Within the last few decades, the extended use of biodiesel and bioethanol has established interlinkages between energy markets and agricultural commodity markets. The present work examines the bivariate relationships of crude oil-corn and crude oil-soybean futures prices with the assistance of the ARDL cointegration approach. Our findings confirm that crude oil prices affect the prices of agricultural products used in the production of biodiesel, as well as of ethanol, validating the interaction of energy and agricultural commodity markets. The practical value of the present work is that the findings provide policy makers with insight into the interlinkages between agricultural and energy markets to promote biodiesel or bioethanol by affecting crude oil prices. The novelty of the present work stands on the use of futures prices that incorporate all available information and thus are more appropriate to identify supply and demand shocks and price spillovers than real prices. Finally, the period of study includes extremely low, as well as extremely high, crude oil prices and the results illustrate that biofuels cannot be substituted for crude oil and protect economies from energy volatility.

The evolution of human societies along with efforts to enhance economic welfare may well lead to the deterioration of the environment. Deforestation is a usual process throughout evolution that poses pressing and potentially irreversible environmental risks, despite the ecological and modernization processes that aim to limit those risks. The economic growth–environmental degradation relationship—namely, the environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis—is studied in alignment with the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) approach. The novelty of the study is attributed to the use of the carbon emissions equivalent derived by deforestation as an index for environmental degradation in Bulgaria as a new entrant into the European Union (EU). In addition, we use the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita as a proxy for income, being determined as an independent variable. Research findings cannot validate the inverted U-shape of the EKC hypothesis; instead, an inverted N pattern is confirmed. The implementation of appropriate policies aiming at the protection of the environment through the diversification of economic activities is related to the use of forest land and other resources, or related sectors (agroforestry, ecotourism activities, and scientific research), rather than only the direct utilization of forested areas; the limitation of afforestation processes and their negative impacts on citizens’ welfare are also addressed.

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Energy has the most significant input to agricultural production. The EU’s effort to produce a carbon-neutral economic entity necessitates changes in the energy mix used for agricultural production. Therefore, we employ different variables, in particular, the emissions generated by energy sources, namely coal, natural gas, and diesel gas and their interlinkages with the GDP share generated from agriculture. The data are annual and refer to the period 1970–2020. The ARDL methodology is the econometric tool employed. The year 1990 is identified as a statistically significant break point for all variables, while for the cointegrating equation, the year 2009 appears to play a significant role. Emissions generated by coal appear to play a vital role in the GDP share generated by agriculture and, therefore, should be the main focus of the policy measures taken. Coal should be replaced by other renewable sources or the use of technologies by farmers that improve energy efficiency in order to make the agricultural income stable and to achieve the objective of carbon-neutral agriculture in the EU.

Environmental degradation caused by intense human activities has allured scientific and social concerns. Environmental taxes are a part of a wider policy context integrating various tools, including pricing instruments, subsidies, and investment in public infrastructure. Environmental taxes are the only fiscal policy tool the revenue which can be used for environmental protection purposes. They are used in modern societies, as means of optimizing consumers’ and producers’ behavior. These taxes generate revenues that can be used by governments to invest in environmental protection projects or in the effective management of natural resources. Eastern European countries’ environmental taxation regime, is a successful example since appropriate policies and actions were used for environmental degradation resilience along with the formerly degraded land restoration and funding environmental information dissemination programs for local communities. The present work aims to unveil successful practices adopted related to the implementation of environmental taxation in European countries and the use of their revenues in projects and actions to protect the environment and limit the anthropogenic impacts. In addition, a comparative analysis of individual EU countries efficiency in the use of taxation for mitigation of natural environment degradation is conducted with significant findings for policymakers.