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2023 JUN Restructuring Reforms for Green Growth Serhan Cevik and João Tovar Jalles WP/23/ 120 © 2023 International Monetary Fund WP/23/120 IMF Working Paper European Department Restructuring Reforms for Green Growth Prepared by Serhan Cevik and João Tovar Jalles 1 Authorized for distribution by Bernardin Akitoby June 2023 IMF Working Papers describe research in progress by the authors and are published to elicit comments and to encourage debate. The views expressed in IMF Working Papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the IMF, its Executive Board, or IMF management. Abstract Policymakers across the world are striving to tackle the century-defining challenge of climate change without undermining potential growth. This paper examines the impact of structural reforms in the energy sector electricity and gas on enviromental outcomes and green growth indicators in a panel of 25 advanced economies during the period 1970-2020. We obtain striking results. First, while structural reforms so far failed in reducing greenhouse gas emissions per capita, there is some evidence for greater effectiveness in lowering emissions per unit of GDP. Second, although energy reforms are not associated with higher supply of renewable energy as a share of total energy supply, they appear to stimulate a sustained increase in environmental inventions and patents per capita over the medium term. We also find strong evidence of nonlinear effects, with market-friendly energy reforms leading to better environmental outcomes and green growth in countries with stronger environmental regulations. Looking forward, therefore, structural reforms should be designed not just for market efficiency but also for green growth. JEL Classification Numbers D31; L43; L51 Keywords Structural reforms; environment; green growth; panel data; local projection; environmmental policy Author’s E-Mail Address scevikimf.org; joaojallesgmail.com 1 The authors would like to thank Geoffroy Dolphin, Gianluigi Ferrucci, Clara Galeazzi, Antung Liu, Christine Richmond, Gregor Schwerhoff, and Johannes Wiegand for helpful comments and suggestions. I. INTRODUCTION Climate change is the defining challenge of our time, with significant risks to environmental sustainability and socioeconomic wellbeing. 2 The global mean surface temperature has already surged more than 1.1 degrees Celsius °C compared with the pre-industrial average, and projections indicate an acceleration in climate change with global temperature rising by as much as 4°C over the next century. This will increase the risk of weather-related natural disasters and cause greater damage to the environment, lives, and livelihoods Stern 2007; IPCC 2007, 2014, 2019; 2021. The 2015 Paris Climate Accord, ratified by 194 countries including the European Union EU, seeks to contain global warming below 2°C compared to the preindustrial level through Nationally Determined Contribution NDC commitments to reduce emissions. According to the latest Emissions Gap Report, however, carbon dioxide CO2 emissions continued to increase since the Paris Agreement by more than 3 percent across the world, and greenhouse gas GHG emissions will decline by only 7.5 percent by 2030, whereas keeping global warming below 1.5°C requires a reduction of 55 percent UNEP, 2021. Economic growth tends to lead to higher emissions and environmental degradation, but it is possible to achieve “green growth” by shifting the energy matrix away from fossil fuels and increasing efficiency in the distribution and use of energy. These objectives, in turn, require structural reforms and policies designed to alter behavior throughout the economy. In this paper, we strive to close an important gap in the literature by investigating how structural reforms in the energy sector electricity and gas can contribute to climate change mitigation, help guard against threats associated with climate change, and thereby promote green growth defined as environmentally sustainable economic growth. This is not a clear-cut question to answer since product market reforms can have conflicting effects simultaneously on energy demand and the supply and composition of energy sources. Furthermore, the extent of which structural reforms in the energy sector affects environmental outcomes and the composition of economic growth depends on the design of structural reforms and the country’s environmental policies and institutional capacity to successfully implement structural reforms. In this paper, we use the local projection LP method proposed by Jordà 2005 to investigate how structural reforms in electricity and gas sectorsbased on a narrative database of product market reforms looking at public ownership and market access and structureinfluence alternative measures of environmental performance and green growth indicators in a panel of 25 countries during the period 1970–2020. We also explore the possibility of nonlinear effects of these electricity and gas sector reforms by taking into account the stringency of initial environmental policies at the time of a reform. We obtain somewhat mixed, but striking results. First, while structural reforms so far failed in bringing about a reduction in CO2 and GHG emissions per capita, there is some evidence for greater effectiveness in lowering GHG emissions per unit of GDP. Second, although market-oriented electricity and gas sector reforms are not 2 There is a growing literature on economic and financial effects of climate change Nordhaus, 1991, 1992; Cline, 1992; Dell et al., 2012; Acevedo et al., 2018; Burke and Tanutama, 2019; Kahn et al., 2019; Cevik and Jalles, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023. 4 associated with higher supply of renewable energy as a share of total energy supply, they appear to stimulate a sustained increase in the number of environmental inventions and patents per capita over the medium term. Furthermore, we find strong evidence of nonlinear effects, with market-friendly electricity and gas reforms leading to better environmental outcomes and green growth in countries with stronger environmental regulations. These results have several important implications for the design of structural reforms and policies, which should aim not just for market efficiency but also for green growth. First, decoupling economic growth from GHG emissions is possible through comprehensive reforms and policies aimed at shifting the energy matrix away from fossil fuels. 3 Second, while transitioning energy supply to low-carbon sources is critical, achieving environmentally sustainable growth is also dependent on greater efficiency in the distribution and use of energy. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section II describes the data used in the empirical analysis. Section III introduces the salient features of our econometric strategy. Section IV presents and discusses the empirical results, including a series of robustness checks. Finally, Section V offers concluding remarks with policy implications. II. DATA OVERVIEW We construct a panel dataset of annual observations covering 25 countries over the period 1970– 2020, drawn from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD. The dependent variables are alternative indicators of environmental performance and green growth. The first set looks at emissions and energy intensity, while the second set focuses on measures of green growth. 4 For environmental outcomes, we consider three indicators i CO2 emissions in metric tons per capita, ii GHG emissions in metric tons per capita, and iii GHG emissions per unit of GDP. 5 For green growth, we consider three indicators to measure environmentally sustainable economic growth i the share of renewable energy supply 6 , ii the number of environment-related inventions per capita, and iii the number of patents for environment- related technologies per capita. The main explanatory variables of interest are structural reforms in the energy sector based on a narrative database of major policy changes in product market regulation. Two sectors are considered out of seven covered electricity and gas, which represent the energy sector. The 3 Since the COP23 in 2017, the objective has been “to maintain the global momentum to decouple output from greenhouse gas emissions” Gough, 2017. However, the extent to which decoupling is taking place remains a matter of dispute. Cohen et al. 2018; 2022 analyze the relationship between real GDP growth and CO 2 emissions across 178 countries from 1960 to 2018 and find some evidence of decoupling in recent years. IMF 2021 and Black et al. 2022 provide detailed assessments. 4 There are alternative measures of “green growth” in the literature. The most comprehensive framework is developed by the OECD and covers a set of 12 indicators including energy use per unit of GDP and GHG emissions per unit of GDP OECD, 2017. 5 This measure of GHG emissions excludes land use, land-use change and forestry. 6 Note that before 2010 the share of renewables was very small. 5 original database of major reforms in product market regulation is put together by Duval et al. 2018 and updated by Wiese et al. 2023 until 2020. This dataset was built in two steps. First, for each of country and aforementioned policy area, Duval et al. 2018 and Wiese et al. 2023 record all legislative and regulatory actions mentioned in all past OECD Economic Surveysthe regular country surveys published by the OECDpublished over the period 1970-2020 , as well as additional country-specific sources. 7 Second, among all those actions, the authors identify major measures liberalizing/deregulating and tightening/regulating type of reforms as those that met at least one of three alternative criteria i a narrative criterion based on OECD staff’s judgement on the significance of the reform at the time of adoption 8 ; ii whether the reform was mentioned again in subsequent Economic Surveys, as opposed to only once when the measured is adopted 9 ; iii the magnitude of the change in the corresponding OECD indicator, when available. 10 When only the third condition is met, an extensive search through other available domestic and national sources, including through the internet, is performed to identify the policy action underpinning the change in the indicator. The approach considers not only reforms but also “counter-reforms”i.e., policy changes in the opposite direction increase in regulation or decrease in flexibility. For each country, our reform variable in each area takes value 0 in non- reform years, 1 in reform years, and -1 in counter-reform years. In Appendix Table A1, we present a selected set of examples of identified reforms in the areas of electricity and gas. Appendix Figure A1 shows the temporal dynamics of country-specific reforms in electricity and gas. It should be acknowledged that the criteria Duval et al. 2018 and Wiese et al. 2023 applied to identify major reforms, as transparent as they are, are not the only possible optionthere is no single, objective way to distinguish between major and minor reforms. Furthermore, the authors do not distinguish among different major reformsall of them are treated equally, even though some have likely been more important than others in practice. Finally, by design, the dataset does not attempt to measure and compare policy settings across countries, and as such is no substitute for other publicly available indicators produced by other institutions. 7 The list of countries in our sample includes Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, the Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 8 The OECD Economic Survey uses strong normative language to define the action at the time is taken, suggestive of an important measure for example, “major reform”. In this respect, the methodology is related to the “narrative approach” used by Romer and Romer 1989, 2004, 2010, and 2017 and Devries et al. 2011 to identify monetary and fiscal shocks and periods of high financial distress. 9 The policy action is mentioned repeatedly across different editions of the OECD Economic Survey for the country considered, and/or in the retrospective summaries of key past reforms that are featured in some editions, which is also indicative of a major action. 10 When available, the existing OECD indicator of the regulatory stance in the area considered displays a very large change in the 5th percentile of the distribution of the cumulative change in the indicator over three yearsto accommodate possibly gradual phasing-in of otherwise major reforms. The OECD indicators used for the purpose of this paper, are the indicators of product market regulation in the gas and electricity sectors. 6 Our empirical objective in this paper is to identify and trace out the environmental performance after major product market reforms in the energy sector, namely electricity and gas. This dataset has several strengths compared to indirect methods used in other papers that rely exclusively on changes in OECD policy indicators. The structural reform database used in this paper i identifies the precise nature and exact timing of major legislative and regulatory actions in key product market policy areas; ii detects the precise reforms that underpin what otherwise looks like a gradual decline in OECD policy indicators without any obvious or noticeable break; iii captures reforms in areas for which OECD indicators exist but do not cover all relevant policy dimensions; and iv documents and describes the precise legislative and regulatory actions that underpin observed large changes in OECD indicators over a long period of time. Finally, compared with alternative data sources documenting policy changes in energy markets, the approach taken by Duval et al. 2018 allows identifying a rather limited set of major legislative and regulatory reforms, as opposed to just a long list of actions that in some cases would be expected to have little or no bearing on macroeconomic outcomes. This is particularly useful for empirical analyses that seeks to identify, and then estimate, the dynamic effects of reform shocks. Table 1 presents stylized facts on structural reforms taking the value 1 in the energy sector that is, decreases in regulation or increase in market flexibilityand counter-reformsthat is, increases in regulation or decrease in market flexibility. The latter are relatively rare events in product markets while they can account for up to 25 percent of total shocks in the labor market. Figure 1 and Figure 2 provide the number and distribution of reforms identified in the sample, respectively, and illustrate the heterogeneity