction that was compatible with US security interests. We also argue that modernization theory provided the ideological and intellectual framework for US persuasion efforts to harness Spain's socio-economic ferment. Nevertheless, the 'development model' promoted by the dictatorship generated inequalities and conflicts that fuelled anti-American sentiment among sectors of Spanish society called to play a role in the future post-Franco transition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has an enormous capacity to generate economic growth and boost the labor market, but contributing to sustainable development is one of the main challenges today. The slow philosophy approach advocates slow tourism as a responsible and sustainable way of life and consumption, and the Spanish Cittaslow network has adopted this approach. The objective of this research is to analyze progress in compliance with the principles of slow tourism in the Spanish Cittaslow network. The applied methodology consists of a comparative analysis of the tourism offerings communicated on the official websites of the Spanish Cittaslow municipalities, in light of slow tourism principles. The findings show that the 12 municipalities that have registered in the Citta Slow network in Spain are relevant in terms of historical heritage and natural resources, but only 30% take advantage of the uniqueness of being a Cittaslow to systematically promote their tourism. Publication of its Cittaslow indicators could accelerate progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between economic development and inequality has been closely examined by researchers. From the seminal work of Kuznets to the more recent work of Piketty, market forces in boom cycles, on the one hand, and institutional action, on the other, have been featured as the main drivers of change in income distribution towards more egalitarian societies. In the Spanish case, previous research has described varied processes with regard to the period of growth that followed the approval of the Stabilisation Plan during the Franco dictatorship (1959–1973). Thus, Alcaide reportedly detected a limited capacity of the developmentalist growth model to reduce inequality, which he attributed to institutional limitations. In contrast, later studies have highlighted the decline in inequality during the same period. This paper aims to investigate the effects of this growth cycle by examining the behaviour of wages in the most dynamic sector of the Spanish economy, industry. Specifically, by using the wage survey compiled by the Instituto Nacional de Estadística, the paper nuances previous research and shows how despite explosive growth, the developmentalist model and the peculiar institutional framework built within the Franco dictatorship contributed to increasing wage dispersion and income inequality in most industrial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting limits on government action is critical to economic development. Some forms of government organization, such as market‐preserving federalism, seem effective to protect property rights in the long term with good results for economic efficiency. Spain endowed its regions with "Statutes of Autonomy" in the 1980s thus moving from a centralized to a decentralized form of government. It renewed and expanded some of the statutes in the 2000s. This article investigates whether these two waves of regionalization, which had their own characteristics in each region, had led to positive effects on economic performance. Using a novel autonomous region/country‐matched balanced sample for the period 1950–2016, we apply the synthetic control method and compare the economic growth trajectories of Spanish regions with their synthetic control groups not affected by the regionalization process. We show that the first wave of "Statutes of Autonomy" had a positive but temporary economic growth impact. By contrast, the second wave of regionalization of the 2000s is associated with a negative growth impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research background: Although some authors propose that economic growth should reduce crime rates as wider opportunities to earn money in a legal way diminish the incentives to commit illegal activities and lead to rising costs of the latter, the results of many studies indicate that an increase in crime rates is also possible under the conditions of economic growth. There are also differing views on the relationship between various economic indicators and crime rates as well as the nature of the relationship between the above-mentioned phenomena in the long and short run. Purpose of the article: After classifying the EU member states by their crime and economic indicators, the main objective of the article is to assess the relationship between the crime and economic development and identify the causes of this relationship. Methods: Systematic and comparative literature analysis, the Promethee and Entropy methods, Spearman's correlation coefficient. Findings & value added: The Promethee method, together with the Entropy method, were used to estimate the weights of the EU member states with respect to their crime and economic development indicators. The most pronounced differences were recorded in Portugal, Spain, and the Slovak Republic. The rankings estimated for the EU member states revealed that although economic situation affects crime rate, it can also be affected by the differences in cultural and political development. Scientific novelty lies in complementing the theory of the shadow economy with the results showing that compared to other crimes, corruption has the greatest weight when examining the relationship between economic development and crime. The practical significance of the research lies in classifying the EU member states into 4 groups with consideration of the relationship between crime and economic development, which may help public authorities to devise the target measures for the effective fight against crime given the nature of the relationship between crime and economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) and tourism are listed as essential components of economic growth in many countries. However, empirical evidence remains controversial and ambiguous. This paper investigates the long-run effects of international tourism and FDI inflows on the rate of economic growth in Spain as an economy with a great GDP share of tourism and FDI. By employing a non-linear ARDL analysis, this study suggests that although international tourism development improves the economic growth rate, it might be wishful thinking to improve this rate by increasing the current rate of FDI in this country if the quality of FDI and its rate of return is as low as in the past. The reasons and solutions are explored in detail, and policy implications are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between government efficiency—an important dimension of quality of government—and economic growth at the municipal level in 1,820 Spanish municipalities during the period 2008–2015. At this level of disaggregation, the literature is virtually nonexistent due to severe data constraints. The efficiency of local government provides an accurate indicator of how good local authorities are in managing their budget. This variable is expected to be highly correlated with other more traditional quality of government indicators, such as corruption. After computing our measure, we then use it in a growth regression framework. We find a dominant positive effect of government efficiency on income per capita growth, which is robust to a wide variety of scenarios. Our findings also suggest that increases in local government quality are particularly rewarding for the poorest municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Open data are considered an essential resource for governments, businesses, and citizens. In that context, open data portals have potential for creating enormous economic growth. Open data portals should allow the reuse of open data, ensure the efficiency of data transmission, and enable professional initiatives based on data reuse. However, there are portals that are inefficient because they do not allow reuse of their data. The objective of this work is to define and identify open data portals that do not offer the possibility for professional reuse of their data. We refer to them as “pretender open data portals”. The following research questions are considered herein: What minimum criteria must an open data portal satisfy to enable professional reuse of open data? How can portals that do not meet these criteria be identified? And, what problems might these portals present, and how they might be solved? The results of an analysis of two samples of open data portals in Spain reveal that 63.8% and 56.1% of the portals analyzed in 2019 and 2021, respectively, can be considered pretender open data portals. The existence of pretender open data portals can have negative economic and social impacts, such as wasting public resources and projecting a negative image of the government’s open data policies. To find coordination mechanisms to develop open data portals that, through the professional reuse of their data can create economic and social value, is one important challenge. The analysis of best practices of open data portals can be also a way to go in deep in the understanding of open data reuse impact not only from a professional standpoint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the intersectoral relationships that characterized the economic structures of three countries during the 1980s and the first half of the 2000s (Mexico, 2003; South Korea and Spain, 2005). The present article attempts to explain potential growth trajectories using structural sensitivity analysis and the important coefficients (IC) by tolerable limits (LT) methodology, elaborating a typology of intersectoral articulation in each economy based on the characteristics of the countries' respective productive structures. This typology also accounted for the article's approach to the structural changes registered in each economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the recent decades, neoliberal policies have prioritized economic growth to the detriment of social cohesion and the environment. Within these policy tendencies, some societies have attempted to promote sustainable collective wellbeing through comprehensive policy mixes. From an institutionalist economic sociology perspective, this article compares how the four regions in Spain with the highest economic growth have dealt with social cohesion and the environment. Based on quantitative and qualitative data, two models are found: the liberal cases of Madrid and Catalonia, focused on economic growth, and the collectivist cases of the Basque Country and Navarre, aimed at comprehensive wellbeing. Each model displays a configuration of politics (institutional power relations and the organization of socioeconomic interests) and policy mix (the relations between two sets of policies: economic development policies and comprehensive wellbeing policies). The policy mix of the collectivist model has generated higher sustainable collective wellbeing driven by transformative public-civil collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the divergent economic trajectories of Barcelona and Madrid since Spain's transition to democracy. It highlights how Barcelona, the city that was better positioned four decades ago to emerge as the main Spanish economic hub, has lost out to Madrid. We argue that the contrasting trajectories of the two cities have less to do with the pull of Madrid as the capital of Spain, with the development of new infrastructure in the country, or with agglomeration economies, and more with institutional factors. A growing societal divide in Barcelona along economic, social, and identity lines has led to a greater breakdown of trust and to the development of strong groups with limited capacity to bridge with one another than in Madrid. This has entailed the emergence of negative externalities that have limited the economic potential for growth in Barcelona and facilitated the rise of Madrid as the main economic hub within Spain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last 20 years of sociodemographic history in Spain cannot be interpreted without considering the impact of foreign immigration, numerous publications have shown. The aim of this article is to contribute a clear spatial representation of migrants in Spain by combining statistical and mapping methods. Maps showing the rate of variation of immigrant populations point to the existence of an uneven distribution around Spain, during both the period of economic growth and the years when migratory flows waned. On the other hand, the immigrant clusters show that certain geographic areas in Spain attract specific groups; the extent of their presence can be seen on density maps based on location coefficients. In short, this article provides an understanding of foreign immigration in Spain, which other approaches have not achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Renewable energy sources (RES) can play a significant role in economic growth. This article examines the development of the wind energy market in the EU. The applicable regulations, directives, and legal acts are reviewed, and the State's role in the development of the renewable energy market is discussed. The analyses were carried out based on the available literature and Eurostat data. The authors of the paper used basic statistics to summarize the changes in wind energy and make a prognosis. The data analysis uses the Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average Method (ARIMA). The survey found that the highest average wind cumulative installed capacities were in Germany (31026 MW), Spain (18602 MW), United Kingdom (7894 MW) and France (6108 MW). Our analysis indicates that the biggest average annual installed wind capacity was in Germany (2952.6 MW), Spain (1224.5 MW) and the United Kingdom (1363.8 MW). These same countries achieved the highest average wind gross electricity production in the years 2004–17: Germany (50.9 TWh), Spain (39.3 TWh) and United Kingdom (18.9 TWh). The study finds that wind cumulative installed capacity will increase in most countries of the EU. • The European Union onshore wind energy market seems to be stable. • Wind power plays an important role as a source of energy supply. • The most important wind gross electricity producers in the EU are: Germany and Spain. • The highest increase of wind cumulative installed capacity in 2022 will be in Croatia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media can play a key role in shaping public opinion and setting a policy agenda by conveying and influencing public discourse. This article evaluates how the Spanish media has covered the topic of the forest bioeconomy and what kind of discourse it has produced and reproduced around it. For this purpose, we analysed the content of 204 national and regional newspaper articles. The results reveal the scarce penetration of the forest bioeconomy in media and some weaknesses in the narrative production and communicative dimension. The discourse is mainly constructed by governments with a limited presence of multiple stakeholders and an absence of conflict and divergent or alternative views. In addition, the discourse only addresses regional or local problems within the framework of an extended and dominant paradigm of economic growth considering the forest bioeconomy as an opportunity to combat fire, rural abandonment, smallholdings, and poor forest management. We conclude that media is not using its strategic potential and capacity as a public space. To become agents of change, the media should reflect a forest bioeconomy based on successful experiences of innovation and valorization, and adopt a transformative social vision that gives relevance to the interconnection between multiple stakeholders, forest multifunctionality and rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The immigration from Latin America and the Caribbean to Spain in the turn of the century has been broadly studied since it originated flows of a large amount in times of economic expansion (1998-2007), when the Spanish labour market demanded workforce in the secondary segments. Since 2008 a shortening of inflows occurred as well as an increase of the return and ongoing migrations, consistent with the intensity of the economic crisis. These flows diminish during the incipient post-crisis period (2015-2017) and immigration resumes. With the target to deepen in these trends, this study is based on information provided by the Residential Variation Statistics microdata, which allows us to characterize the evolution of Latin Americans' migrations to and from Spain. The sequence of these flows, regarding the countries of origin, and their features according to the age-sex patterns, inform us of disparate dynamics and differentiated migratory cycles, as well as of changes that point to a reconfiguration of migration trends throughout the study stage and of more intense and complex forms of mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Society has changed during the last 100 years of evolution; however, some problems, such as suicide, remain. The objective here is to carry out a long-term epidemiological study in Spain, and to calculate the social and labor costs of 2016. Method: Epidemiological data were obtained from official data obtained between 1906 - 2016. The calculation of the costs of suicides included the social costs and the costs of production losses (labor costs). The latter were obtained by the human capital method, taking into account the unemployment rate. The economic growth rate stood at 2.6% per year. Results: The suicide rate was between 4 and 8% per year. The evolution during these 100 years had three periods. Until 1940 it had slight increases, and then it decreased until 1980 and, subsequently, the rate increased until it reached almost 8% in 2016. The costs of the suicides were 2,167 million € of economic losses for society, or its equivalent of 607 € for suicide. Conclusions: Public health policies aimed at the prevention of suicide should be increased, and supported by the economic costs they mean for society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses social structures of accumulation theory in combination with Ernesto Laclau's discourse theory in order to analyze the institutional mechanisms that sustained the long economic expansion of the Spanish economy between 1995 and 2008. Productive deficiencies endogenously gave way to several trends that, despite displaying a highly contradictory character when considered in isolation, managed to coalesce into a relatively coherent whole for more than a decade, namely, a massive housing bubble, an explosion of private debt in the face of real wage stagnation, and family economies being submitted to increasing strains. Moreover, their joint occurrence prevented their inherently conflictive nature from acquiring a political expression liable to undo the institutional structure itself, so that a social order was successfully reproduced throughout the whole expansion phase. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this paper is to link the literatures on economic complexity, income equality and environmental quality within the context of the Environmental Kuznets Trilemma. Within this framework, it is possible to measure the presence of an impossible trinity of irreconcilable objectives: economic growth, equal distribution of income and environmental sustainability. Our paper revisits this trilemma by focusing on economic complexity (EC) indexes instead of direct measures of economic growth, and applies this analysis to the sub-national level. We link these three cutting-edge topics by means of novel datasets computed for the Spanish economy at the province level (NUTS-3) for a long period (2002–16). Our paper also sheds new light on the spatial patterns of the trilemma's three dimensions and their implications for the future of Spain's more peripheral regions. ⁃ This paper links the literatures on economic complexity, income equality and environmental quality within the context of the Environmental Kuznets Trilemma. ⁃ Our paper focuses on economic complexity indexes instead of direct measures of economic growth, and applies this analysis to the sub-national level, using novel datasets for the Spanish provinces (NUTS-3) for a long period (2002–16). ⁃ Our paper shows a clear tension between economic growth and complexity versus income equality and environmental quality. The econometric analysis verifies the classic trilemma (equality-sustainability-growth), but also of our new version: equality-sustainability-complexity. ⁃ The paper also tests the presence of a quadrilemma, discussing the role to which a province's level of complexity tends to play in the tensions between growth, inequality, and sustainability. The results open new avenues for the smart specialization of regions within countries, something specially relevant in the COVID-19 crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that shortage of human activity may represent an internal constraint to economic growth as relevant as external resource and sink constraints. Human time is required, both inside and outside the market, to produce and consume the goods and services needed to sustain societal metabolism. The time allocation profile is therefore an emergent property of the societal metabolic pattern. When most time is invested in services and final consumption rather than supplying the inputs required by the metabolic process, further growth is constrained. This problem may be temporarily overcome by three strategies: (i) increasing capital investment to boost labor productivity in the productive sectors; (ii) externalizing the requirement of working hours through imports of goods and services; (iii) importing economically active population through immigration. Each strategy is illustrated with an empirical example: (i) a comparison of the evolution of the profile of time and capital allocation between China and the EU; (ii) an assessment of the labor hours embodied in EU imports; (iii) an analysis of demographic changes in response to immigration in Spain. While these strategies can temporarily overcome constraints to economic growth at the national level, they do not represent a long-term solution at the global level. • Human time represents a key internal constraint to economic growth. • The richer the society the stronger is the working time constrains in its economy. • The profile of allocation of human activity in a society is an emergent property. • A metabolic perspective allows a contingent analysis of human time allocation. • There are individual, household, sectoral, national, and global time constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study on the socio-economic development that promotes an industrial mining tourism in Córdoba, Spain. It proposes an alternative strategy for new economic vitality and heritage-related activity to stabilize the social situation and population decline in the province' coal mining industry. The study highlights the role of public administrators in structuring different touristic resources while preserving the heritage that reflect the culture and history of Spain.

El artículo trata el nivel de regulación del comercio en España comparado con el de la Unión Europea. Afirma que la regulación es necesario para el funcionamiento eficaz del comercio, aunque la regulación excesiva pueda suprimir el crecimiento económico. Informa que la cuantía de regulación económica en España excede la de la Unión Europea. Nota que el mayor crecimiento económico de los Estados Unidos relativo a el europeo se debe al nivel relativamente bajo de regulación en ése.

This study explores the impact of clean energy and non-renewable energy consumption on CO2 emissions and economic growth within two phases (formative and expansion) of renewable energy diffusion for three selected countries (France, Spain, and Sweden). The vector autoregression (VAR) model is estimated on the basis of annual data disaggregated into quarterly data. The Granger causality results reveal distinctive differences in the causality patterns across countries and two phases of renewables diffusion. Clean energy consumption contributes to a decline of emissions more clearly in the expansion phase in France and Spain. However, this effect seems to be counteracted by the increases in emissions due to economic growth and non-renewable energy consumption. Therefore, clean energy consumption has not yet led to a decoupling of economic growth from emissions in France and Spain; in contrast, the findings for Sweden evidence such a decoupling due to the neutrality between economic growth and emissions. Generally, the findings show that despite the enormous growth of renewables and active mitigation policies, CO2 emissions have not substantially decreased in selected countries or globally. Focused and coordinated policy action, not only at the EU level but also globally, is urgently needed to overhaul existing fossil-fuel economies into low-carbon economies and ultimately meet the relevant climate targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the climate change emergency, reducing energy consumption, which is responsible for most greenhouse gases emissions worldwide, is a priority. However, the strong historical link between energy consumption and economic growth questions whether continued economic growth is compatible with energy conservation targets. Conventional final energy analysis (common analysis methods applied at the final energy stage) has provided limited insights to this nexus. In response, this paper explores the extent to which useful stage analysis provides additional insights using three common methods: aggregate energy-economy analysis (growth rates, energy intensities, and Index Decomposition Analysis), energy-GDP causality testing, and Aggregate Production Function modelling, using Spain (1960–2016) as empirical case study. The results reveal that of the three methods investigated, aggregate energy-economy analysis provides the greatest insights, including that Spain is far from achieving absolute energy-GDP decoupling. Further, moving to the useful stage indicates that the extent of decoupling is even less than suggested at the final energy stage, and that increasing final energy consumption has historically fully offset efficiency gains. In contrast, whether applied at the final energy or useful stage, energy-GDP causality testing and Aggregate Production Function modelling reveal little about the energy-economy nexus — the results even suggest that these tools are not appropriate and may mislead. Thus, useful stage analysis is necessary but not sufficient for delivering further energy-economy insights; there is also a need for exploring alternative, reliable, energy-economy analysis methods. Indeed, the lack of robustness of Aggregate Production Function modelling and energy-GDP causality testing is worrisome. • Final energy analysis has delivered limited insights to the energy-economy nexus. • Three common analysis methods are assessed at both final and useful energy stages. • Aggregate energy-economy analysis yields additional benefits at the useful stage. • Energy-GDP causality testing and Aggregate Production Functions lack insights at both energy stages. • A move to alternative, useful stage energy-economy analytical methods is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Identification and selection of the most important influencing factors on ocupational health indicators. • Relationship between the occupational health indicators and influencing factors. • Using Lasso, Elastic Net and AdaLasso regression methods. • Study of occupational accidents in Spain in the time period 1995–2017. This paper analyses the relationship between the evolution of occupational health indicators, i.e. frequency rate (FR), severity rate (SR) and days lost per accident (DLA), and the performance of relevant influencing factors related to the labour market, the productivity structure and the economy using regression shrinkage methods: the Lasso, Elastic Net and AdaLasso regression methods. The advantage of applying these methods is that they overcome two common problems faced in this type of analysis: the number of input factors greatly exceeds the number of observations (data set) and the multicollinearity of the input factors. A case study is included focused on occupational accidents in Spain in the time period 1995–2017. The analysis covers an unstable period in the Spanish labour market consisting of stages of economic growth and deep recession as well as changes in the structure of the production system. The shrinkage methods identified and selected the most important factors that significantly affected the occupational health indicators. The AdaLasso method provided the best results for FR y DLA, based on the bayesian information criterion (BIC) and performed slightly worse than Elastic Net for SR. It can be concluded that AdaLasso seems to be the most consistent and robust method and also explains the different relationships with the least number of factors (variables). Based on the results of the AdaLasso regression method, Factor Hours Worked showed a strong positive relationship with all three indicators, while the Total Females Employed and Agriculture Sector factors showed a strong negative relationship with FR and SR. However, several factors affecting either FR or DLA seemed to have no affect on SR, while others affected each other in the same way but with weaker or stronger relationships. The results found were not only consistent with the results of the health indicators analysed in previous work, but also provided additional insights into occupational indicators that have not been covered up to now. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• New power system may play a role in the growth of the economy of the regions. • A multiscale analysis is developed to evaluate social impact of the facilities layout. • Social indexes are developed to determine the location of power facilities. • Unemployment rate, regional GDP and population density are used as reference. • Multiobjective optimization provides a tool for the design of a social power system. A new energy system represents investment and job creation opportunities across any region. The use of economic and/or social criteria to locate the collecting technologies and the power production plants can strengthen the economy and mitigate the effect of the substitution of fossil based power plants. Economy growth, employment and population equity indexes and a mathematical formulation are developed to evaluate the optimal social location of renewable energy collection devices and power plants. These facilities are based on the storage of wind and solar energy in the form of metal hydride that produces power in a fuel cell using the hydrogen generated in its decomposition. The case study of Spain is considered to evaluate the substitution of base electricity since coal and nuclear facilities are closing down in June 2020 and 2030 respectively. Aiming at economic growth, a more distributed location of wind farms and PV panels is selected at a cost. If job generation is the target, only PV panels are selected and the preferred location is the Southern part of the country. However, a trade-off for the lay out can be achieved considering a multiobjective solution involving costs and social background. Substituting coal and nuclear power plants can generate over 500k jobs and help develop the regions reducing the impact of depopulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between renewable and nuclear energy consumption, carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth by using the Granger causality and non-linear impulse response function in a business cycle in Spain. We estimate the threshold vector autoregression (TVAR) model on the basis of annual data from the period 1970–2018, which are disaggregated into quarterly data to obtain robust empirical results through avoiding a sample size problem. Our analysis reveals that economic growth and CO2 emissions are positively correlated during expansions but not during recessions. Moreover, we find that rising nuclear energy consumption leads to decreased CO2 emissions during expansions, while the impact of increasing renewable energy consumption on emissions is negative but insignificant. In addition, there is a positive feedback between nuclear energy consumption and economic growth, but unidirectional positive causality running from renewable energy consumption to economic growth in upturns. Our findings do indicate that both nuclear and renewable energy consumption contribute to a reduction in emissions; however, the rise in economic activity, leading to a greater increase in emissions, offsets this positive impact of green energy. Therefore, a decoupling of economic growth from CO2 emissions is not observed. These results demand some crucial changes in legislation targeted at reducing emissions, as green energy alone is insufficient to reach this goal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an investigation into the sustainability of the electrical system in Spain. The analysis covers historic inventories of power generation, installed capacity and technology mix since 1990 and also contemplates four alternative projections for 2030 and 2050. The sustainability is evaluated using eight indicators that provide objective information about the environmental (climate change, fossil depletion, ozone layer depletion, terrestrial acidification, human toxicity and photochemical smog), economic (levelized cost of electricity) and socio-economic (direct employment) performance of the system. The results show an increase in the magnitude of the environmental impacts between 1990 and 2008, due to a growing power demand triggered by economic expansion. After 2008, the environmental performance improves due to the economic recession and the penetration of renewable energies. Overall, the cost of power generation remains rather stable as rising expenses generated by renewables are compensated by a progressive reduction in the cost of fossil technologies. Direct employment generation has been strongly stimulated by the upsurge in renewables that has taken place in Spain after 2008. Regarding future scenarios, the results evidence that the most ambitious projections in terms of renewable penetration perform best in terms of environmental performance, employment generation and reduced costs (€/MWh). The significance of these benefits was particularly clear in the 2050 scenario. In the long term, the scenario considering higher fossil fuel contributions (ST) performed worst in all sustainability indicators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]