Jesús Peiró-Palomino, Lisa Gianmoena, Andrés J. Picazo-Tadeo, Vicente Rios (p)

Elisenda Jové-Llopis

The green transition is a topic of great interest for European policymakers. It is broadly acknowledged that socio-cultural elements embedded in societies, such as social capital, have a major influence on environmental performance. European regions differ widely in terms of both social capital and environmental behavior. However,
there are very few related studies at the sub-national level. Using data on 230 regions of the European Union in 2021, this paper examines the impact of social capital on air quality, which is a key indicator of environmental performance. The results show a positive effect, which is robust to several model specifications and to endogeneity. Some potential transmission mechanisms are also explored, revealing that the positive effects of social capital are channeled through the quality of formal institutions, more stringent environmental policy and citizens’ stronger preferences for environmental protection. These insights suggest that regional social capital endowments can be a determinant of a green transition that occurs evenly across European regions.

Linnea Nelli (p)

Vicente Rios

The twin transition could possibly represent a new energy and technological revolution. The extant literature has framed past technological revolutions as evolving along long waves or constituting "development blocks". On the one hand, we may presume that the twin transition evolves along waves, building on the exploitation of cheap and widely available core inputs (renewable energy sources as hydrogen, solar and wind power, minerals) on which several constellations of technologies have been developed (solar panels, wind turbines, hydrogen technologies, batteries for electric vehicles); in leading sectors (energy and transport) and in induced branches (as the production of components, services, infrastructures for public mobility) and co-evolving organizational innovations (circular economy), social innovations (in consumption and living), and institutional changes can be identified. At the same time, the surge of different constellations of technologies together with complementary organization, social and institutional innovations seem to respond to the transformation to close with old sources of energy and shaping a new development block more than constituting a new long wave.
This paper embraces an evolutionary and historical perspective to analyse the evolution of technological patterns, adopting the definition of constellations of technologies. The analysis focuses on the core clusters of technologies of the twin transition and the evolution of their technological patterns over time, identifying the co-occurrences with clusters of different technological domains, the most relevant knowledge they build on, the pervasiveness and diffusion across sectors.
We use patent data from 1976 to 2021 from the US Patent Office classified as climate change mitigation and adaptation technologies and twin technologies (ICT for improving the electrical power generation, transmission, distribution, management or usage and ICT aiming at the reduction of their own energy use). A selection of key words has been identified for a more comprehensive selection on twin technologies. We asses the existence and a classification of green and twin -green with digital traits- technologies; the pervasiveness by the identification of their sectoral penetration; the advancement by
weighting for the “greeness” of the technologies by looking at the CO2 emissions by sector using input-output tables of the OECD’s Inter-Country Input-Output (ICIO) dataset. Looking at the sectoral diffusion across sectors can help us to undestrand the possible outcomes of the transition in terms of impacts on territories with respect to prodution activity distributions and on the labour market, to better frame and guide the policy interventions needed.

Elisenda Jové-Llopis (p)

Linnea Nelli

Within the framework of EU policies and measures to develop a just and fair green energy transition model, this paper offers valuables insights into a paramount concern not so well debated in the literature, i.e. the spatial variation of energy poverty. This empirical analysis investigates the regional variation of energy poverty in a sample of more than 300,000 Spanish households. Our results confirm that energy poverty is a phenomenon that is asymmetrically distributed across Spain, and mainly occurs in un-densely populated regions. In addition, our findings demonstrate that the incidence of energy poverty drivers is highly heterogeneous across regions. The paper ends with some recommendations for policymakers suggesting that countries need to design an energy poverty policy for the households that jointly pursues both a correct identification of vulnerable groups and a match with the type of measure to the characteristics of each region.