Taxation and the Environment–Health–Poverty Trap: A Policy Experiment Perspective

Under pressures related to economic growth and environmental protection, China is facing an increasingly severe “environment–health–poverty” trap risk. Fuel taxation is generally considered an effective policy to counter such a risk. Since 2009 China has raised the fuel tax rate many times to enhance tax reform. However, the effects of this policy remain unknown. Therefore, it is vitally important to estimate the impacts of China's current fuel taxation policy on environment, public health and the national economy. As the first attempt in existing literature on China, this paper builds a general equilibrium framework with the feedback effect of public health on economy. We find that that the fuel tax policy benefits the adjustment of the economic structure and improves human health; however, it is detrimental to economic growth, public welfare and price stability. In this sense, it plays a limited role in reducing the trap risk and might not be sustainable in the long term.     

Fuel consumption for various driving styles in conventional and hybrid electric vehicles: Integrating driving cycle predictions with fuel consumption optimization*

Improving fuel economy and lowering emissions are key societal goals. Standard driving cycles, pre-designed by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), have long been used to estimate vehicle fuel economy in laboratory-controlled conditions. They have also been used to test and tune different energy management strategies for hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). This paper aims to estimate fuel consumption for a conventional vehicle and a HEV using personalized driving cycles extracted from real-world data to study the effects of different driving styles and vehicle types on fuel consumption when compared to the estimates based on standard driving cycles. To do this, we extracted driving cycles for conventional vehicles and HEVs from a large-scale U.S. survey that contains real-world GPS-based driving records. Next, the driving cycles were assigned to one of three categories: volatile, normal, or calm. Then, the driving cycles were used along with a driver-vehicle simulation that captures driver decisions (vehicle speed during a trip), powertrain, and vehicle dynamics to estimate fuel consumption for conventional vehicles and HEVs with power-split powertrain. To further optimize fuel consumption for HEVs, the Equivalent Consumption Minimization Strategy (ECMS) is applied. The results show that depending on the driving style and the driving scenario, conventional vehicle fuel consumption can vary widely compared with standard EPA driving cycles. Specifically, conventional vehicle fuel consumption was 13% lower in calm urban driving, but almost 34% higher for volatile highway driving compared with standard EPA driving cycles. Interestingly, when a driving cycle is predicted based on the application of case-based reasoning and used to tune the power distribution in a hybrid electric vehicle, its fuel consumption can be reduced by up to 12% in urban driving. Implications and limitations of the findings are discussed.     

Separate waste collection in mountain municipalities. A case study in Campania

This paper aims to analyse the impact of land characteristics (i.e. altimetry and housing dispersion) on separate waste collection, with a focus on mountain municipalities. The high spatial heterogeneity of the driving factors of separate waste collection allows traditional techniques, such as OLS, to offer only a partial depiction of the situation, missing important information. In this view, we perform the Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR), which allows to control for the local determinants of waste management. Our data cover 550 municipalities of Campania, in Southern Italy. We control for a set of morphological and socio-economic variables, drawn from official records for 2012. Our results show that the relationships between land characteristics and separate waste collection are not constant over space. Moreover, they suggest that in the presence of non-modifiable factors (such as land characteristics) local governments should act on citizen motivations, promoting awareness on environmental issues, and should implement time-saving collection methods.     

Economic uncertainty,oil prices,hedging and U.S. stock returns of the airline industry

This paper examines the impacts of economic policy uncertainty and oil price shocks on stock returns of U.S. airlines using both industry and firm-level data. Our empirical approach considers a structural vector-autoregressive model with variables recognized to be important for airline returns including jet fuel price volatility. Empirical results confirm that oil price increase, economic uncertainty and jet fuel price volatility have significantly adverse effect on real stock returns of airlines both at industry and at firm level. In addition, we also find that hedging future fuel purchase has statistically positive impact on the smaller airlines. Our results suggest policy implications for practitioners, managers of airline industry and commodity investors.     

The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis

Climate projections are based on emission scenarios. The emission scenarios used by the IPCC and by mainstream climate scientists are largely derived from the predicted demand for fossil fuels, and in our view take insufficient consideration of the constrained emissions that are likely due to the depletion of these fuels. This paper, by contrast, takes a supply-side view of CO₂ emission, and generates two supply-driven emission scenarios based on a comprehensive investigation of likely long-term pathways of fossil fuel production drawn from peer-reviewed literature published since 2000. The potential rapid increases in the supply of the non-conventional fossil fuels are also investigated. Climate projections calculated in this paper indicate that the future atmospheric CO₂ concentration will not exceed 610 ppm in this century; and that the increase in global surface temperature will be lower than 2.6 °C compared to pre-industrial level even if there is a significant increase in the production of non-conventional fossil fuels. Our results indicate therefore that the IPCC’s climate projections overestimate the upper-bound of climate change. Furthermore, this paper shows that different production pathways of fossil fuels use, and different climate models, are the two main reasons for the significant differences in current literature on the topic.     

Infrastructure development for alternative fuel vehicles on a highway road system

A new mathematical model for positioning alternative fuel (AF) refueling stations on directed-transportation networks with the objective of maximizing the coverage of path flow volume is proposed. This model is especially designed for developing an AF infrastructure on toll roads and other highways, where vehicles do not need to exit the road network for refueling, some candidate station locations are not located at interchanges, and some stations may only service vehicles on one driving direction. The proposed model is applied to the Pennsylvania Turnpike System using the 2011 truck traffic data and considering different vehicle driving ranges.     

Risk analysis of the EASA minimum fuel requirements considering the ACARE-defined safety target

We present the results of flight simulator experiments (60 runs) with randomly selected airline pilots under realistic operational conditions and discuss them in light of current fuel regulations and potential fuel starvation. The experiments were conducted to assess flight crew performance in handling complex technical malfunctions including decision-making in fourth-generation jet aircraft. Our analysis shows that the current fuel requirements of the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) are not sufficient to guarantee the safety target of the Advisory Council for Aviation Research and Innovation in Europe (ACARE), which is less than one accident in 10 million flights. To comply with this safety target, we recommend increasing the Final Reserve Fuel from 30 min to 45 min for jet aircraft. The minimum dispatched fuel upon landing should be at least 1 h.     

新型固相萃取材料在样品前处理技术中的应用研究进展

固相萃取是近年来发展比较迅速的样品前处理技术,固相萃取材料的选择是影响固相萃取效率的主要因素之一。本研究对近年来新型的固相萃取材料及其在样品前处理技术中的应用进行综述,并对其未来发展的方向进行了展望。     

How much do alternative cookstoves reduce biomass fuel use? Evidence from North India

Despite widespread global efforts to promote clean cookstoves to achieve improvements in air and forest quality, and to reduce global climate change, surprisingly little is known about the degree to which these actually reduce biomass fuel consumption in real-world settings. Using data from in-house weighing of fuel conducted in rural India, we examine the impact of cleaner cookstoves ⿿ most of which are LPG stoves ⿿ on three key outcomes related to solid fuel use. Our results suggest that using a clean cookstove is associated with daily reductions of about 4.5 kg of biomass fuel, 160 fewer minutes cooking on traditional stoves, and 105 fewer minutes collecting biomass fuels. These findings of substantial savings are robust to the use of estimators with varying levels of control for selection, and to alternative data obtained from household self-reports. Our results support the idea that efforts to promote clean stoves among poor rural households can reduce solid fuel use and cooking time, and that rebound effects toward greater amounts of cooking on multiple stoves are not sufficient to eliminate these gains. We also find, however, that households who have greater wealth, fewer members, are in less marginalized groups, and practice other health-averting behaviors, are more likely to use these cleaner stoves, which suggests that socio-economic status plays an important role in determining who benefits from such technologies. Future efforts to capture social benefits must therefore consider how to promote the use of alternative technologies by poor households, given that these households are least likely to own clean stoves.     

货运车辆燃油消耗与运输效率关系研究

文中采用理论分析与模型构建相结合的方式,研究货运车辆的燃油消耗与运输效率之间的关系,基于调研数据,采用回归分析的方法构建模型,得到了不同车型车辆的百吨公里燃油消耗量与实载率的倒数关系模型,为企业提高车辆运输效率,降低燃油消耗提供数据参考。