Assessing the effects of technological progress on energy efficiency in the construction industry: A case of China

Energy-saving technologies in buildings have received great attention from energy efficiency researchers in the construction sector. Traditional research tends to focus on the energy used during building operation and in construction materials production, but it usually neglects the energy consumed in the building construction process. Very few studies have explored the impacts of technological progress on energy efficiency in the construction industry. This paper presents a model of the building construction process based on Cobb-Douglas production function. The model estimates the effects of technological progress on energy efficiency with the objective to examine the role that technological progress plays in energy savings in China's construction industry. The modeling results indicated that technological progress improved energy efficiency by an average of 7.1% per year from 1997 to 2014. Furthermore, three main technological progress factors (the efficiency of machinery and equipment, the proportion change of the energy structure, and research and development investment) were selected to analyze their effects on energy efficiency improvement. These positive effects were verified, and results show the effects of first two factors are significant. Finally, recommendations for promoting energy efficiency in the construction industry are proposed

Geography and development

The most striking fact about the economic geography of the world is the uneven spatial distribution of economic activity, including the coexistence of economic development and underdevelopment. High-income regions are almost entirely concentrated in a few temperate zones, half of the world's GDP is produced by 15 percent of the world's population, and 54 percent of the world's GDP is produced by countries occupying just 10 percent of the world's land area. The poorest half of the world's population produces only 14 percent of the world's GDP, and 17 of the poorest 20 nations are in tropical Africa. The unevenness is also manifest within countries and within metropolitan concentrations of activity. Why are these spatial differences in land rents and wages not bid away by firms and individuals in search of low-cost or high-income locations? Why does economic activity cluster in centers of activity? And what are the consequences of remoteness from existing centers? The authors argue that understanding these issues is central for understanding many aspects of economic development and underdevelopment at the international, national, and subcontinental levels. They review the theoretical and empirical work that illuminates how the spatial relationship between economic units changes and conclude that geography matters for development, but that economic growth is not governed by a geographic determinism. New economic centers can develop, and the costs of remoteness can be reduced. Many explicit policy instruments have been used to influence location decisions. But none has been systematically successful, and many have been very costly-in part because they were based on inappropriate expectations. Moreover, many ostensibly nonspatial policies that benefit specific sectors and households have spatial consequences since the targeted sectors and households are not distributed uniformly across space. These nonspatial policies can sometimes dominate explicitly spatial policies. Further work is needed to better understand these dynamics in developing countries.Economic Theory&Research,Decentralization,Labor Policies,Environmental Economics&Policies,Banks&Banking Reform,Banks&Banking Reform,Municipal Financial Management,Health Economics&Finance,Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies

Prospects for the hydrogen transition based on the network economic approach : Insights from the electricity and gas experience in Europe

This paper aims to investigate the transition to a new energy system based on hydrogen in the European liberalized framework. After analyzing the literature on the hydrogen infrastructure needs in Europe, we estimate the size and scope of the transition challenge.We take the theoretical framework of network economics to analyze early hydrogen infrastructure needs. Therefore, several concepts are applied to hydrogen economics such as demand club effects, scale economies on large infrastructures, scope economies, and positive socio-economical externalities. On the examples of the electric and natural gas industry formation in Europe, we argue for public intervention in order to create conditions to reach more rapidly the critical size of the network and to prompt network externalities allowing for the market diffusion of and, thus, an effective transition to the new energy system.Economics of regulation ; network economics ; technological change ; energy economics ; hydrogen ; electricity ; natural gas

Do regional trade pacts benefit the poor ? An illustration from the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement in Nicaragua

The main objective of this paper is to provide an ex-ante assessment of the poverty and income distribution impacts of the Central American Free Trade Area agreement on Nicaragua. The authors use a general equilibrium macro model to simulate trade reform scenarios and estimate their price effects, while a micro-module maps these price changes into real income changes at the individual household level. A useful insight from this analysis is that even if the final total impact on poverty is not too large, its dispersion across households-due to their heterogeneity of factor endowments, inputs use, commodity production, and consumption preferences-is significant and should be taken into account when designing compensatory policies. Additionally, growth and redistribution decomposition show that, at least in the short to medium run, redistribution can be as important as growth. The main policy message that emerges from the paper is that Nicaragua should consider enlarging its own liberalization to countries other than the United States to boost trade-induced poverty reductions.Economic Theory&Research,Free Trade,Inequality,Markets and Market Access,Consumption

Sustainable Development Data Availability on the Internet

Defining what Sustainability and Sustainable Development mean is a critical task, as they are global objectives, which cover different aspects of life often difficult to quantify and describe. Talking about sustainable development means dealing with the development and implementation of SD strategies at international as well as at local level. With this regard, SD information plays a key role in monitoring SD performances at different administration levels. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of sustainable data availability on the internet at international, European, national and regional level. The paper is novel in the fact that the attention of the whole analysis focused on internet, considered as the principal mean for accessing data. In fact, the web has become through the years a fundamental tool for exchanging information amongst people, organisations, institutes, governments, thanks to its easy accessibility for a wide knowledge exchange. Sustainable development data collected at different administrative levels are classified and processed according to different methods and procedures; they are gathered at different scales, in different periods and they have a different frequency of updating. Data accuracy and meta-information on available data considerably vary, too. Few organisations at the international and at the European level such as, for example, World Bank, United Nations, OECD, FAO, Eurostat, EEA committed themselves to process information belonging to different sources aiming at standardising and producing comparable data sets for several nations and regions. Following the above considerations, various international, European and national organisations’ databases were investigated in order to check the availability of data at different administrative levels, mostly focusing on those sectors considered as pillars for the definition and monitoring of the implementation of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy, as pointed out in the Communication of the EC SEC(2005) 161 final.Sustainability, Indicators, Regional Development, Internet, Database

Modeling Infrastructure Vulnerabilities and Adaptation to Climate Change in Urban Systems: Methodology and Application to Metropolitan Boston

Much of the infrastructure in use today was designed and constructed decades if not centuries ago. Many of these infrastructure systems are vulnerable to a variety of anthropogenic or natural disruptions even though their functioning is vital to the creation and maintenance of quality of life in a region. Moreover, concepts and designs have persisted even as technologies have changed. Yet the demands and technologies of the future may require infrastructures ? both material facilities and human institutions ? that are radically different from those of the present. Dealing appropriately with immediate infrastructure vulnerabilities and infrastructure evolution requires a combination of effective short-term crisis management and anticipatory, strategic thinking and planning. Both the "material nature" and institutional issues surrounding urban infrastructure in a changing environment pose formidable challenges to efforts by industrial ecologists to improve the sustainability of urban areas. This presentation describes a collaborative study carried out over the course of more than three years by a group of scientists from engineering, policy analysis, geography and public health, together with a local planning agency and over 200 stakeholders from the public, private and non-profit sectors in metropolitan Boston. The research was conducted as part of the CLIMB project, which explores Climate?s Long-term Impacts on Metro Boston. Special focus was given to vulnerabilities and dynamics of urban infrastructures for energy, communication, transportation, water run-off, and water quality, as well as the interrelatedness of these systems, and implications for public health. Computer-based scenarios are presented for potential future infrastructure dynamics under a variety of assumptions about changes in technology, infrastructure investment, and local climates. The presentation concludes with a set of strategies for environmental investment and policy making that are currently considered for metro Boston, and many of which are highly relevant to, and directly applicable in other locations.

The adaptation continuum: groundwork for the future

The focus of the program was to understand the challenges posed by climate change and climate variability on vulnerable groups and the policies needed to support climate adaptation in developing countries. The aim of the book is to share this experience in the hope that it will be helpful to those involved in shaping and implementing climate change policy

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table