Level Of Environmental Quality Research Articles

Would the inequality of environmental quality affect labor productivity and the income gap? Evidence from China

Healthy ecosystems and safe workplaces are not equally distributed across regions and people. Increasingly close economic exchanges domestically and abroad have aggravated regional environmental unequal status in China. To evaluate China’s inequality of environmental quality, four-panel environmental Gini coefficients are calculated for 25 Chinese provinces based on the data for 281 prefecture-level cities from 2008 to 2018. China’s inequality level of environmental quality is measured by resource inequality and pollution inequality. The results of the spatial Durbin model and GMM estimations indicate that resource inequality may widen the local income gap but narrow the income gap with distant regions, while the uneven environmental quality significantly inhibits the improvement of labor productivity. The dynamic threshold model results show that pollution inequality in areas with relatively low education levels will widen the local income gap, while resource inequality in areas with low health levels has a strong inhibiting effect on labor productivity.

Nexus Between Trading Non-Green Products and Environment: Introducing Non-Green Trade Openness Index

Trade is a significant parameter that may impact environment positively or negatively. However, there is no consensus on this issue among the researchers. It seems likely that tradable products will affect the environmental quality level. However, this requires the separation of the international trade basket. Thus, this research asks whether trade in non-green products affects the level of environmental degradation in the 25 European Union (EU) member states? To answer this question, we develop an index of trade openness in non-green products and empirically investigate whether this index influences the ecological footprint. Non-green trade openness index represents the ratio of the total export and import of non-green products in a country’s international trade basket to that country’s Gross Domestic Product. Advanced panel estimation techniques are employed for a sample of 25 EU countries over the period between 2003 and 2016. The core finding–supporting the Pollution Haven Hypothesis–is that non-green trade openness reduces environmental degradation. We discuss several implications of this result for recent environmental policies, particularly for the EU climate policy.

Eco-innovation and Sustainable Development

The paper aims to encourage the creation of innovation policy by individual states and state institutions, management of companies in the energy sector, with the synergy of national and interstate institutions, to apply an integrative approach to eco-innovation. The purpose of this paper is to expand the existing potential for the development of eco-innovation in the business sector and industrial enterprises. The method used is based on the descriptive method, synthesis, and analysis of data collected by international organizations, as well based on research in academic circles. Appropriate incentives from governments to innovate green business models, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), would ensure a higher level of environmental quality, adequate quality of life for all people, and a greener future. To achieve the goals, future directions of development should be focused on the development of technology and knowledge, with an adequate policy of creating a green strategy for decarbonization and sustainable development.

The Development of “Internet +” Smart Environmental Protection Multi-Environment Perception System

With the development of the economy and people’s longing for a better living environment, the smart and environmentally friendly ecological environment has entered a period of intensive research. However, the current ecological environment resources cannot be used reasonably, and word of mouth and tourism economy are showing negative growth. In order to be able to conduct an in-depth study of the ecological environment, based on “Internet +” and perceived value, this paper builds a comprehensive evaluation model of a smart and environmentally friendly ecological environment based on a multiple perception system. This article establishes an evaluation index system that combines two systems of multiple perception systems and ecological environment, six secondary indicators, and 22 three-level indicators. In this paper, the comprehensive evaluation value of the smart environmental protection ecological environment is 0.78595, and the level of the multi-perception system is good. At the same time, the corresponding evaluation values of visual perception, functional service perception, and cultural and activity perception are 0.75431, 0.70196, and 0.78846, respectively. The comprehensive evaluation value of the ecological environment is 0.65734, and the level of ecological environment development is average. The corresponding evaluation values of the subsystem environmental quality level, environmental pressure level, and environmental improvement level are 0.69943, 0.63491, and 0.60279, respectively. The coordination value of the multi-perception system and the ecological environment is 0.9978, which is an ultra-high-level coordination stage. The comprehensive evaluation value of the two is 0.8659. At this stage, the degree of interaction between the two is strong and affects their development.

A novel design approach for indoor environmental quality based on a multiagent system for intelligent buildings in a smart city: Toward occupant's comfort

AbstractIn a smart city, energy usage for sustaining indoor environmental quality (IEQ) and occupant comfort levels frequently clash. This research aims to design a novel approach to solve the conflict between the use of power and the comfort of the citizens. A multi‐purpose problem for minimum consumption of energy as well as maximum occupant's ease within the energy‐efficient construction for smart city as a future has been formulated. Across suggested design method, three variable namely temperature (°C), illumination level (lux), as well as Carbon dioxide (CO2‐ppm) have been undertaken for occupant's comfort. The Crisscross Search Particle Swarm Optimization (CSPSO), a revolutionary solution for the design method, has been applied to search for the optimal value of environmental factors (temperature, light level, CO2) in relation to user‐set preferences. In the heuristic method, the augmented particle swarm optimization strategy updates an initial solution before updating the best local solutions through length and breadth crossover operators. The CSPSO approach search explores the search space in all dimensions and reduces the stagnation trouble by through length and breadth crossover operators. The temperature, lighting, CO2 sensors data, and user‐defined parameters are all inputs to the CSPSO algorithm, and the optimized parameters are the outputs of the optimization method. Such optimized parameters will become an input to the fuzzy controllers that adjust various actuators' status according to the users' comfort. Utilizing the CSPSO technique, 22.74% energy of 625.372 kWhr energy was saved during a day, and the comfort level has increased from 0.51692 to 0.75685. Therefore, the proposed novel design approach is acceptable in managing building energy consumption by achieving maximum comfort.

Pengelolaan Sampah Berbasis Masyarakat sebagai Upaya Mewujudkan Kota Layak Huni di Kelurahan Bulusan Tembalang Semarang

The increasing of population number influences waste generation so that it requires proper management to prevent the environmental problems. Waste management will determine the level of environment quality as well as the amenities. This is in accordance with the concept of a livable city, particularly related to the provision of urban facilities. Hence, it is necessary to have an understanding of the concept of a livable city as a form of the government's commitment to improving the quality of the environment and society. The community service team is from the Laboratory of Urban Design and Development, Department of Urban and Regional Planning, Universitas Diponegoro that consist of four lecturers and two students disseminated the concept of a livable city in Bulusan Village through community-based waste management. This is done as an effort to reduce the volume of waste which requires an active role and community commitment. The purpose of this dissemination is to increase public understanding and ultimately realize the importance of playing a role in its implementation. The method used in this activity were identified potentions and problems on waste management, identified the community’s characteristics and analyzed existing waste management, that further arranged the waste management strategies in term of liveable city. The data collection process is carried out through interviews and field observations. The output of this community service is a community-based waste management strategy within the framework of the livable city concept based on lessons learned from best practices and relevant theories through the involvement of students, boarding house owners, and the community in waste sorting, the role of government in bridging with garbage collectors.

Environmental Regulation Modeled as a Public Input Proportional to Capital Investment

Abstract Public inputs, when referred to as unpaid factors, are included in production specifications characterized by constant returns to scale in all inputs. In equilibrium, the public input rent generated by this configuration must be allocated among firms based on some measure of productive activity. Herein, decentralized environmental regulation is modeled as a public input of the unpaid type. Environmental rent is then rationed to private firms in proportion to their capital investment. Results reveal that source based capital taxation will capture these environmental rents, however, will not yield efficiency in the devolved interjurisdictional framework. The capital tax must be complemented by benefit taxation in order to provide efficient local public expenditures and socially optimal levels of environmental quality. JEL classification numbers: H42, H54, H71. Keywords: Environmental federalism, Capital tax, Public inputs, Efficiency.

Environmental Sustainability Assessment of the European Union's Capital Cities.

The growing flow of people into cities causes several challenges for their functioning. This brings the need to ensure, for example, efficient transport, sustainable waste, and appropriate energy policy. Particularly capital cities are exposed to the above-mentioned risks, due to their large numbers and densities of inhabitants. Therefore, the state of the environment in cities should be monitored systematically. The research aim of this article is to evaluate the level of environmental sustainability in capitals of European Union countries. A synthetic indicator was made up of diagnostic variables, using quantitative and qualitative indicators relating to the quality of the environment. Based on the ranking, results reveal that Europe is spatially divided according to the level of environmental quality. The best results were achieved by capital cities of the northern European countries. The analysis presented here has some application potential. It can serve to identify challenges to improving the quality of the environment, and to raise public awareness of the importance of changing individual behaviour (e.g., use of public transport).

DEVELOPMENT OF ECONOMIC THEORY – FROM THEORIES OF ECONOMIC GROWTH AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT TO THE PARADIGM OF SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Rapid economic growth is a relatively recent phenomenon, which has been examined since the end of the 18th century. In the scientific literature researchers use the concept of “economic growth” and “economic development” when analyzing economic processes. “Economic growth”, as defined by Paul M. Romer occurs whenever people use resources and rearrange them in more valuable ways. Thus, economic growth means an increase in a real national income / national output. In contrast, economic development is an improvement of the quality of life and living standards, e.g. improvement of literacy, life expectancy, and approach to environmental issues. Economic development encircles a wider range of metrics than just gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita, it is about actual standard of living, level of environmental standards, availability and quality of housing and other aspects. The article analyzes, compares and evaluates theories of economic growth and economic development in the context of sustainable development.

Efficient Decentralized Environmental Standards from a Model of Strategic Interjurisdictional Competition

The purpose of this paper is to develop a strategic model of interjurisdictional competition where regions choose taxes on two types of capital (locally and absentee owned) and set a level of local environmental quality. Regional strategic interactions are introduced to reinforce the differential returns to and tax treatment of capital types. Moreover, the choice of the level of environmental quality by a jurisdiction is allowed to effect the returns to mobile capital types. The joint determination and fiscal interaction of these three policy variables leads to efficiency in the devolved game. Taxation of mobile capital will not distort the choice of environmental standards when public goods are provided efficiently. Efficiency in public goods provision is enhanced by capital tax exporting.

Environmental offsets and production externalities under monopolistic competition.

In a monopolistically competitive model with production externalities, where individuals voluntarily provide offsets which compensate for degradation of environmental quality caused by their income earning activities, this paper examines how an increase in the population size affects the equilibrium levels of environmental quality, offsets, and net contributions. Whether labor supply is institutionally constrained or not, as the population size increases, environmental quality decreases and converges to zero. However, since offsets increase and converge to the degradation rate of environmental quality, the carbon neutrality theorem holds: net contributions are zero. These results are independent of the specification of the utility function.

Local environmental quality and heterogeneity in an OLG agent-based model with spatial externalities

Most of the theoretical contributions on the relationship between economy and environment assume the environment as a good distributed homogeneously among agents. The aim of this work is to relax this hypothesis and to consider that the environment can have a local character even if conditioned through externalities by the choices made at the global level. In this article, we adapt the classical framework introduced in John and Pecchenino (Econ J 104(427):1393–1410, 1994) to analyze the dynamic relationship between environment and economic process, and we propose an OLG agent-based model where each agent perceives her own level of environmental quality determined by her own decisions, and by the decisions of those living around her. Despite the attention devoted to local environmental aspects, network externalities (determined through the scheme of Moore neighborhoods) play a fundamental role in defining environmental dynamics and they may induce the emergence of cyclical dynamics. The occurrence of oscillations in the local environmental quality is partially mitigated by the presence of heterogeneity in individuals’ preferences. Finally, when a centralized planner is introduced, the dynamics converge to stationary values regardless of the assumption on heterogeneity of agents.

Simulation of passive ventilation strategies towards indoor CO2 concentration reduction for passive houses

Population awareness and economic growth are responsible for the increasing requirements of indoor thermal comfort in buildings. However, the use of active systems to ensure indoor thermal comfort, contributes for the building sector to be responsible for high levels of energy consumption and consequently greenhouse gas emissions. Passive Houses are one step forward towards low energy demand and indoor environmental quality in buildings. Airtightness of the building's envelope is one of the major PH requirements, that in association with the mechanical ventilation system are responsible to assure adequate ventilation levels. These parameters result in additional challenges towards PH applications in Mediterranean and warm subtropical climates due to the overheating risk, providing new opportunities to explore potential night ventilation strategies. This study is focused on the analysis of different passive ventilation strategies towards indoor CO2 concentration reduction preventing overheating risk, thus assuring high levels of indoor environmental quality. The adopted methodology relied on collected data acquired from interviews performed to Passive Houses residents as the starting point, to identify their major expectations as well as complaints and concerns regarding indoor environmental quality. Following the interviews analysis, whole building dynamic simulation was performed using as a case study a PH building constructed in Cyprus (Tseri Passive House). Three different ventilation scenarios were evaluated: original settings (scenario 1); mechanical ventilation active during the day and turned off during the night (scenario 2); natural night ventilation (scenario 3). An ideal scenario, considering night ventilation through window openings, in which indoor CO2 concentration never exceeded the normative limit of 1000 ppm during a summer design week was achieved.

Energy performance assessment of passive buildings in future climatic scenarios: the case of study of the childcare centre in Putignano (Bari, Italy)

The building sector is a primary target for GreenHouse Gas emissions mitigation efforts, as it accounts for 36% of final energy use. The most effective mitigation strategies include the energy retrofit of the existing building stock. Among existing buildings, particular attention should be paid to school buildings, which are among the most diffuse public buildings in Europe, most of them built decades ago, with a resulting high potential in terms of refurbishment effectiveness. Moreover, schools cover a social function and require high levels of indoor environmental quality. In this field, the research activity is intense, but retrofit strategies are still conceived considering historical weather data, which could not represent correctly present and future climate patterns, reducing the retrofit effectiveness. In this work, an energy retrofit to “Passivhaus standard” of a childcare centre located in the Mediterranean area is analysed through dynamic simulations. A post-retrofit building model is simulated using Typical Meteorological Year (TMY) and compared with the ones simulated in future weather scenarios, created using the morphing method. The analyses aim to assess if the technical solutions currently adopted on the basis of the TMY will lead to acceptable energy performance in future decades. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis of different design solutions is performed, aiming to assess their effectiveness in future weather conditions.

Monitoring and Assessment of Indoor Environmental Conditions after the Implementation of COVID-19-Based Ventilation Strategies in an Educational Building in Southern Spain.

Since students and teachers spend much of their time in educational buildings, it is critical to provide good levels of indoor environmental quality (IEQ). The current COVID-19 pandemic has shown that maintaining a good indoor air quality level is an effective measure to control the transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. This study used sensors to monitor key IEQ factors and assess several natural ventilation scenarios in a classroom of the University of Granada. Subsequently, the IEQ factors (temperature, relative humidity, CO2 concentration, acoustic environment, and air velocity) were evaluated for the selected ventilation scenarios in the occupied classroom, and the field monitoring was carried out in two different assessment periods, winter and summer. The obtained results show that the CO2 concentration levels were well below the recommended limits. However, the maintenance of the recommended thermal and acoustic IEQ factors was significantly affected by the natural ventilation strategies (temperature and relative humidity values were very close to the outside values, and the background sound pressure level was over 35 dBA during the entire assessment). The proper measurements and careful selection of the appropriate ventilation scenarios become of utmost importance to ensure that the ventilation rates required by the health authorities are achieved.

Environmental decentralization, environmental public service, and public health: evidence from 289 cities in China.

Effective supply of environmental public services (EPS) is important to guarantee the mitigation of residential pollution exposure risk. This study analyzes the impact of the supply efficiency of EPS on residential health through the sample of 289 cities in China by fixed-effect model and threshold regression model. The results show that: (1) Improving the efficiency of EPS can significantly increase the efficiency of pollution control, and improve the environmental quality and health level of residents. (2) Improving the efficiency of EPS can have a greater positive effect on residents' health in areas with high-level population aging, poor medical condition, and low population density. (3) Environmental decentralization weakens the positive effect of EPS on residential health. Giving more power of environmental management to local governments may be detrimental to pollution control. Therefore, differentiated strategies of EPS should be developed to realize the equalization of basic public services with healthcare and environmental protection. It is necessary to strengthen central environmental supervision and establish resident offices for environmental supervision.

The Relationship of Education and Regional Income Level on Environmental Quality: Empirical Evidence from High Populated Country

Indonesia is committed to implementing a sustainable development agenda by considering its quality and maintaining economic growth by improving public education and regional income. This study aims to estimate the relationship between education and regional income level with the environmental quality of Indonesian provinces. By applying the descriptive analysis and panel data regression, it is observed that regions with a high-level level of education and income are likely to have low environmental quality, which shows that education level has a negative relationship with environmental quality. In contrast, income level has no relationship with environmental quality. The empirical estimation revealed that higher education and regional income correlate with a lower level of environmental quality. It implied that the regional development in Indonesia has been at the cost of environmental degradation. It advised establishing an incentive and disincentive mechanism for economic actors to utilize energy resources and environmentally friendly production technology and bring the country into a sustainable development direction.

Campania and cancer mortality: An inseparable pair? The role of environmental quality and socio-economic deprivation

The region of Campania in Southern Italy features high levels of socio-economic deprivation and low levels of environmental quality. A vast strand of the scientific literature has tried to verify whether poor environmental quality and widespread socio-economic deprivation might explain the high cancer mortality rates (CMRs) observed, especially in the municipalities – infamously labelled as the ‘Land of Fires’ – that were hit most severely by the crisis. While some studies managed to identify links between these two confounding factors and cancer mortality, the evidence is overall mixed. Interesting information may be drawn from the observation of municipal data: in spite of previous claims, some municipalities featuring high environmental quality and low socio-economic deprivation also display high CMRs, while other Campanian municipalities facing disastrous environmental and socio-economic conditions are characterised by low CMRs. These figures, in contrast to common sentiment and previous studies, need to be investigated thoroughly in order to assess the exact role of the confounding factors. In this work, we aim to identify the municipalities where confounding factors act as driving forces in the determination of high CMRs through an original multi-step analysis based on frequentist and Bayesian analysis. Pinpointing these municipalities could allow policymakers to design targeted and effective policy measures aimed at reducing cancer mortality.

A method of calculating the spatial difference of human settlements in urban blocks based on floor area ratio

Based on the method of the Jenks natural break point, this paper constructs the floor area ratio level of urban habitat environmental quality, and proposes a method of analyzing spatial difference characteristics of the human living environment in urban neighborhoods using the Theil-index model and spatial difference measurement index. The proposed method can be used not only to characterize the spatial difference measurement value of urban neighborhoods, but also to calculate the inner spatial difference in city blocks. The effectiveness of the method is verified by the remote sensing image of the case point and the actual data.

TAIL, a new scheme for rating indoor environmental quality in offices and hotels undergoing deep energy renovation (EU ALDREN project)

To avoid health risks and discomfort, the European Energy Performance for Building Directive (EPBD) mandates that “Member States should support energy performance upgrades of existing buildings that contribute to achieving a healthy indoor environment.” There is, however, no widely accepted method for rating the overall level of indoor environmental quality (IEQ), although several different approaches are proposed by standards, guidelines, and certification schemes. To fill this void, a new classification rating scheme called TAIL was developed to rate IEQ in offices and hotels undergoing deep energy renovation during their normal use; the scheme is a part of the energy certification method developed by the EU ALDREN project. The TAIL scheme standardizes rating of the quality of the thermal (T) environment, acoustic (A) environment, indoor air (I), and luminous (L) environment, and by using these ratings, it provides a rating of the overall level of IEQ. Twelve parameters are rated by measurements, modelling, and observation to provide the input to the overall rating of IEQ. Their quality levels are determined primarily using Standard EN-16798-1 and World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines and are expressed by colours and Roman numerals to improve communication. The TAIL rating was shown to discriminate IEQ levels when its feasibility was examined in eleven buildings across Europe to provide support for its applicability and input for further modifications. Opportunities for using the scheme in other types of buildings and for its further development and application are discussed.