IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i24p17054-d1008394.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Effect of Carbon Dioxide and Energy Reduction on Production Efficiency and Economic Growth: Application of Carbon Neutrality in Korea

Author

Listed:
  • Sangmok Kang

    (Department of Economics, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea)

  • Ziyao Li

    (Department of Economics, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea)

  • Dasom Jeong

    (Department of Economics, Pusan National University, Busan 46241, Republic of Korea)

Abstract

Global interest in climate change and carbon neutrality is hot. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, achieving carbon neutrality is the solution to avoiding climate change. Carbon neutrality is a global challenge for sustainable economic growth. In response, Korea declared 2050 carbon neutrality in 2021. However, for Korea to be carbon neutral, an incredible transformation in terms of an energy revolution is required. In this context, this study aims to diagnose the current situation to achieve carbon neutrality in Korea and to explore the direction of minimizing the national economic burden in the implementation process. To this end, we use the data envelopment analysis (DEA) directional distance function based on the material balance flow approach to examine changes in production efficiency and GDP due to carbon dioxide reduction and energy conversion. The empirical analysis results are as follows. First, in the analysis, according to the type of reduction, when only 1% of CO 2 was reduced, GDP decreased by about 0.1%. Still, when reduced simultaneously with fossil energy, GDP fell by about 0.3% or more. Secondly, based on the scenario of the 2050 carbon-neutral plan, as a result of estimating the efficiency and GDP change caused by Korea’s energy transition, Korea is a country with a significant increase in inefficiency due to the energy transition and a substantial loss of GDP. Therefore, the government should establish a Korean carbon-neutral policy at a level that the national economy can afford.

Suggested Citation

  • Sangmok Kang & Ziyao Li & Dasom Jeong, 2022. "An Effect of Carbon Dioxide and Energy Reduction on Production Efficiency and Economic Growth: Application of Carbon Neutrality in Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-18, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:24:p:17054-:d:1008394
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/17054/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/24/17054/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robert C. Feenstra & Robert Inklaar & Marcel P. Timmer, 2015. "The Next Generation of the Penn World Table," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3150-3182, October.
    2. Welch, Eric & Barnum, Darold, 2009. "Joint environmental and cost efficiency analysis of electricity generation," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(8-9), pages 2336-2343, June.
    3. Stamatios Ntanos & Michalis Skordoulis & Grigorios Kyriakopoulos & Garyfallos Arabatzis & Miltiadis Chalikias & Spyros Galatsidas & Athanasios Batzios & Apostolia Katsarou, 2018. "Renewable Energy and Economic Growth: Evidence from European Countries," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(8), pages 1-13, July.
    4. Belke, Ansgar & Dobnik, Frauke & Dreger, Christian, 2011. "Energy consumption and economic growth: New insights into the cointegration relationship," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(5), pages 782-789, September.
    5. Wang, Ke & Wei, Yi-Ming & Huang, Zhimin, 2018. "Environmental efficiency and abatement efficiency measurements of China's thermal power industry: A data envelopment analysis based materials balance approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(1), pages 35-50.
    6. George E. Halkos & Shunsuke Managi, 2017. "Measuring the Effect of Economic Growth on Countries’ Environmental Efficiency: A Conditional Directional Distance Function Approach," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(3), pages 753-775, November.
    7. Lauwers, Ludwig, 2009. "Justifying the incorporation of the materials balance principle into frontier-based eco-efficiency models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1605-1614, April.
    8. Yildirim, Ertugrul & Aslan, Alper, 2012. "Energy consumption and economic growth nexus for 17 highly developed OECD countries: Further evidence based on bootstrap-corrected causality tests," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 985-993.
    9. Oh, Wankeun & Lee, Kihoon, 2004. "Energy consumption and economic growth in Korea: testing the causality relation," Journal of Policy Modeling, Elsevier, vol. 26(8-9), pages 973-981, December.
    10. Popescu, Gheorghe H. & Mieila, Mihai & Nica, Elvira & Andrei, Jean Vasile, 2018. "The emergence of the effects and determinants of the energy paradigm changes on European Union economy," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 81(P1), pages 768-774.
    11. Geoffrey Heal, 2022. "Economic Aspects of the Energy Transition," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 83(1), pages 5-21, September.
    12. Narayan, Paresh Kumar & Prasad, Arti, 2008. "Electricity consumption-real GDP causality nexus: Evidence from a bootstrapped causality test for 30 OECD countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 910-918, February.
    13. Fangming Xie & Chuanzhe Liu & Huiying Chen & Ning Wang, 2018. "Threshold Effects of New Energy Consumption Transformation on Economic Growth," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-14, November.
    14. Hoang, Viet-Ngu & Rao, D.S. Prasada, 2010. "Measuring and decomposing sustainable efficiency in agricultural production: A cumulative exergy balance approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(9), pages 1765-1776, July.
    15. Tim Coelli & Ludwig Lauwers & Guido Huylenbroeck, 2007. "Environmental efficiency measurement and the materials balance condition," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 3-12, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Andreas Eder, 2022. "Environmental efficiency measurement when producers control pollutants under heterogeneous conditions: a generalization of the materials balance approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 57(2), pages 157-176, April.
    2. Atkinson, Scott E. & Tsionas, Mike G., 2021. "Generalized estimation of productivity with multiple bad outputs: The importance of materials balance constraints," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 292(3), pages 1165-1186.
    3. Ke Wang & Zhifu Mi & Yi‐Ming Wei, 2019. "Will Pollution Taxes Improve Joint Ecological and Economic Efficiency of Thermal Power Industry in China?: A DEA‐Based Materials Balance Approach," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 23(2), pages 389-401, April.
    4. Hampf, Benjamin & Rødseth, Kenneth Løvold, 2019. "Environmental efficiency measurement with heterogeneous input quality: A nonparametric analysis of U.S. power plants," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 610-625.
    5. Aldanondo-Ochoa, Ana M. & Casasnovas-Oliva, Valero L. & Almansa-Sáez, M. Carmen, 2017. "Cross-constrained Measuring the Cost-environment Efficiency in Material Balance Based Frontier Models," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C), pages 46-55.
    6. Aparicio, Juan & Kapelko, Magdalena & Zofío, José L., 2020. "The measurement of environmental economic inefficiency with pollution-generating technologies," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    7. Andreas Eder, 2021. "Environmental efficiency measurement when producers control pollutants under heterogeneous conditions: a generalization of the materials balance approach," Working Papers 752021, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Institute for Sustainable Economic Development.
    8. Aldanondo, Ana M. & Casasnovas, Valero L. & Almansa, M. Carmen, 2016. "Cost-constrained measures of environmental efficiency: a material balance approach," MPRA Paper 72490, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. repec:zbw:inwedp:752021 is not listed on IDEAS
    10. Jeanneaux, Philippe & Latruffe, Laure, 2016. "Modelling pollution-generating technologies in performance benchmarking: Recent developments, limits and future prospects in the nonparametric frameworkAuthor-Name: Dakpo, K. Hervé," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(2), pages 347-359.
    11. Kenneth Rødseth & Eirik Romstad, 2014. "Environmental Regulations, Producer Responses, and Secondary Benefits: Carbon Dioxide Reductions Under the Acid Rain Program," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 59(1), pages 111-135, September.
    12. Behrouz Arabi & Susila Munisamy Doraisamy & Ali Emrouznejad & Alireza Khoshroo, 2017. "Eco-efficiency measurement and material balance principle: an application in power plants Malmquist Luenberger Index," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 255(1), pages 221-239, August.
    13. Tiba, Sofien & Omri, Anis, 2017. "Literature survey on the relationships between energy, environment and economic growth," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 1129-1146.
    14. Joanna Domagała, 2021. "Economic and Environmental Aspects of Agriculture in the EU Countries," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-23, November.
    15. Sofien, Tiba & Omri, Anis, 2016. "Literature survey on the relationships between energy variables, environment and economic growth," MPRA Paper 82555, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 14 Sep 2016.
    16. Wang, Ke & Wei, Yi-Ming & Huang, Zhimin, 2018. "Environmental efficiency and abatement efficiency measurements of China's thermal power industry: A data envelopment analysis based materials balance approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 269(1), pages 35-50.
    17. Odhiambo, Nicholas M, 2020. "Energy consumption and economic growth in Botswana: Empirical evidence from disaggregated data analysis," Working Papers 27659, University of South Africa, Department of Economics.
    18. Nicholas M. Odhiambo, 2021. "Energy consumption and economic growth in Botswana: empirical evidence from a disaggregated data," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(1), pages 3-24, January.
    19. Yıldırım, Ertugrul & Sukruoglu, Deniz & Aslan, Alper, 2014. "Energy consumption and economic growth in the next 11 countries: The bootstrapped autoregressive metric causality approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(C), pages 14-21.
    20. Kenneth Løvold Rødseth, 2017. "Environmental regulations and allocative efficiency: application to coal-to-gas substitution in the U.S. electricity sector," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 47(2), pages 129-142, April.
    21. Kenneth Rødseth, 2014. "Efficiency measurement when producers control pollutants: a non-parametric approach," Journal of Productivity Analysis, Springer, vol. 42(2), pages 211-223, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:24:p:17054-:d:1008394. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.