Research Database

This is an empirical study on the energy-growth nexus for selected Asian countries which uses the Westerlund methodology for cointegration and Dumitrescu and Hurlin causality procedure. Besides energy consumption (separated as renewable and non-renewable), the following variables are also used: trade, rents, financial development and inflation. The study first calculates two versions of the ISEW for selected Asian countries. The Basic Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare (BISEW) contains strictly economy related variables and the Solid Index for Sustainable Economic Welfare (SISEW) which additionally contains an environmental component. Then we re-estimate the energy-growth nexus replacing the GDP with each of the two estimated types of the ISEW. We also estimate the conventional nexus but find no different implications between the GDP growth and the growth in sustainable economic welfare when energy conservation measures apply. Evidence of the feedback hypotheses in the three frameworks shows that energy conservation measures will restrain growth of both types, conventional and sustainable and thus policy makers in Asian countries should refrain from that.

The development of renewable energy policies is necessary to ensure secure and sustainable energy supplies at reasonable costs and to address issues related to global climate change. Since the year 2000 in Malaysia (time of the 8th Malaysian Plan), renewable energy has been included as a key fifth element in the country's fuel policy along with hydro, coal, gas, and oil, and a target of obtaining 5% of the total energy supply from renewable sources was set, although it has not yet been reached. This work explores public opinions regarding climate change and renewable energy in Peninsular Malaysia. Probability sampling and a stratified technique were used to conduct a survey with subjects aged 20 years and over with higher education qualifications. The results showed that the majority of Malaysians are concerned about climate change and have heard about renewable energy. However, only two out of five people in Peninsular Malaysia have used renewable energy products. This finding can be explained by the high price of renewable energy products, lack of knowledge about government policies, and ineffective programs and initiatives.

In developing countries, industries and manufacturing sectors consume a major portion of the total consumption of energy, where most of the energy is used for low, medium or high temperature heat generation to be used for process applications known as process heat. The necessity to commercialize clean, cheap and efficient renewable sources of energy in industrial applications emerges from increasing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions and global warming and decreasing fossil fuel use in commercial sectors. As an abundant source of energy, solar energy technologies have proven potential. Recent research shows currently only a few industries are employing solar energy in industrial processes to generate process heat while replacing fossil fuels. Solar thermal power generation is already very well-known and getting popular in recent years while other potential applications of the concentrated heat from solar radiation are little explored. This review paper presents a detailed overview of the current potential and future aspects of involving solar industrial process heating systems in industrial applications. In order to keep pace with this emerging and fast growing sector for renewable energy applications, it is necessary to get in depth knowledge about the overall potential of industrial processes in individual industrial sector where solar process heat is currently in use and identifying industrial processes are most compatible for solar system integration depending on temperature level and the type of solar collector in use. Furthermore, the promising sectors needs to be identified for the use of solar heat using industrial processes for the integration of solar heat, so that countries with immense solar energy potential can use those technologies in future to reduce fossil fuel consumption and develop sustainable industrial systems. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the potential industrial processes that can adopt solar process heating systems and thus driving towards sustainable production in industries.

There is an increasing interest in investigating the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis because it suggests the existence of a turning point in the economy that will lead to a sustainable development path. Although many studies have focused on the EKC, only a few empirical studies have focused on analyzing the EKC with specific reference to Indonesia, and none of them have examined the potential of renewable energy sources within the EKC framework. This study attempts to estimate the EKC in the case of Indonesia for the period of 1971–2010 by considering the role of renewable energy in electricity production, using the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach to cointegration as the estimation method. We found an inverted U-shaped EKC relationship between economic growth and CO2 emissions in the long run. The estimated turning point was found to be 7729 USD per capita, which lies outside of our sample period. The beneficial impacts of renewable energy on CO2 emission reduction are observable both in the short run and in the long run. Our work has important implications both for policymakers and for the future development of renewable energy in Indonesia.

This paper assesses competing outlooks for energy mix in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), highlighting the paradox of its fossil fuel-dominated outlooks when contrasted with its aspirations to move toward a green energy mix, and reviews green energy strategies using the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis method. The paper argues that despite the looming brown outlooks due to the expected surge of coal, the ASEAN region has many advantages in providing cleaner energy for its green vision. However, reduction of CO2 emissions has not been explicitly set in the region’s policy agenda and thus green energy potential is underdeveloped. To achieve a greener energy mix, ASEAN needs to make further efforts such as cleaner use and removal of subsidies of fossil fuels, promotion of renewables and energy efficiency, regional market integration and connectivity, and execution of existing plans by nations. Ultimately, each of these strategies will require sustained leadership, political determination, and concrete actions from stakeholders, in particular, national governments across the region.

This study examines whether policies to promote renewable electricity generation are likely to be effective by applying panel unit root and stationarity tests to time series data on renewable electricity generation for 115 countries over the period 1980-2008. We find that for the panel as a whole, and almost three quarters of the individual countries, renewable electricity generation is characterized by a unit root. This result implies that policies to promote renewable electricity generation, such as renewable portfolio standards, which result in annual increases in renewable energy and, as such, which represent permanent positive shocks to the long-run growth path of renewable electricity generation, will be more effective in increasing renewable electricity generation than policies with a pre-specified time horizon.