12 research outputs found
Identifying the sources of structural changes in CO2 emissions in Italy
Decomposition analysis represents an important tool in order to highlight the impli- cation of
socio-economic, employment and environmental indicators. In addition, it also helps to assess the
determinants which are responsible for changes in such indi- cators. In this paper, changes in CO2
emissions in Italy are examined on the basis of the combination of singular value decomposition
(SVD) analysis and structural decomposition analysis (SDA). SVD is used to decompose the total
environmen- tal pollution impact coefficient matrix and the pollution multiplier matrix in three
different factors: key structures of the policy objective, key structures of the policy control and
singular values to find out the potential behaviour of the economy. Fur- thermore, SDA is carried
out to classify the CO2 emission into four main determi- nants over a period of fourteen years i.e.
from 1995 to 2009. These four determinants include: the policy objective effects, the policy
control effects, the singular values effects and the final demand structure effects. The results
point out that the CO2 emissions decreased during the overall period of 1995–2009, the only
exception to this was the period 1995–2000 in which the CO2 emissions increased to 0.29% and
technological change was a positive contributor to the increase of carbon emission during this
period. Structural decomposition suggests that CO2 increases with an increase in the final demand,
implying that a reduction in CO2 emissions is possible increase in demand is based on renewable
energies or if economic growth
is sustainable