Is eco-efficiency in greenhouse gas emissions converging among European Union countries?

Abstract

Abstract. Eco-efficiency refers to the ability to produce more goods and services with less impact on the environment and less consumption of natural resources. This issue has become a matter of concern that is receiving increasing attention by politicians, scientists and academics. Furthermore, greenhouse gases emitted as a result of production processes have a heavy impact in the environment and also are the foremost responsible of global warming and climate change. This paper assesses convergence in eco-efficiency from greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union (EU). Eco-efficiency is assessed at both country and greenhouse-gas-specific levels using Data Envelopment Analysis techniques and directional distance functions, as recently proposed by Picazo-Tadeo et al. (2012). Then, convergence is evaluated using the Phillips and Sul (2007) approach that allows testing for the existence of convergence groups. Although the results point to the existence of different convergence clubs depending on the specific pollutant considered, they signal the existence of, at least, four clear groups of countries. The first two groups are conformed of core EU high-income countries (Benelux, Germany, Italy, Austria, the United Kingdom and Scandinavian countries). A third club is made up of peripheral countries (Spain, Ireland, Portugal, Greece) together with some Eastern countries (Latvia, Slovenia) and the rest of clubs consists of groups containing Eastern European countries.

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“…In the European country group, the results show the opposite picture with their RP leading the emissions upwards while EF balancing them downwards for most years. [64] had already noticed larger differences observed among EU countries in terms of efficiency, as well as by [65]. The formers attribute these differences to different development levels, economic activity structure and to environmental awareness.…”

“…In this relative homogeneous European group of countries, at least subject to the same laws and environmental and economic laws, but still with different development levels and income highlighted differences, we can still find justifications for the noticed heterogeneity observed. Spanish and Italians underperformances were pointed by [64] and [65].…”

“…Some authors stress for different economic growth rates, but it remains to be explained those situations not justified by the joint growth-convergence relationship. [64] tried to justify these findings through factors like technological change and the fossil fuel energy component changes. In this relative homogeneous European group of countries, at least subject to the same laws and environmental and economic laws, but still with different development levels and income highlighted differences, we can still find justifications for the noticed heterogeneity observed.…”

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“…Convergence was first introduced to describe the process of equalization of growth rates across regions (or countries), and much of the related discussions have been conducted to investigate convergence in economic growth [46][47][48]. Numerous scholars have investigated convergence in environmental indicators, such as resource consumption [37,[49][50][51], atmosphere pollutant emissions [52], CO 2 emissions [53][54][55][56], environmental quality [57,58], and ecological efficiency [41,[59][60][61]. The investigation of convergence in environmental variables is important from the perspective of compatibility between economic growth and environmental preservation in the long run and could provide useful information for the design of policies regarding the complex processes featured in the interactions between economic and ecological processes [48,62].…”

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“…The idea of reducing the negative environmental impact is present in every economic sector, making it the ideal time to implement that in maritime as well [18][19][20][21]. Previously taken steps toward this direction were mostly indirect, through technologies primarily targeting the improvement of the vessel's engine efficiency.…”