Oleksandr Telizhenko

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
The growing importance of renewable energy in ensuring energy security and sustainable development has increased attention to the role of public finance, particularly at the regional level. This study aims to assess whether different categories of regional public expenditure are associated with renewable energy development in Ukraine, distinguishing between installed capacity and electricity generation. The analysis is based on a balanced panel dataset for 25 Ukrainian regions over 2018–2021 and applies two-way fixed effects models with lagged specifications and Driscoll–Kraay standard errors. The results show that expenditures on electric transport exhibit the strongest positive association with installed renewable energy capacity (β ≈ 0.078, p < 0.001), followed by SME support (β ≈ 0.025, p < 0.001), other environmental activities (β ≈ 0.017, p < 0.001), and natural resource management (β ≈ 0.013, p < 0.001). In contrast, most general economic expenditures are not statistically significant, suggesting that these expenditure categories are not statistically associated with higher renewable energy development within the analyzed period. For renewable electricity production, contributions to the statutory capital of enterprises are positively associated (β ≈ 0.006, p < 0.05), while co-financing of investment projects is negatively associated (β ≈ −0.027, p < 0.001), reflecting implementation lags. Additionally, capital investments in environmental protection are negatively associated with renewable electricity production (β ≈ −0.072, p < 0.001), suggesting that installed capacity expansion differs from renewable electricity production.

Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant No. IZURZ1_224119]. The authors bear sole responsibility for the conclusions and results of the research.

This paper elaborates on the theoretical and methodological fundamentals of a tradable green certificates system to foster renewable energy development in Ukraine. It proposes a management mechanism premised on the classical market model of tradable green certificates aiming at increasing the share of electricity from renewable energy sources in the country’s energy mix. Organizational stages of the mechanism formation at the national level and a methodological approach to assess green electricity generation cost are developed. The modeling has shown that the annual increase in the cap for green electricity consumption by 1% will raise the electricity tariff by 3%, which is not a significant financial burden for consumers. The proposed changes in the tradable green certificates system can be an effective management tool to achieve the required amount of electricity from renewable energy sources in the country’s total electricity consumption and to foster the development of the Ukrainian renewable energy sector.

Type of the article: Research Article

Abstract
Efficient regional public expenditure is critical for aligning decentralized economic development with renewable energy, energy security, and reconstruction priorities. This study aims to examine whether expenditure across selected regional budget programs is systematically associated with renewable energy development in Ukraine and whether these relationships remain robust across alternative temporal, distributional, and nonlinear specifications. The analysis uses a balanced panel of 25 Ukrainian regions for 2018–2021 and applies program-specific two-way fixed-effects models with CR2 standard errors, Benjamini–Hochberg adjustments, lagged and same-sample specifications, wild-cluster-bootstrap inference, presence–intensity decomposition, alternative transformations, winsorization, and formal quadratic tests. In the baseline capacity growth models, expenditure from local target funds (β = 0.9152, p = 0.0192) and electric transport measures (β = 0.1499, p = 0.0126) showed nominally positive associations, but neither survived multiplicity adjustment (q = 0.1054). Wild-cluster-bootstrap inference did not confirm these estimates, producing p-values of 0.4871 and 0.3597, respectively, while both programs were observed in only five region–year cases across two regions. No program coefficient was significant at the 5% level in the electricity production models; SME support produced the strongest negative estimate (β = −0.2152, p = 0.0580, q = 0.5995), whereas installed renewable capacity remained positively associated with production (β = 0.4108–0.4803, p = 0.0041–0.0220). Lagged, presence–intensity, transformed, winsorized, and nonlinear specifications provided no multiplicity-robust evidence, with formal U-test q-values no lower than 0.5789.

Acknowledgment
The authors acknowledge funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) [Grant No. IZURZ1_224119]. The authors bear sole responsibility for the conclusions and results of the research.

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).