The Oil Drum: Net Energy | Using Thermodynamics to (Re)Examine Environmental Kuznets Curves

49 comments on Using Thermodynamics to (Re)Examine Environmental Kuznets Curves

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Sam Foucher on May 11, 2009 - 11:41am

I wish we could see a Kuznet curve for CO2 :).

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FMagyar on May 11, 2009 - 12:52pm

There are many out there in Google land, here's one that may or may not be representative.

An Environmental Kuznets Curve Analysis of
U.S. State-Level Carbon Dioxide Emissions1
Joseph E. Aldy
Department of Economics
Harvard University
August 9, 2004

PDF Link

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Sam Foucher on May 11, 2009 - 1:56pm

Thanks for the link.

The author brings a very good point which is that modern economies have shipped their dirty manufacturing jobs overseas and that Kuznets curves need to be corrected for trade (the consumption-CO2 curve above is taking into account CO2 related to imports in goods and the other one is not). What I suspect, is that most of the published Kuznet curves are biased production-Kuznet curves which are not trade corrected.

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David Murphy on May 11, 2009 - 3:04pm

FMagyar,

Thanks for the link. I read through some of the paper (rather quickly) and found a few concerns with his regression technique, but nothing major.

FMagyar and Sam,

The paper takes into account inter-state commerce, but what about international commerce? It was my understanding that the U.S. showed EKCs for some air pollutants because the industrial processes associated with those pollutants moved to other countries, not states, e.g. to Mexico.

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FMagyar on May 11, 2009 - 3:32pm

David, Sam,

First a disclaimer, I claim no expertise in any of this and though I did read the paper, I'm only an interested layman. However this comment by the author did catch my attention.

By characterizing the income-CO2 relationship for the U.S. states, this analysis can also help inform our understanding of greenhouse gas emissions in an international context. First, illustrating the economic dynamics of per capita CO2 for high-income states provide evidence of what may occur for countries as they achieve advanced stages of development. Second, the potential role of trade in emissions-intensive goods (e.g., electricity) in the income-CO2 relationship may be valuable for other regions of the world that may share similar characteristics to the U.S. states. For example, the European Union, with converging incomes, policies, and institutions and substantial cross-border trade in emissions-intensive goods and energy may follow similar production- and consumption-based CO2 trends as the U.S. states. Third, if trade in emissions-intensive goods is as important in the international context as for the U.S. states, then this work suggests that studies that attempt to forecast carbon dioxide emissions may produce biased results without attempts to correct for trade.The next section briefly reviews several key hypotheses of the environmental Kuznets curve literature as it relates to greenhouse gas emissions. The third section provides an overview of the data used in this paper, including the novel state-level carbon dioxide emissions dataset constructed by the author.

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Yvan Dutil on May 11, 2009 - 12:53pm

Check the work of Taylor on Green Solw-Model. Very nice piece of work for most polluant. Unfortunately, his model lack of memory therefore it is useless for CO2. I personnaly ask him about this in a public conference. I am still waiting for his answer.

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Jolly on May 11, 2009 - 5:34pm

When you say lack of memory, I assume you're referring to the lack of a stock variable? Or are you referring to path dependence?

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Yvan Dutil on May 11, 2009 - 9:52pm

Green Solow model works only for short lived polluant. Long lived polluant like CO2 are radiactive waste accumulate in the system. Therefore, economically you may indeed reduce your annual production of garbage overtime due to technological improvement. However, since CO2 is long lived, you may have pass anyway the tipping point.

By the way, at that time Taylor was not sure than climate change was real. I came to speak to me latter validate this was a real phenomenon.

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Jolly on May 11, 2009 - 10:00pm

Thanks for the clarification. My inclination would be to think of radioactive waste as a stock variable with a low rate of depreciation. I'll have to track down Taylor's work on that model.

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jjauregui on May 11, 2009 - 11:03pm

Interesting point you make. Here is a good IPCC reference for the long range impact of CO2 at 20, 100 and 500 years. Scary stuff compared to other pollutants out there.

http://www.grida.no/publications/other/ipcc_tar/?src=/climate/ipcc_tar/w...

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