Nadezda Krasilnikova (p), Iolanda Ialongo, Daria Gritsenko, Tuyara Gavrilyeva, Henrik Virta

Dávid Nagy

NO2 is high toxic air pollutant, due to its short lifetime it strongly correlates with local emission sources and is a good tracer of human activities over urban or industrial areas. The relationship between NO2 concentration and major industries output among the regions shows the contribution of economic development to air pollution over time. Satellite observations provide information on NO2 concentration on global scale, also where ground-based measurements or other information on air polluting emissions are not available. In this work, the NO2 tropospheric columns derived from the TROPOMI satellite instrument are used to evaluate the spatial distribution of polluting emissions over the three areas of the Sakha Republic (Yakutia), the largest north-east region of Russia: diamond-extractive industrial hub of Aykhal and Unachny urban-type settlements, the coal-mining complex in the southern part of Yakutia, located in the territory of city of Negungry, Chulman and Serebryany Bor urban settlements and Yakutsk city, heat and energy generating center of the Yakutian division of the United Energy Systems of East of Russia. The territories dominated by anthropogenic NO2 are revealed and the positive relation between NO2 and coal consumption, industrialization, urbanization and cross-regional transportation are proved. The environmental policy measures influence on spatial NO2 distribution is shown

Massimo Giannini (p), Cristiana Fiorelli, Barbara Martini

Nadezda Krasilnikova

The conflict in East Europe is adding further shadows on the future of energy policies in Europe. It overlaps the pandemic crisis. The rapid but uneven economic recovery from last year's Covid induced recession is putting major strains on parts of today's energy system, sparking sharp price rises in natural gas, coal and electricity markets. Despite advances being made by renewables and electric mobility, 2021 is seeing a large rebound in coal and oil use. Largely for this reason, it is also seeing the second-largest annual increase in CO2 emissions in history. (World Energy Outlook - WEO, 2021, page 15).
The WEO casts some shadows on targets established in the Paris conference and recently in the Cop26 meeting in November 2021: all countries will need to do more to align and strengthen their 2030 goals and make this a collaborative global transition in which no one is left behind. (WEO page 17).
This paper estimates the energy efficiency for European countries using a spatial stochastic frontier approach. Unlike current literature, the introduction of spatial correlation not only assures higher estimates efficiency but provides information on spatial interdependencies among countries. A point that must be considered in policy design. Moreover, the possibility that the variables used to estimate the efficiency component could be endogenous is managed by an instrumental approach.
Once consistently estimated the energy efficiency for each Country, policy implications will be drawn. Moreover, by exploiting scenarios depicted in the World Energy Outlook 2021, the empirical results will be compared to EU 2030 targets on energy efficiency.

Dávid Nagy (p)

Massimo Giannini

Sustainability has become a key aspect of the analysis of the development of transport, as indicated by the rising societal demand for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, noise and air pollution. Transport is currently undergoing a revolution with a globally transformative impact on shipping. One such sea change is the replacement of conventional internal combustion engines and energy resources. Although the capacity intensity of Danube freight transport has not increased over the last two decades, the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions and congestion on road networks points to growing demand for efficient and competitive inland waterway transport of goods.
Another major challenge is the impact of climate change on Danube navigation. Water level fluctuations are the combined effect of the decreasing amount and extreme distributions of precipitation. The growing frequency of extreme weather events hampers navigation and damages inland waterway navigation infrastructure. Besides waterway development and its adaptation to the changing circumstances, the resolution of this problem requires the introduction of new types of vessels and fleet renewal.