This paper provides an empirical analysis of CO2 emissions and economic growth, based on a panel dataset covering 93 countries over the period 1960-2008, and examines the challenge of country selection for homogeneous and appropriates groups. We have proposed a no parametric hierarchic...

Strategies to increase the contribution of renewable energy to the energy system and to enhance energy efficiency of industries and households are on the agenda of many countries. The motifs are manifold: using the domestic potential for energy generation and thus increasing energy security or...

Degradation of the environment, including the pollution of water, soil and air, the irreversible loss of biodiversity, and depletion of natural resources are global threats to sustainable development. The threats are enhanced by the impact of climate change already being felt in many developing...

The positive impacts of an increasing share of renewable energy (RE) on the mitigation of climate change as well as on the decrease of the dependence of energy imports are indisputable. However, such are currently still the additional costs of heat and electricity generation from most renewable...

For a long time fuels such as gas, coal or oil have been the most important cost items for power generation accounting for 70% of the variable costs (Crampes and Fabra, 2005), since they were usually marginal generation technologies that set wholesale prices (Bosco et al., 2010). Intuitively,...

The causality between energy consumption and real income in developed countries has been a very vital research topic in recent years. Raising concerns about climate change and global warming increase the pressure on policy makers to take action against energy depletion. Unfortunately these...

COP17 in Durban revealed once again the general willingness to commit to the 2°-target and the difficulty to reach an international Post-Kyoto agreement until 2015. There is strong evidence from model-based analysis that economic costs of reaching the 2°-target will be below global GDP growth...

Renewable energy deployment is growing rapidly on a global scale. China, Germany, Japan and the US are among the countries with highest capacity of renewables installed. In Germany, for example, the large growth in renewable power generation (RPG) capacities in the past has been mainly due to...