Besides promising economic growth, will the Italian NRRP also produce fewer emissions

The investment projects funded by the Italian National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) aim to trigger an increase in GDP, that is in turn expected to drive energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions up. At the same time, since an important share of the Plan’s investments is aimed at facilitating the green transition, we expect favorable effects on emissions. Which one of these two effects will prevail remains to be ascertained. In this study we have used the GEM model by Oxford Economics to build a number of scenarios and generate the relevant simulations. To validate the use of GEM we also considered the macroeconomic impact on GDP and unemployment rate generated by the model and compared the results with those presented by other institutions and obtained using different models. The results show that when the green investments of the NRRP display their effects, there are climatic benefits in terms of reduced emissions. Compared to the implementation of the NRRP in 2021, however, the reduction in emissions by 2030 is modest and equal to 5%. As those investments largely refer to the adoption of clean technologies, the climate benefits are likely to be more substantial only in subsequent years and over longer horizon

Il futuro del clima: prevenire e adattarsi al cambiamento climatico

Robert Pindyck’s recently published book, Climate Future: Averting and Adapting to Climate Change, attempts to answer the questions that in the light of great uncertainty even lay readers are asking. There are two key issues. How will the climate react if greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions continue to increase in the coming decades? How much will temperatures rise? How will global warming affect sea levels, the severity and frequency of storms and hurricanes, droughts, and other aspects of the climate? And, more importantly, what economic and social damages will these changes produce? Reducing emissions will not be enough, and Pindyck’s recommendation is to invest in adaptation

A review of macroeconomic models for the WEFE nexus assessment

The Water, Energy, Food and Ecosystems (WEFE) nexus refers to the system of complex and highly non-linear interconnections between these four elements. It now represents the basic framework to assess and design policies characterized by an holistic environmental end economical perspective. In this work, we provide a systematic review of the macroeconomic models investigating its components as well as combinations of them and their interlinkages with the economic system. We focus on four different types of macroeconomic models: Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) models, Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), Agent-based Models (ABMs), and Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) models. On the basis of our review, we find that the structure of IAMs is currently the most used to represent the nexus complexity, while DSGE models focus only on single components but appear to be better suited to account for the randomization of exogenous shocks. CGE models and ABMs could be more effective on the side of the policy perspective. Indeed, the former can account for interlinkages across sectors and countries, while the latter can define theoretical frameworks that better approximate reality

Exploring macroeconomic models in the water, energy, food, and ecosystem (WEFE) field: a comprehensive review

This study conducts a comprehensive review of macroeconomic models within the Water, Energy, Food, and Ecosystem (WEFE) nexus, considering four different approaches: computable general equilibrium (CGE) models, integrated assessment models (IAMs), agent-based models (ABMs), and dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models. Specifically, we examine how macroeconomic models represent not only the WEFE nexus as a whole but also its individual components and their combinations. Spanning a collection of 77 papers published in the last 20 years, this review underscores the prevalence of CGE models and IAMs, followed by ABMs, as dominant avenues of research within this field. CGE models frequently investigate interconnections between pairs of WEFE elements, while IAMs focus on the whole nexus. At the same time, ABMs do not exhibit a clear pattern, whereas DSGE models predominantly concentrate on the energy component alone. Overall, our findings indicate that the development of DSGE models and ABMs is still in its early stages. DSGE models potentially allow the analysis of uncertainty and risk in this field, while ABMs might offer new insights into the complex interactions between natural and human systems but still lack a common framework

Sustainable development goals and the European Cohesion Policy: an application to the autonomous Region of Sardinia

Paramount to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the effective tackling of the 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs) is the cooperation and coordination of the different levels of government - i.e. the supranational, national and local levels. This is due to the very nature of the SDGs, which are multi-dimensional and intended to guide and boost sustainable development at multiple scales. The European Union (EU) demonstrated a full commitment to the Agenda, making sustainable development a top priority. In fact, the five strategic objectives of the EU are modelled on the principles of the 2030 Agenda and the Cohesion Policy, EU's most transversal policy, is designed to give a direct contribution to the tackling of the 17 SDGs. Introducing a new methodology to evaluate the sustainability of operational programmes co-financed by the EU, the following paper aims to contribute to the building literature around the question of monitoring public investments regarding sustainability criteria. By matching the 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda with the 143 intervention fields of the Cohesion Policy, with specific reference to Sardinia's European Regional Development Fund and European Social Fund 2014-2020 Regional Operational Programmes, the present work introduces the key features of the model developed and its first results. The model could be of valuable support to policymakers who now have an innovative tool to monitor investments' coherence with the sustainability standards of the 2030 Agenda