Energy transition or energy diversification? Assessing the complexity of energy ecosystem towards transiting a climate neutral society.

The recent shift in the global energy paradigm and the expansion of renewable energy, spurred by the global COVID-19 epidemic and as a consequence of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, require assessing the complexity of the energy ecosystem to transition to a low-carbon economy. While the most of the literature is centered on analyzing the energy sector and the transformation determined by the energy transition to renewables or investigating the need for energy diversification, there has been less attention focused to assessing the complexity of energy ecosystems toward transiting a climate neutral society, despite determinant potential of policy implications. The main aim of this study is to analyze the complexity behavior and the resilience of the Romanian energy system in the period 2015 to 2020 and to compare the complexity situations in 2015, 2016 and 2020. The study is based on the quantitative complexity management approach developed by Ontonix™ (2022) and it is carried out using the OntoSpace™ software. The results indicate higher complexity of the Romanian energy ecosystem since 2016, which highlights a higher difficulty of governing it.

Evolution of Romania's Economic Structure and Environment Degradation - An Assessment Through LMDI Decomposition Approach.

PURPOSE: This paper studies the relationships between air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, N2O) and different diseases (tumors, skin and respiratory) and the factors influencing air pollutant emissions in Romania. METHODS: The methods are Toda-Yamamoto procedure of non-causality Granger test, grey relational analysis and logarithmic mean Divisia index method (LMDI). RESULTS: Air pollutants intensities dropped significantly over 2008-2017 period due to structural changes. The only economic activity that showed an increase both in volume and intensity of air pollutants, despite a downward trend of farming activities output is agriculture. Technology improvements play a significant role in mitigation of PM2.5 emissions and a moderate role in mitigation of PM10 emissions. For N2O emissions technology used contributed to an increase of N2O intensities. CONCLUSION: Health policy makers should address the issue of technology improvements and mitigation of agriculture emissions to improve health of individuals and air quality.

The Supply of Calories, Proteins, and Fats in Low-Income Countries: A Four-Decade Retrospective Study.

Over the past decades, both the quantity and quality of food supply for millions of people have improved substantially in the course of economic growth across the developing world. However, the number of undernourished people has resumed growth in the 2010s amid food supply disruptions, economic slowdowns, and protectionist restrictions to agricultural trade. Having been common to most nations, these challenges to the food security status of the population still vary depending on the level of economic development and national income of individual countries. In order to explore the long-run determinants of food supply transformations, this study employs five-stage multiple regression analysis to identify the strengths and directions of effects of agricultural production parameters, income level, price indices, food trade, and currency exchange on supply of calories, proteins, and fats across 11 groups of agricultural products in 1980-2018. To address the diversity of effects across developing nations, the study includes 99 countries of Asia, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa categorized as low-income, lower-middle-income, and upper-middle-income economies. It is found that in low-income countries, food supply parameters are more strongly affected by production factors compared to economic and trade variables. The effect of economic factors on the food supply of higher-value food products, such as meat and dairy products, fruit, and vegetables, increases with the rise in the level of income, but it stays marginal for staples in all three groups of countries. The influence of trade factors on food supply is stronger compared to production and economic parameters in import-dependent economies irrelevant of the gross national income per capita. The approach presented in this paper contributes to the research on how food supply patterns and their determinants evolve in the course of economic transformations in low-income countries.

Exploring the link between environmental pollution and economic growth in EU-28 countries: Is there an environmental Kuznets curve?

This study examines the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis (EKC), considering the primary energy consumption among other country-specific variables, for a panel of the EU-28 countries during the period 1990-2014. By estimating pooled OLS regressions with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors in order to account for cross-sectional dependence, the results confirm the EKC hypothesis in the case of emissions of sulfur oxides and emissions of non-methane volatile organic compounds. In addition to pooled estimations, the output of fixed-effects regressions with Driscoll-Kraay standard errors support the EKC hypothesis for greenhouse gas emissions, greenhouse gas emissions intensity of energy consumption, emissions of nitrogen oxides, emissions of non-methane volatile organic compounds and emissions of ammonia. Additionally, the empirical findings from panel vector error correction model reveal a short-run unidirectional causality from GDP per capita growth to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as a bidirectional causal link between primary energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, since there occurred no causal link between economic growth and primary energy consumption, the neo-classical view was confirmed, namely the neutrality hypothesis.

A multifactor approach to forecasting Romanian gross domestic product (GDP) in the short run.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the application of a generalized dynamic factor model (GDFM) based on dynamic principal components analysis to forecasting short-term economic growth in Romania. We have used a generalized principal components approach to estimate a dynamic model based on a dataset comprising 86 economic and non-economic variables that are linked to economic output. The model exploits the dynamic correlations between these variables and uses three common components that account for roughly 72% of the information contained in the original space. We show that it is possible to generate reliable forecasts of quarterly real gross domestic product (GDP) using just the common components while also assessing the contribution of the individual variables to the dynamics of real GDP. In order to assess the relative performance of the GDFM to standard models based on principal components analysis, we have also estimated two Stock-Watson (SW) models that were used to perform the same out-of-sample forecasts as the GDFM. The results indicate significantly better performance of the GDFM compared with the competing SW models, which empirically confirms our expectations that the GDFM produces more accurate forecasts when dealing with large datasets.

The impact and determinants of the energy paradigm on economic growth in European Union.

Contemporary economies are strongly reliant on energy and analyzing the determining factors that trigger the changes in energy paradigm and their impact upon economic growth is a topical research subject. Our contention is that energy paradigm plays a major role in achieving the sustainable development of contemporary economies. In order to prove this the panel data methodology of research was employed, namely four panel unit root tests (LLC, IPS, F-ADF and F-PP) aiming to reveal the connections and relevance among 17 variables denoting energy influence on economic development. Moreover, it was introduced a specific indicator to express energy consumption per capita. Our findings extend the classical approach of the changes in energy paradigm and their impact upon economic growth and offer a comprehensive analysis which surpasses the practices and policy decisions in the field.