Path dependence in energy systems and economic development

Energy systems are subject to strong and long-lived path dependence, owing to technological, infrastructural, institutional and behavioural lock-ins. Yet, with the prospect of providing accessible cheap energy to stimulate economic development and reduce poverty, governments often invest in large engineering projects and subsidy policies. Here, I argue that while these may achieve their objectives, they risk locking their economies onto energy-intensive pathways. Thus, particularly when economies are industrializing, and their energy systems are being transformed and are not yet fully locked-in, policymakers should take care before directing their economies onto energy-intensive pathways that are likely to be detrimental to their long-run prosperity

Fossil energy in economic growth: A study of the energy direction of technical change, 1950-2012

Climate change mitigation challenges national economies to increase productivity while reducing fossil energy consumption. Fossil energy-saving technical change has been assumed to accomplish this, yet empirical evidence is scarce. This paper investigates the long-run relationship between the rate and direction of technical change with respect to fossil energy and labor in the world economy. Growth rates of labor productivity and the fossil energy-labor ratio are examined for more than 95 of world output between 1950 and 2012. The average elasticity of the energy-labor ratio with respect to labor productivity is close to one, implying highly energy-using technical change, but no trade-o between factor productivity growth rates. This stylized fact suggests the importance of a cheap, abundant energy supply for robust global growth, and a more important role for renewable energy. Integrated assessment models do not incorporate this restriction which may result in poorly speci ed baseline scenarios

Price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the European Union

This study examines the short- and long-run price and income elasticities of residential and industrial electricity demand in the European Union between 1996 and 2016. Instrumental variable models using the between estimator, as well as dynamic panel models are employed to present robust estimates, and to assess the impact of different methodologies on the reported elasticities. The long-run price elasticity of residential electricity consumption is estimated between −0.53 and −0.56. These elasticities are more inelastic than that of industrial electricity use, which is reported between −0.75 and −1.01. The choice of different econometric methodologies has only moderate impact on the estimates. While long-run residential income elasticity estimates are moderately inelastic and estimated around 0.61, industrial electricity use tends to be closely tied to income, with elasticities between 0.76 and 1.08. Electricity demand in all sectors is highly price and income inelastic in the short run. Additionally, population density, temperatures, and policy measures also influence sectoral electricity use. The above estimates can aid the design of European energy and environmental policy

Global energy use: Decoupling or convergence?

We examine the key factors driving change in energy use globally over the past four decades. We test for both strong decoupling where economic growth has less effect on energy use as income increases, and weak decoupling where energy use declines overtime in richer countries, ceteris paribus. Our econometric approach is robust to the presence of unit roots, unobserved time effects, and spatial effects. Our key findings are that the growth of per capita energy use has been primarily driven by economic growth, convergence in energy intensity, and weak decoupling. There is no sign of strong decoupling