Annual average daily traffic estimation in England and Wales: An application of clustering and regression modelling

Collection of Annual Average Daily Traffic (AADT) is of major importance for a number of applications in road transport urban and environmental studies. However, traffic measurements are undertaken only for a part of the road network with minor roads usually excluded. This paper suggests a methodology to estimate AADT in England and Wales applicable across the full road network, so that traffic for both major and minor roads can be approximated. This is achieved by consolidating clustering and regression modelling and using a comprehensive set of variables related to roadway, socioeconomic and land use characteristics. The methodological output reveals traffic patterns across urban and rural areas as well as produces accurate results for all road classes. Support Vector Regression (SVR) and Random Forest (RF) are found to outperform the traditional Linear Regression, although the findings suggest that data clustering is key for significant reduction in prediction errors

The long-term effect of renewable electricity on employment in the United Kingdom

Assessment of the employment impact of renewable electricity technologies is generally implemented through either complex and data-intensive methods (such as Computable General Equilibrium models) or simplistic approaches, normally focused on specific energy generation technologies, such as employment factors. In contrast, this article proposes a transparent and easily reproducible econometric methodology based on the Vector Error Correction model that uses aggregated and widely available data. The model is applied to the power generation sector in the United Kingdom using annual data from 1990 onwards and provides evidence that the long-term employment impact of renewable technologies is much higher than the impact arising from deploying nuclear or natural gas technologies. The impulse response function analysis indicates that a permanent 1 Gigawatt-hours increase in annual electricity supply generated by renewable technologies creates 3.5 jobs in the long-term period. Finally, this study derives the implications of the findings in the context of decarbonisation scenarios for the power sector in the United Kingdom and assesses the extent to which decarbonisation pathways based on renewable electricity contribute to stimulating employment in the generation sector

Road Emissions in London: Insights from Geographically Detailed Classification and Regression Modelling

Greenhouse gases and air pollutant emissions originating from road transport continues to rise in the UK, indicating a significant contribution to climate change and negative impacts on human health and ecosystems. However, emissions are usually estimated at aggregated levels, and on many occasions roads of minor importance are not taken into account, normally due to lack of traffic counts. This paper presents a methodology enabling estimation of air pollutants and CO_{2} for each street segment in the Greater London area. This is achieved by applying a hybrid probabilistic classification–regression approach on a set of variables believed to affect traffic volumes and utilizing emission factors. The output reveals pollution hot spots and the effects of open spaces in a spatially rich dataset. Considering the disaggregated approach, the methodology can be used to facilitate policy making for both local and national aggregated levels

Goodbye Warm Front: Evaluating the Delivery of Energy Efficiency Retrofits in Low-income Homes in England from 2005 to 2012

For over 10 years, the Warm Front scheme (WFS) was the primary tool through which Government sought to improve the energy efficiency of owner occupied homes in or at risk of fuel poverty in England. Beginning in 2000, and closing in 2012/13, the WFS provided energy efficient heating and insulation measures to low income households. Targeting and delivery of retrofit measures to vulnerable households is limited by the ability to identify them from available data. Vulnerable households may be ‘unseen’ or be unable to access government programmes because they lack the means or awareness. Key questions to be addressed in evaluating the WFS are: how effective was the targeting in meeting fuel poverty need? How did changes in eligibility affect applications? And, what factors affected application success? A database collected on all WFS applications (successful and unsuccessful) was used to examine the targeting and delivery of measures. The findings show that the uptake of measures among vulnerable households broadly mirrored the concentration of fuel poverty risk across England. Ethnic minority households made fewer applications to the scheme, but were more likely be approved. The WFS was able to treat a significant proportion of the target population over the scheme period examined, over 1.5 million households. However, higher uptake rates were affected by ethnicity, suggesting that engagement may need to be more specifically tailored in the future

An optimisation framework for the strategic design of synthetic natural gas (BioSNG) supply chains

A general optimisation framework based on a spatially-explicit multiperiod mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model is proposed to address the strategic design of BioSNG supply chains. The framework considers procurement of feedstocks, plantation of energy crops, and different modes for transportation of feedstocks and final products. The mathematical framework allows researches and policy makers to investigate scenarios that promote the development of BioSNG supply chains in a regional and/or national context. The capabilities of the proposed model are illustrated through the implementation of a set of case studies based on the UK. The results revealed that domestic resources in the UK can supply up to 21.4% of the total gas demand projected by the UK National Grid in the scenario “Slow progression” for a planning horizon of 20 years. However, despite the considerable potential for production of BioSNG, the role of the government through subsidisation schemes such as feed-in tariff and Renewable Obligation Certificates (ROCs) is crucial in order to make the development of these resources economically attractive for private sectors

The causal impact of economic growth on material use in Europe

Several scholars and policy-makers have claimed that Europe, and Western Europe in particular, has managed to ‘decouple’ economic growth from material use. We identify and address one major limitation in the existing literature – failure to take the endogeneity of economic growth into account. Based on a panel data-set of 32 European countries from 2000 to 2014, we estimate the causal impact of gross domestic product (GDP) on domestic material consumption (DMC) applying an instrumental variable approach. We use the number of storm occurrences as an instrument for GDP, which we show is both relevant and valid. Our results provide new evidence that increasing the GDP growth rate causes the DMC growth rate to increase for Western Europe, whereas the effect is insignificant for the Eastern European economies and Europe as a whole. As our results partly question current wisdom on the achievements of ‘decoupling’, especially among European policy-makers, we offer two explanations that are consistent with these results

Carbon leakage and agriculture: A literature review on emissions mitigation policies

The risks of carbon leakage associated with climate policies in the agricultural sector remains under- researched. Studies to date suggest that carbon pricing policies implemented by a single country, or small group of countries, reduce global emissions but also affect the international competitiveness of these countries’ agricultural sectors and induce carbon leakage. While carbon leakage can be prevented with trade-related measures that adjust emissions prices at the border, such measures applied in developed countries could potentially lead to significant welfare losses for developing countries that heavily rely on agricultural exports. That said, important caveats apply to the reviewed studies: i) from an environmental perspective, estimations of carbon leakage rates alone do not offer a comprehensive assessment of how optimally agricultural activities are allocated across countries; ii) most of the studies estimate the effects of additional environmental policies, such as carbon taxes, and ignore the effects of existing policies, including market distorting and potentially environmentally harmful support for agricultural production

Towards a sustainable hydrogen economy: Optimisation-based framework for hydrogen infrastructure development

This work studies the development of a sustainable hydrogen infrastructure that supports the transition towards a low-carbon transport system in the United Kingdom (UK). The future hydrogen demand is forecasted over time using a logistic diffusion model, which reaches 50% of the market share by 2070. The problem is solved using an extension of SHIPMod, an optimisation-based framework that consists of a multi-period spatially-explicit mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation. The optimisation model combines the infrastructure elements required throughout the different phases of the transition, namely economies of scale, road and pipeline transportation modes and carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, in order to minimise the present value of the total infrastructure cost using a discounted cash-flow analysis. The results show that the combination of all these elements in the mathematical formulation renders optimal solutions with the gradual infrastructure investments over time required for the transition towards a sustainable hydrogen economy

Technology shocks and the Prebisch-Singer hypothesis

Can technology neutralize the threat that depletion poses to resource availability? We offer new insights into this long-standing topic by analysing the US mining sector of iron ore, an important primary commodity used in a wide range of industrial productions. We develop a new econometric approach that allows to distinguish the sign of unobserved shocks, and we use it to study potential asymmetries between technology and scarcity. We find that technological progress produces stronger and more persistent effects on productivity and price than the natural action of resource depletion, with global market structure influencing the size of such effect