The impact of investor attention during COVID-19 on investment in clean energy versus fossil fuel firms

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has had significant negative impacts on financial markets, including energy stock markets. However, recently proposed and implemented green recovery plans may mean that clean energy firms demonstrate better performance than fossil fuel firms after the pandemic. As more voices call for the update of clean energy, theory on investor attention suggests investors will pay more attention to the potential to invest in clean energy stocks. Using a sample period of eight weeks before and during the pandemic, we find that the negative impact of the outbreak on both clean energy and fossil fuel firms is more significant for fossil fuel firms. Our results further show that during the pandemic there have been improved returns for clean energy firms as a consequence of investor attention, but not for fossil fuel firms. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the advantages of green recovery schemes in influencing financial markets, especially for clean energy stocks. These results suggest there are benefits for further promotion and implementation of green recovery stimulus measures post-pandemic

Global low-carbon energy transition in the post-COVID-19 era

The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant challenges for energy transition. Concerns about the overwhelming emphasis on economic recovery at the cost of energy transition progress have been raised worldwide. More voices are calling for “green” recovery scheme, which recovers the economy while not compromising on the environment. However, limited academic attention has been paid to comprehensively investigating the implications of COVID-19 for global energy transition. This study thus provides a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics between energy transition and COVID-19 around the world and proposes a low-carbon energy transition roadmap in the post-pandemic era. Using energy data from the International Energy Agency (IEA), we first summarized and reviewed the progress of energy transition prior to COVID-19. Building on prior progress, we identified the challenges for energy transition during the pandemic from the perspectives of government support, fossil fuel divestment, renewable energy production capacity, global supply chain, and energy poverty. However, the pandemic also generates opportunities for global energy transition. We hence also identified potential opportunities for energy transition presented by the pandemic from the perspectives of price competitiveness, policy implementation efficiency, and renewable energy strengths. We further provided an in-depth discussion on the impact of current worldwide economic recovery stimulus on energy transition. Based on the identified challenges and opportunities, we proposed the post-pandemic energy transition roadmap in terms of broadening green financing instruments, strengthening international cooperation, and enhancing green recovery plans. Our study sheds light on a global low-carbon energy transition framework and has practical implications for green recovery schemes in post-pandemic times

Can regional integration narrow city-level energy efficiency gap in China?

Improving energy efficiency is essential for energy conservation, emissions reduction, and sustainable development. Prevalent huge efficiency gaps are not advantageous for the improvement of the region's overall energy efficiency. Although studies have analyzed the influencing factors of the regional energy efficiency gap, the impact of regional integration on the regional energy efficiency gap remains untested. This paper applies the extended stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) method that incorporates time-varying, time-invariant and city heterogeneous characteristics to estimate the city-level energy efficiency in China from 2005 to 2017. Building on the “center-periphery” framework, we further calculate the regional energy efficiency gap and investigate the impact of regional integration on the regional energy efficiency gap through the generalized moment method (GMM). The results show that 1) average city-level energy efficiency is 44.2%, ranging from 2.9% to 75.5%, indicating that China has a huge regional energy efficiency gap; 2) there is a U-shaped relationship between regional integration and the regional energy efficiency gap within city agglomeration. Improvement in regional integration can narrow the regional energy efficiency gap when the degree of regional integration is low, and expand the efficiency gap when regional integration level is high; 3) government intervention will smooth the impact of regional integration on the regional energy efficiency gap within city agglomeration. Practicable policies to mitigate the regional energy efficiency gap in China are suggested and applicable to other emerging economies, especially for those with a huge imbalance in regional energy efficiency

Environmental Finance:An Interdisciplinary Review

Environmental finance has gained considerable attention globally as an emerging interdisciplinary research area. This study uses bibliometric analysis to systematically review major studies on environmental finance-related areas published since the 1970s. Through a bibliometric analysis of 892 environmental finance-related articles sourced from the Web of Science database, we identified the main research streams and illustrated the trending research themes of environmental finance. We find that publications related to environmental finance have increased exponentially over the past decade. Current research streams include corporate and social re- sponsibility (CSR), climate negotiations, natural gas price volatility, national policy, and cost comparisons. Further analysis of the recent five years of literature shows that emerging research topics include climate finance, sustainable finance, firm value, climate risk, and green bonds. Finally, we conclude with a future research agenda for environmental finance

Emission accounting and drivers in 2004 EU accession countries

The ten countries that joined the European Union (EU) in 2004 (Cyprus, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia) have experienced faster economic growth and slower declines in energy consumption than traditional EU members. As designing of low-carbon policies requires accurate CO2 emission accounting, this study describes the evolving trajectories of CO2 emissions from 2005 to 2017 of 2004 EU accession members by providing detailed emission inventories by 28 types of energy and 47 socioeconomic sectors. We further quantify the contributions of four socioeconomic drivers (i.e., economic growth, energy structure, carbon intensity, and energy intensity) to the emission changes. The results show that the total CO2 emissions of the ten countries decreased by 7.50% from 2010 (506.81 Mt) to 2016 (468.78 Mt), which is lower than the average decline rate of other EU members (10.52%). Although the effect of economic growth contributed the most to emission increase (15.44%), it is completely offset by the decline in carbon intensity (-18.82%). We also discuss potential roadmaps towards carbon neutrality by designing 33 scenarios based on the European Union Low-Carbon Development Map 2050. We find that carbon neutrality cannot be achieved unless the share of renewable energy sources reaches 60% and more than half of existing coal and gas power plants are upgraded to Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) technology. These changes require the implementation of both short-term and long-term strategies

Urban metabolism and emergy of China’s cities

Unprecedented pace of urbanization and industrialization caused a massive increase in China’s urbanmetabolic pressure. The trend presents an urgent challenge for detailing the long-term changes anddisparities in urban metabolic performances in a wide range of cities. Here, we present empirical evidenceof 283 China’s cities from 2000 to 2018 based on emergy analysis indicating that China’s urbanmetabolic performance gradually becomes worse. For example, the environmental sustainability indexdecreased by 81.64% between 2000 and 2018. In addition, emergy-based performances among China’scities show considerable differences. Agricultural cities and light manufacturing cities have bettersustainability; energy production cities face high environmental pressure. Scenarios for 2025 show thattotal emergy use would experience slower growth; and most cities continue their decline in emergymetabolism. To ensure overall progress on urban metabolic performance, heavy manufacturing cities andenergy production cities should give more attention in adjusting emergy structure

Dynamic changes and convergence of China’s regional green productivity:A dynamic spatial econometric analysis

Low-carbon economic development is at the heart of the post-pandemic green recovery scheme worldwide. It requires economic recovery without compromising on the environment, implying a critical role that green productivity plays in achieving the carbon neutrality goal. Green productivity measures the quality of economic growth with consideration for energy consumption and environmental pollution. This study employs the slacks-based measure directional distance function (SBM-DDF) approach and the Malmquist-Luenberger (ML) index to calculate green productivity and its components of 30 provinces in China between 2001 and 2018. Using a spatial panel data model, we empirically analyzed the conditional β-convergence of China's green productivity. We found that overall, since 2001, China's green productivity has demonstrated a continuous upward trend. When taking into account spatial factors, China's green productivity demonstrates a significant conditional β-convergence. In terms of regional effects, the results indicate that the green productivity of the eastern and western regions demonstrates club convergence, implying a more balanced green economic development. Moreover, the convergence rate of China's green productivity increases with the addition of environmental regulation variable, and so the corresponding convergence time decreases. It indicates that environmental regulations help to facilitate the convergence of China's green productivity, narrowing the gap between the regional green economic development. The findings provide guideline for achieving a low-carbon development and carbon neutrality from a regional green productivity perspective