Feasible Alternatives to Green Growth

Hot off the press, it is a pleasure to share our latest article with you, titled: ‘Feasible Alternatives to Green Growth’ published in Nature Sustainability. The paper explores the difficulty of achieving a low-carbon transition together with social justice through policy decisions.  

The study presents a new comprehensive framework based on recent advances in the fields of “ecological macroeconomics”, “post-growth”, and “post-Keynesian”. It develops a dynamic macro-simulation model, parameterized for France, to compare three different scenarios (in comparison to the baseline) from 2014 to 2050. Each scenario is composed of alternative policy packages including both energy and labor market interventions.

Simulation results show the emergence of a “green growth paradox”, i.e. purely market-based strategies are likely to have negative side effects in terms of unemployment and income inequality. Moreover, part of the GHG emission reduction is due to a low pace of growth stimulated by this policy package. On the other hand, the Green New Deal and the Degrowth scenarios generate similar environmental performances paired with improving social conditions, at the cost of higher public deficit. The take-home message is that, although each policy package brings about trade-off, the road toward a sustainable and just transition must include radical social policies.

The paper details and access link are given below.

DOI :10.1038/s41893-020-0484-y. 

URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0484-y

The models (for the French and Italian case) are free to use at: https://remarc.ec.unipi.it/low-carbon-transition-simulations-online-platforms/?fbclid=IwAR0OL3He4tTLJzImgMm4PXxnn0cZamEw8ImiQPfb04iCzAJZaXikLjAh-3Q