Green Leader Research Articles

Not everything is green in the green transition: Theoretical considerations on market structure, prices and competition

This paper studies how the green transition towards a more sustainable and environmentally friendly economy affects the market structure and the competition between firms. In this context, we propose a two-stage game-theoretical model of competition between firms in prices and green investments. The model delivers several scenarios but two are particularly concerning. One such scenario is called the “dirty” equilibrium, in which firms delay the green transition investments. The other scenario is called the “partial green” equilibrium scenario, in which one firm makes the green transition investments obtaining a leading position, while the other remains producing the “dirty” product. In addition to the associated environmental damages, both scenarios are also problematic because they reduce market competition and the number of firms. In this respect, the “partial green” equilibrium may be even more problematic in the long-run because the green leader may perpetuate its advantage towards some kind of monopoly or market power. Inflation and less competition are particular robust implications of the green transition process that are found in this paper.

Sustainability in the Banking Sector Pakistan; Leader’s Role and Green Employee Engagement

In the contemporary banking sector, green employee engagement has ascended as a critical driver of sustainability, drawing significant attention from business researchers worldwide. This research delves into the influential role of green leader emotional intelligence on green employee engagement, particularly within Karachi's banking milieu. Furthermore, it explores the mediating effects of green employee behavior and green organizational citizenship behavior in this dynamic relationship. Employing a convenience sampling strategy, data were amassed from 387 banking professionals in Karachi, Pakistan, providing a comprehensive insight into the sector's eco-conscious practices. Analytical procedures were conducted using SmartPLS 3.0, ensuring rigorous data interpretation and hypothesis testing. The findings underscore the pivotal role of leaders' emotional intelligence in fostering an environment conducive to green work engagement. Notably, the results reveal that green employee behavior and green organizational citizenship behavior significantly mediate the relationship between green leader emotional intelligence and green work engagement. These mediators bridge the gap, highlighting the importance of individual and collective actions in promoting an eco-friendly work ethos. This study contributes to the burgeoning literature on green human resource management, emphasizing the necessity of emotionally intelligent leadership in catalyzing sustainable employee practices. It advocates for a paradigm shift in leadership strategies, urging the adoption of green initiatives that resonate on an emotional level, thereby enhancing employee engagement and propelling the banking sector toward sustainable horizons.

The EU’s Green Peace Narrative and Russia: Russia’s War in Ukraine in the EU’s Climate Narrative

The article looks at how Russia’s war in Ukraine enters the EU’s climate narrative. The European Union has over time developed a narrative of itself as the global green leader. This narrative has increasingly served as complementary to the EU’s foundational peace narrative. For the peace narrative, the EU’s own violent past served as ‘the other’, whereas for the green leader narrative other world powers less willing to climate action, including the US, China and Russia have served as ‘the others’. The current war merges the two narratives and put the EU as the peaceful green leader in contrast to the brutal aggression of the authoritarian Russian oil economy. The war discourse, moreover, facilitates the concrete work with the EU’s fit for 55 climate mitigation agenda and during the second half of 2022, several important milestones were reached.

India’s Solar Energy Transition: a perspective of an accountability crisis

India’s announcement at the Glasgow Climate Conclave in 2021, regarding the nation’s short- and long-term climate actions portrayed an ambition of becoming a green leader in the years to come. The article discusses how accountability has broad horizons which in turn is linked with legitimacy, often neglected in research and when incorporated, in relevance to India’s solar energy transition will revolve around accountability crisis. An accountability–legitimacy framework is created in which the Indian solar energy paradigm is tested where the major findings are solar uptake discrepancies, pertinent to four typologies of legitimacy—technocratic, bureaucratic, financial, and discursive.

Driving mechanism model of enterprise green strategy evolution under digital technology empowerment: A case study based on Zhejiang Enterprises

AbstractDigital technology innovation is sweeping the world, endowing the development of enterprises with the new feature of “digital + green,” which improves the efficiency of enterprises in implementing green strategy. Previous studies emphasized the driving force of enterprise green strategy evolution under the traditional economic model, but often ignored its driving mechanism under digital technology empowerment. Collecting the data from first‐hand interviews and second‐hand documents and selecting 11 case enterprises in Zhejiang, China, this study adopts multiple case method to construct a driving mechanism model of enterprise green strategy evolution under digital technology empowerment. This study proposed as follows, first, the enterprise green strategy is innovatively divided into five evolution stages (green beginner, green responder, green adapter, green activist, and green leader), and it is found that most case enterprises reached a higher stage. Second, digital technology empowerment affects the enterprise green strategy evolution through the mediating role of managerial perception, enterprise competitive capabilities, data and information elements, enterprise resource utilization efficiency, green product design, and whole process digitalization and digital marketing. Third, corporate governance (including public ownership, ownership concentration, independence, and diversity of the board of directors) significantly and positively moderate between various factors and enterprise green strategy evolution. Finally, a series of policy implications and managers' coping strategies are proposed.

EU — a new Green Economy leader? Circular economy in European legislation

EU — a new Green Economy leader? Circular economy in European legislation

The Interaction Between the EU’s Climate Change Objectives and Its State Aid Regulation in the Area of Renewable Energy

This paper analyses the interaction between the EU’s climate change objectives and its state aid regulation in the area of renewable energy through the chronology of the adoption of the EU’s key policy documents and related legislation. The EU’s state aid rules impose certain restrictions on the public financing of renewable energy, which is crucial for reaching the EU’s climate change objectives in due time. The paper identifies four challenges in this respect. The ultimate challenge for the EU is how to reconcile science, the market economy and energy politics. Another challenge for the EU was the diverging national energy policies before the ‘energy title’ was introduced in the Lisbon Treaty. The third challenge for the Commission is how to move the climate change issues up to the top decision-making level. The final challenge is the state aid framework that supports climate change mitigation, whose upcoming changes should address the gap between ambition and reality. The paper aims to assess the policy consistency of the EU’s climate change legislation in order to determine whether the EU’s credibility as a ‘green leader’ is just nominal. The notion of ‘nominal green leader’ is related to the consistency of the EU’s climate change legislation which seems not to have had the expected effect determined by the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement. The paper brings the ambitious policies face to face with the data on state aid provided for climate and energy targets and compares them with the technological expectations in renewable energy deployment. The question that arises is whether it is time for the EU to balance the understanding of ‘common interest’ more towards climate change mitigation at the expense of certain elements of competition policy. Keywords: climate change, competition, electricity generation, internal market, renewable energy, state aid. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution − Non-Commercial − No Derivatives 4.0 International License. Suggested citation: D Vuletic, ‘The Interaction Between the EU’s Climate Change Objectives and Its State Aid Regulation in the Area of Renewable Energy’ (2020) 16 CYELP 319.

Economic insecurity, conservatism, and the crisis of environmentalism: 30 years of evidence

There is an ongoing scientific debate about how environmental concern develops in a population, and under which circumstances it might decline at some point. In this paper, by analysing thirty years of microdata from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), I investigate the role of socioeconomic factors and political preferences in altering and addressing environmental perceptions in Germany, Europe's green leader. Results from correlated random-effects models reveal, inter alia, that economic insecurity and support for right-wing political parties significantly contribute to lowering environmental concern. Hence, policymakers ought to focus on economic insecurity in order to increase citizens' environmental concern and, eventually, bring an enhancement in pro-environmental behaviour as a result of the voters' political will.

Blockchain moderated by empty blocks to reduce the energetic impact of crypto-moneys

While cryptocurrencies and blockchain applications continue to gain popularity, their energy cost is evidently becoming unsustainable. In most instances, the main cost comes from the required amount of energy for the Proof-of-Work, and this cost is inherent to the design. In addition, useless costs from discarded work (e.g., the so-called Forks) and lack of scalability (in number of users and in rapid transactions) limit their practical effectiveness. In this paper, we present an innovative scheme which eliminates the nonce and thus the burden of the Proof-of-Work which is the main cause of the energy waste in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. We prove that our scheme guarantees a tunable and bounded average number of simultaneous mining whatever the size of the population in competition, thus by making the use of nonce-based techniques unnecessary, achieves scalability without the cost of consuming a large volume of energy. The technique used in the proof of our scheme is based on the analogy of the analysis of a green leader election. The additional difference with Proof-of-Work schemes (beyond the suppression of the nonce field that is triggering most of the waste), is the introduction of (what we denote as) “empty blocks” which aim are to call regular blocks following a staircase set of values. Our scheme reduces the risk of Forks and provides tunable scalability for the number of users and the speed of block generation. We also prove using game theoretical analysis that our scheme is resilient to unfair competitive investments (e.g., ”51 percent” attack) and block nursing.

Influence of governance structure on green stormwater infrastructure investment

Communities are faced with the challenge of meeting regulatory requirements mandating reductions in water pollution from stormwater and combined sewer overflows (CSO). Green stormwater infrastructure and gray stormwater infrastructure are two types of water management strategies communities can use to address water pollution. In this study, we used long-term control plans from 25 U.S. cities to synthesize: the types of gray and green infrastructure being used by communities to address combined sewer overflows; the types of goals set; biophysical characteristics of each city; and factors associated with the governance of stormwater management. These city characteristics were then used to identify common characteristics of “green leader” cities—those that dedicated >20% of the control plan budget in green infrastructure. Five “green leader” cities were identified: Milwaukee, WI, Philadelphia, PA, Syracuse, NY, New York City, NY, and Buffalo, NY. These five cities had explicit green infrastructure goals targeting the volume of stormwater or percentage of impervious cover managed by green infrastructure. Results suggested that the management scale and complexity of the management system are less important factors than the ability to harness a “policy window” to integrate green infrastructure into control plans. Two case studies—Philadelphia, PA, and Milwaukee, WI—indicated that green leader cities have a long history of building momentum for green infrastructure through a series of phases from experimentation, demonstration, and finally—in the case of Philadelphia—a full transition in the approach used to manage CSOs.

Austrian Greens: from pyrrhic presidential victory to parliamentary exit

After a continuous parliamentary presence of over three decades and despite the recent election of former Green Party leader, Alexander Van der Bellen, as President, the Austrian Greens failed to s...

The Trump Administration's Assault on California's Global Climate Leadership

The Trump Administration is taking direct aim at California's global leadership on climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to revoke the most effective tool California has to exercise climate leadership: its special authority under federal law to regulate tailpipe emissions more stringently than the federal government. California's use of this authority has led to the invention of automotive technology now standard around the world, including the catalytic converter. The state also used this power in 2002 to enact the globe's first greenhouse gas standards for automobiles. If the Trump Administration succeeds in revoking California's authority, California will find it very difficult to meet its ambitious 2030 greenhouse gas target. The attack on the state's authority will also undermine other states’ efforts to cut their greenhouse gas emissions as well as conventional air pollutants, since thirteen states follow California's standards in whole or in part. And the Trump Administration's revocation will undercut California's role as a green technology innovator by eliminating the strongest regulatory signal the state sends to automotive entrepreneurs. The last result is perhaps the most pernicious of all, because the state's role as a green technology leader has the capacity to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions around the world.

Analysis of Green Campus Initiatives Led by Voluntary Participants of University Students

Purpose: Since 2010, many universities in Korea have been implementing Green Leader Training Programs which are usually run by students themselves. In the last five years of 2015, the Green Leader Training Program under the sponsorship of Korean Association for Green Campus Initiative has promoted the practice of a green campus and many relative projects have been carried out in various fields. Method: We utilized the green campus component index established by the Presidential Committee on Green Growth in Korea and have analyzed 480 activities during the years of 2010~2015. Result: We found that many activities were classified into the environmental field(264, 55.0%). This was followed by university members' participation(130, 27.1%), community engagement(68, 14.2%), and university management(18, 3.7%). These results showed that the green campus initiatives were focused on the environmental field. The number of universities participating from 2010 to 2015 were 20 in the metropolitan area and 15 in the non-metropolitan are. In the metropolitan area, 81.7% of green leader activities were conducted at universities in Seoul, and those in non-capital areas were active in the Middle region(51.3%) and Yeongnam region(48.7%). On the other hand, there was no activity in the Honam region, and it shows that there was a noticeable differential by regional groups.

Europe as a Green Leader? A Brief Evaluation of both the European Union's Climate and Energy Policy and Common Agricultural Policy

Europe as a Green Leader? A Brief Evaluation of both the European Union's Climate and Energy Policy and Common Agricultural Policy

It's Not Easy Being Green: Integrating Refugees in German Environmentalist Culture

The solidarity crisis has prompted many initiatives for refugees in Germany, among them quite a few local and state-funded environmental education programs. Many of these initiatives are framed as measures of cultural integration and issue bold statements such as “recycling has become a cultural value in Germany.” Media depictions of these programs therefore inadvertently detail the cultural specificity of “environmentalism made in Germany” and reveal institutionalized idiosyncrasies of a long-standing green leader. The news coverage as well as the online self-presentations of these initiatives seem to embody the ideals of Willkommenskultur with glossy images of people of color among their blond neighbors and with captions that feature moments of mutual learning. Yet despite ample evidence of good intentions driving the programs, their feel-good depictions are problematic for many reasons: they are invariably dominated by German voices and specifically German environmental concerns, rendering the (homogenized) refugees and the global dimension of climate change secondary yet somehow responsible. Many of the articles begin with the imagery of trash surrounding refugee housing, seemingly not realizing that these portrayals suggest a linkage between refuse and refuge – between discarded objects and displaced human beings. Largely ignoring pressing issues of asylum housing and employment, it is not always clear whose problems these programs set out to solve, and the more tone-deaf reporting about them brings to light many difficult notions, such as conceiving of German environmentalism as thepath to integration (a problematic concept to begin with) and as a universal good despite its apparent localism. This article analyzes available media representations of a set of environmentalist initiatives for refugees, which tell us as much, if not more, about German perceptions of cultural values and related conversations in the publics sphere as about refugees and the environment.Keywordssolidarity crisis, refugees, German environmental culture, environmental education, recycling, Will

Green Economy or Living Well? Assessing divergent paradigms for equitable eco-social transition in South Korea and Bolivia

'Green Economy' and 'Living Well ('Vivir Bien)' have emerged as contending macro-policies in the search for a future direction that meets human needs whilst respecting environmental limits. There are a number of different interpretations of each concept but the dominant discourses in relation to each are distinct. Green Economy is presented as a fundamentally technological, managerial and market-based approach, whilst Living Well is considered to imply redistribution of wealth, inter-personal and inter-species reciprocity and eco-socialist development in harmony with nature. Contributing to the debate on the most effective strategic direction to take to achieve equitable and effective eco-social transition, this article examines the processes, politics and early impacts of attempts to implement these macro-policies in South Korea, a global Green Economy leader, and Bolivia, at the forefront of promoting the Living Well approach.Key words: Environment, development, Vivir Bien, macro-policy, climate change, Global South

Petra Kelly, International Green Leader: On Biography and the Peace Movement as Resources of Power in West German Politics, 1979-1983

This article uses the biography of the activist and Green Party co-founder Petra Kelly in order to rethink the Greens' founding process and to articulate a new conception of charismatic political leadership. It shows how Kelly used her activism in the new social movements as the basis for her leadership role in the Greens, and how her ongoing work in the peace movement provided her a means of maintaining power within the nascent party during the early 1980s. By examining Kelly's contributions to the Greens' approach to politics, the article shows that she was more than just a figurehead for the new party. Most importantly, the article shows that throughout her career as an activist and politician, Kelly used her biography to establish credibility and to support her unique style of charismatic leadership. The German public's response to Kelly reveals the influence of this charismatic leadership and shows how her movement-driven and biographically informed approach, which brought personal experiences and emotions into politics, was part of a larger transformation of the political in West Germany during the 1970s and 1980s.

The Green Economy in South Africa: Global Discourses and Local Politics

Global interest in the ‘green economy’ has heightened since 2008, and this article contributes to these discussions by elaborating on (a) four alternative, and sometimes competing, discourses of the green economy, and (b) the particular politics of the green economy in South Africa. Most research on the green economy tends to focus on European and North American countries, however in the context of a changing global economy and the ‘rise of the South’ the politics of the green economy in countries like South Africa is of increasing importance. South Africa faces many challenges in pursuing a transition to a more sustainable development path, yet has been cited as a global green economy leader. This article argues that this is related to the particular discourse of ‘green growth’ which is dominant in South Africa, and proposes two significant lines of critique of this discourse. The first cautions that commitment to the green economy may not be particularly deep-rooted, sustained or coherent; and the second highlights some of the more troubling political implications of the type of green growth advocated, even if it were to be pursued with more determination. With this in mind, it is important to consider whether transitions to a green economy might produce new power relations of inequality and injustice, just as the industrial revolution helped produce today's deeply unequal world.

Grassroots action for renewable energy: how did Ontario succeed in the implementation of a feed-in tariff system?

BackgroundThis article examines the policymaking process of Ontario's Green Energy Act (GEA) which enabled the introduction of the first comprehensive feed-in tariff (FIT) in North America. The FIT, which is a payback system for renewable energy (RE) producers, was implemented in order to make Ontario a Green Leader in North America. This article analyzes this process through a consideration of the role played by grassroots action.MethodsThe Green Energy Act Alliance (GEAA) succeeded in the implementation of the GEA. Using Lober's collaborative window, this article explores factors that led to the realization of the FIT. The conclusion will show that the GEAA succeeded in opening the collaborative window, even though the model's prerequisites were not completely fulfilled, namely there was a lack of public awareness.ResultsThe diffusion of innovation theory helps us to understand this, with regard to the GEAA's strategy. The policymakers had recognized the importance of RE but had not yet been motivated to develop RE generating capacity in the region. The GEAA changed their opinion by showing the success of the FIT in Europe in boosting the economy.ConclusionsAfter the European study tour, the Minister of Energy, George Smitherman, as one of the important policymakers, started to support the GEA, and this was the key factor leading to the introduction of the FIT, despite a lack of public awareness.

Rutile compositions in the Kalgoorlie Goldfields and their implications for exploration

The compositions of 188 grains of rutile from 12 samples from the Kalgoorlie Goldfields, in the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia, show that grains associated with the Mt Charlotte stockwork-style mineralisation have generally low minor-element contents (except for Fe, which may reflect, in part, ilmenite inclusions). However, rutile in the Fimiston (Golden Mile) lode-style mineralisation is (Fe + W)-rich, and in the high-grade Green Leader mineralisation rutile is (V + W)-rich. The incorporation of W6 + into the rutile structure in these styles of mineralisation is balanced by the presence of Fe3 + and V3 + , although in rutile in the Green Leader mineralisation, V is present in both + 3 and higher oxidation states. Detailed examination of W-rich rutiles from the Fimiston lode indicates that they have a complex internal microstructure, with variations in lattice orientation within single rutile crystals, probably caused by the strain associated with incorporation of large amounts of foreign ions into the rutile structure. The composition and complex microstructure of rutile can potentially discriminate between Au anomalies of higher and lower significance in the region (lode- vs stockwork-style), with the presence of V in high oxidation states suggesting that the hydrothermal fluids responsible were relatively oxidising.