posted on 2009-06-17, 13:44authored byMonjur Mourshed, Mohammed A. Quddus
Purpose:
Renewable energy is an important component to the complex portfolio of technologies that have
the potential to reduce CO2 emissions and to enhance the security of energy supplies. Despite
RE’s potential to reduce CO2 emissions, the expenditure on renewable energy research,
development & demonstration (RERD&D) as a percentage of total government energy
research, development & demonstration (ERD&D) investment remains low in developed
countries. The declining ERD&D expenditure prompted this research to explore the relationship
between CO2 emissions per capita and RERD&D as opposed to ERD&D.
Methodology:
An econometric analysis of annual CO2 emissions per capita during the period 1990 – 2004 for
the 15 pre-2004 European Union (EU15) countries was carried out. It was hypothesized that the
impact of RERD&D expenditure on the reduction of CO2 emissions would be higher than that of
ERD&D expenditure, primarily due to several RE technologies being close to carbon neutral.
Country-level GDP per capita and an index of the ratio between industry consumption and
industrial production (IICIP) were introduced in the analysis as proxies to control for activities
that generate CO2 emissions. A number of panel data econometric models that are able to take
into account both country- and time-specific unobserved effects were explored.
Findings:
It was found that random effect models were more appropriate to examine the study hypothesis.
The results suggest that expenditure on RERD&D is statistically significant and negatively
associated with CO2 emissions per capita in all models, whereas expenditure on ERD&D is
statistically insignificant (ceteris paribus).
Originality:
The findings of this paper provided useful insight into the effectiveness of renewable energy
RD&D investment in reducing CO2 emissions and are of value in the development of policies
for targeted RD&D investment to mitigate the impacts of climate change.
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Citation
MOURSHED, M. and QUDDUS, M.A., 2009. Renewable energy RD&D expenditure and CO2 emissions in 15 European countries. International Journal of Energy Sector Management, 3(2), pp. 187 - 202.