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- Drivers promoting renewable energy: a dynamic panel approachPublication . Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoWe study the commitment to renewable energy sources, focusing on a set of 24 European countries, and applying panel dynamic estimators. Europe is a leading player in the fight against climate change, and the estimators we use reveal themselves to be appropriate in handling the persistency effect on renewables. The level of renewable energy use in the previous period has a positive and highly significant effect on the current level of use. Traditional energy sources restrain the impetus towards renewables. Social awareness of sustainability, climate change mitigation and CO2 reduction targets are not enough to motivate the switch from traditional to renewables energy sources. Income and prices of fossil-based fuels were not significant for the development of renewables in the period from 1990 to 2006, suggesting that it was not the market that encouraged renewables.
- Technological progress and other factors behind the adoption of electric vehicles: Empirical evidence for EU countriesPublication . Neves, Sónia Almeida; Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThis paper aims to analyse the factors supporting the transition to new forms of mobility, namely Electric Vehicles (EV). For a deep understanding of these effects, we analysed EV, by dividing them into individual Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV), which are 100% electric, and Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV). The factors examined include: policy, social, economic, environmental, and technical. This paper uses data from 2010 to 2016 for a panel of the 24 EU countries. A Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) estimator is used. When comparing the results of analysing BEV and PHEV individually, and all EV together, they prove to be quite different. This finding indicates that policies should be tailored to each individual technology, rather than a single one for all EV. The proxy used for technological progress is the increased use of both BEV and PHEV. The evidence is also provided that charging stations are drivers of electric mobility.
- Have fossil fuels been substituted by renewables? An empirical assessment for 10 European countriesPublication . Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José Alberto; Pereira, Diogo AndréThe electricity mix worldwide has become diversified mainly by exploiting endogenous and green resources. This trend has been spurred on so as to reduce both carbon dioxide emissions and external energy dependency. One would expect the larger penetration of renewable energies to provoke a substitution effect of fossil fuels by renewable sources, in the electricity generation mix. However, this effect is far from evident in the literature. This paper thus contributes to clarifying whether the effect exists and, if so, the characteristics of the effect by source. Three approaches, generation, capacity and demand, were analysed jointly to accomplish the main aim of this study. An autoregressive distributed lag model was estimated using the Driscoll and Kraay estimator with fixed effects, to analyse ten European countries in a time-span from 1990 until 2014. The paper provides evidence for the substitution effect in solar PV and hydropower, but not in wind power sources. Indeed, the generation approach highlights the necessity for flexible and controllable electricity production from natural gas and hydropower to back up renewable sources. Moreover, the results prove that peaks of electricity have been na obstacle to the accommodation of intermittent renewable sources.
- Is energy consumption in the transport sector hampering both economic growth and the reduction of CO 2 emissions? A disaggregated energy consumption analysisPublication . Neves, Sónia Almeida; Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThe transport sector was analysed by studying the interaction between conventional (fossil fuels) and alternative (electricity and renewable fuels) energy consumption, on economic growth and CO2 emissions. To do this, annual data for 15 OECD countries from 1995 to 2014 was used. The short- and long-run effects were analysed individually with the robust Driscoll-Kraay estimator in an Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) structure. The results support the argument that fossil fuels consumption in the transport sector have contributed to increasing both economic growth and CO2 emissions. In contrast, both electricity and renewable fuels in the transport sector have hampered economic growth. This paper supports the idea that the shift to a low-carbon transport sector must be reanalysed. Although the use of renewable fuels is reducing CO2 emissions, a negative impact on economic growth could reveal that the costs remain high. Furthermore, the transition to electric mobility must be pursued, but policies need to be reconsidered, to avoid obstructing economic growth.
- Dieselization and Road Transport CO2 EmissionsPublication . Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José Alberto; Gonçalves, Bruno MiguelRoad transport carbon dioxide emissions were analyzed, by focusing on a panel of 14 European countries for the time span 1995-2007. We deal with the existence of contemporaneous correlation by using the Panel Corrected Standard Errors estimator. We extend the empirical literature by controlling the effect of new diesel passenger car registrations and the average power of those vehicles. The price of gasoline and income reduce road transport carbon dioxide emis-sions, while population density and average power of new diesel passenger cars raises those emissions. We deepen the debate about dieselization, concluding that saving emissions by using diesel tend to be surpassed by the increased kilo-meters driven.
- Strategies to make renewable energy sources compatible with economic growthPublication . Afonso, Tiago Lopes; Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThis paper focuses on the relationship between economic activity, and renewable and non-renewable energy consumption for the set of countries with the largest usage of each energy source. The dominance of one type of energy source could raise an unintentional barrier to a strategy of energy mix diversification. A panel of 28 countries was studied, using annual data for the time span 1995e2013. The ARDL approach was used to capture the short- and long-run effects. The Driscoll-Kraay estimator was used to attain robust results given the presence of the phenomena of heteroscedasticity, contemporaneous correlation, first order autocorrelation and cross-sectional dependence. Results suggest that renewable energy has not contributed to economic growth, while non-renewable energy has contributed. This finding should be incorporated in the definition of energy strategies, specifically by making renewable energy compatible with economic growth.
- O impacto da produção de energia eólica no mercado de trabalho: uma abordagem PVARPublication . Koengkan, Matheus; Fuinhas, José Alberto; Marques, António CardosoEste artigo estuda o impacto da geração de energia eólica sobre o mercado de trabalho. O modelo Panel Data Vector Autoregressive (PVAR) foi utlizado para analisar um painel de nove países no período de 1992-2014. Os testes preliminares indicaram, a existência de cross-section dependence em todas a variáveis em logaritmos e primeiras diferenças, a estacionaridade das variáveis DLF e DLO, bem como a presença de efeitos fixos no modelo PVAR. Os resultados do modelo PVAR indicaram, que a produção de energia eólica tem um impacto positivo de 0.0002 sobre o mercado de trabalho.
- Redefining the energy-growth nexus with an index for sustainable economic welfare in EuropePublication . Menegaki, Angeliki N.; Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThis paper inaugurates the study of the energy-sustainable economic growth for Europe. It is novel both because it calculates an Index for Sustainable EconomicWelfare (ISEW) index for European countries, but foremost because it compares the conventional energy-growth nexus with the newly appeared energysustainable growth nexus. Also, it goes further by suggesting ways to overcome the limitations pointed out to the use of the conventional GDP. The paper uses the road sector energy consumption, which is in accordance with the enormous discussion about the high energy intensity of the road transport sector and about the huge dependence from fossil sources of this sector. The dynamic Driscoll-Kraay estimator is also used, which allows decomposing the effects in the short- and long-run and is also robust in the presence of cross-sectional dependence. Results show that economic growth and sustainable economic welfare are not perfect substitute variables. In the long-run, the feedback hypothesis is verified only for sustainable growth.
- On the drivers of peak electricity demand: What is the role played by battery electric cars?Publication . Neves, Sónia Almeida; Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThe analysis of the drivers of both peak electricity demand and renewable electricity generation con- stitutes the main objective of this paper. Data from 2010 to 2016 for a panel of 20 European Union countries were used. Two models were estimated using both Panel-Corrected Standard Errors and Driscoll-Kraay estimators with fixed effects. These estimators were robust in the presence of cross- section dependence, first-order serial correlation and heteroscedasticity. The main results suggest that renewable electricity generation and the penetration of battery electric vehicles into the automotive market are helping to decrease peak electricity demand. At the same time, it was confirmed that employment in this industry sector is increasing peak electricity demand. The existence of peak periods was shown to be the main barrier to the integration of renewables into electricity systems. It seems that policies focused on Demand Side Management have been effective in integrating renewables in contrast to their lack of success in reducing peak electricity demand.
- The role of Portuguese electricity generation regimes and industrial productionPublication . Marques, António Cardoso; Fuinhas, José AlbertoThis paper examines how renewables (special regime) simultaneously interact with conventional sources (ordinary regime), within the Portuguese electricity generation system. There is also an appraisal of the relationship between these two regimes and economic activity, using the industrial production index. First difference VAR modelling was applied for monthly data for the time span of 2007:M1 to 2012:M10. The appropriateness of the VAR is proved. The relationship between variables develops within a structure of endogeneity, i.e., they generate feedback and may be both explained and explaining variables, simultaneously. The outcomes show a strong complementarity between the ordinary and special regimes. Economic activity causes electricity consumption but only the special regime causes economic activity. Moreover, the non-renewable component of the special regime does not cause a need for backup from either the ordinary regime or imports, contributing to a reduction in energy dependency.