The understanding of natural laws underlies the research programme so that we can ‘obey nature’ and thereby develop in a sustainable way - but let us not forget that human behaviour is part of nature’s ways too. Human nature must also be understood. Socio-economic research, which looks...

An Energy Service Company (ESCO) is a firm that offers to reduce its client’s energy bill, with the cost saving being split with the client. ESCOs in the full sense of the term offer finance for their projects, will accept the risk of the project and are remunerated in proportion to the...

This paper provides updated estimates for the scale of fuel poverty in the Republic of Ireland using two measures: one based on fuel expenditure as a share of income and the other based on self-reported deprivation. It also presents modelling results as to the characteristics of households most...

The purpose of this study is to check the monetary value of the recreational use of Irish forests using two different valuation methods on the one dataset – the Travel Cost Method and the Contingent Valuation Technique – and in doing so test convergent validity, i.e. whether they are...

We study the effects of carbon tax and revenue recycling across the income distribution in the Republic of Ireland. In absolute terms, a carbon tax of €20/tCO2 would cost the poorest households less than €3/week and the richest households more than €4/week. A carbon tax is regressive,...

We use historical industrial emissions data to assess the level of abatement and overallocation that took place across European countries during the pilot phase (2005-2007)of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme. Using a dynamic panel data model, we estimate the counterfactual...