Macroeconomic drivers of CO₂ emissions reduction in a transition economy: From residential extrapolation to municipal policy scaling

  • 8 Views
  • 2 Downloads

Creative Commons License DMCA.com Protection Status
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
This study aims to assess a macroeconomic methodological approach for evaluating the impact of investment activity, energy efficiency, energy costs, and renewable energy development on CO₂ emissions in Ukraine, using the model’s insights for a conceptual extrapolation to the residential sector with subsequent policy scaling to the municipal building stock. The methodological basis is a top-down approach using econometric modeling (OLS) for 2002–2021, which represents the pre-war period in Ukraine. All estimations are based on aggregated macroeconomic proxy indicators and not on direct residential or municipal emissions measurement data due to a lack of reliable information. The results demonstrate that macroeconomic energy efficiency is the most powerful driver of decarbonization. An analysis of the residential sector indicates that higher household financial burdens associated with higher utility expenditures are statistically connected with lower CO₂ emissions, which may reflect demand-side adjustments in energy consumption, including price-driven savings. However, other factors, such as energy inefficiency or energy poverty, may also add to this relationship. In contrast, traditional investment activity still contributes to growing carbon footprints, with CO₂ emissions rising by 136 kg per 1% increase in gross capital formation as a share of GDP. At the same time, the estimated coefficients for global oil prices and the share of renewable energy exhibit the expected negative signs, suggesting economically meaningful long-term decarbonization tendencies. However, these relationships do not reach conventional statistical significance and should therefore be interpreted as directional trends rather than statistically confirmed effects.

Acknowledgments
This paper is funded by the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine within the projects “Comprehensive vertically integrated intelligent system for monitoring and regulating energy supply in municipal sector buildings” (No. 0126U000867) and “Drivers and barriers to human capital transformation for a circular and green economy” (No. 0126U001080).

view full abstract hide full abstract
    • Figure 1. Modeling the drivers of decarbonization in Ukraine (Specification 1)
    • Figure 2. Modeling the impact of macroeconomic energy efficiency (Specification 2)
    • Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the variables for Ukraine (2002–2021)
    • Conceptualization
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Liliana Smiech
    • Data curation
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Oleksandra Kubatko
    • Formal Analysis
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Iryna Sotnyk
    • Investigation
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Oleksandra Kubatko
    • Resources
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Mykola Sotnyk, Oleksandr Telizhenko
    • Writing – original draft
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Liliana Smiech, Iryna Sotnyk, Oleksandra Kubatko
    • Writing – review & editing
      Tetiana Kurbatova, Iryna Sotnyk, Mykola Sotnyk, Oleksandr Telizhenko
    • Funding acquisition
      Liliana Smiech
    • Project administration
      Liliana Smiech, Iryna Sotnyk
    • Supervision
      Liliana Smiech, Iryna Sotnyk
    • Visualization
      Liliana Smiech, Mykola Sotnyk, Oleksandr Telizhenko
    • Methodology
      Iryna Sotnyk, Oleksandra Kubatko
    • Software
      Iryna Sotnyk, Oleksandra Kubatko
    • Validation
      Oleksandra Kubatko, Mykola Sotnyk, Oleksandr Telizhenko