Saggi sull'energia e l'economia ambientale: energia sostenibile, produttività verde, elettrificazione e povertà energetica

This doctoral thesis consists of four stand-alone papers at the intersection of energy and environmental economics. The thesis focuses on the environmental role of sustainable energy, green productivity with natural capital, the causal impacts of large-scale electrification, and dynamics of energy poverty. Applying novel empirical approaches with macro- and micro-level datasets, the thesis contributes to a better understanding of how energy systems interact with human welfare and environmental sustainability. The first two chapters have been published in Energy Economics and Resources Policy, while the third—co-authored with my supervisors—has been revised and re-submitted to Energy Policy, and the fourth is a job market paper. The first chapter examines the combined role of green energy, energy efficiency and economic productivity in mitigating energy-driven greenhouse gas emissions within the Sustainable Development (SDG) context. Building on and extending the traditional Kaya identity, it provides global empirical evidence on the dynamic interplay among these SDG goals using a broad set of countries. The findings reveal significant synergies between the green energy and energy efficiency in reducing energy-related emissions while simultaneously moderating the effects of economic productivity. The second chapter estimates green productivity growth by explicitly incorporating environmental services as both inputs and outputs. Unlike conventional approaches, it integrates natural capital, loss of capital stocks, and pollution damages into productivity analysis, thereby emphasizing the interplay between economic and ecological systems. The findings indicate a decline in green productivity growth and significant gap between traditional and green productivity measures, with the neglect of capital losses and environmental damages leading to overestimation of conventional productivity growth. The third chapter explores the dynamics of household energy poverty amid the large-scale electrification efforts in a low-income country. Despite rapid progress in electrification, the findings show no significant reduction in overall energy poverty, mainly due to persistent cooking deprivations. Yet, improved grid-reliability and off-grid solar solutions help reduce household energy deprivation. The fourth chapter studies the causal impacts of large-scale electrification, focusing on how and under what conditions it can drive welfare-improving structural changes in local economy. The key findings reveal that electrification is a crucial catalyst for welfare-enhancing structural changes. The electricity-induced welfare benefits are notably amplified in areas with better roads and reliable grids, emphasizing the importance of complementary conditions to maximize the observed electricity-driven welfare gains.