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"The relatively new and still amorphous concept of ‘green growth' can be understood as a call for balancing longer-term investments in sustaining environmental wealth with nearer-term income growth to reduce poverty. We draw on a large body of economic theory available for providing insights on such balancing of income growth and environmental sustainability. We show that there is no a priori assurance of substantial positive spillovers from environmental policies to income growth, or for a monotonic transition to a ‘green steady state' along an optimal path. The greenness of an optimal growth path can depend heavily on initial conditions, with a variety of different adjustments occurring concurrently along an optimal path. Factor-augmenting technical-change targeting at offsetting resource depletion is critical to sustaining long-term growth within natural limits on the availability of natural resources and environmental services."

"The relatively new and still amorphous concept of "Green Growth" can be understood as a call for balancing longer-term investments in sustaining environmental wealth with nearer-term income growth to reduce poverty. We draw on a large body of economic theory available for providing insights on such balancing of income growth and environmental sustainability. We show that there is a no a priori assurance of substantial positive spillovers from environmental policies to income growth, or for a monotonic transition to a "green steady state" along an optimal path. The greenness of an optimal growth path can depend heavily on initial conditions, with a variety of different adjustments occurring concurrently along an optiaml path. Factor-augmenting technical change targeting at offsetting resource depletion is critical to sustaining long-term growth within natural limits on the availability of natural resources and environmental services."

"This paper reviews dynamic general equilibrium models in order to collect insights on the interaction between economic growth and environmental issues. The authors discuss the Ramsey model and extend it for natural resource inputs and pollution, as well as for endogenous technical change. Green growth becomes within reach if there is good substitution, a clean backstop technology, a small share of natural resources in gross domestic product, and/or green directed technical change."

"In a calibrated integrated assessment model we investigate the differentia impact of additive and multiplicative damages from climate change for both a socially optimal and a business-as-usual scenario in the market economy within the context of a Ramsey model of economic growth. The sources ofenergy are fossil fuel which is available at a cost which rises as reserves diminish and a carbon-free backstop supplied at a decreasing cost. if damages are not proportional to aggregate production output, and the economy is along a development path, the social cost of carbon and the optimal carbon tax are smaller as damages can more easily be compensated for by higher output. As a result, the economy switches later from fossil fuel to the carbon-free backstop and leaves less fossil fuel in situ. This is in contrast to a partial equilibrium analysis with dmages in utility rather than in production which finds that the willingness to forsake current consumption to avoid future global warming is higher (lower) under additive damages in a growing economy if the elasticity of intertemporal substitution is smaller (bigger) than one."

"The Green Paradox states that, in the absence of a tax on CO2 emissions, subsidizing a renewable backstop such as solar or wind energy brings forward the date at which fossil fuels become exhausted and consequently global warming is aggravated. We shed light on this issue by solving a model of depletion of non-renewable fossil fuels followed by a switch to a renewable backstop, paying attention to timing of the switch and the amount of fossil fuels remaining unexploited. We show that the Green Paradox occurs for relatively expensive but clean backstops (such as solar or wind), but does not occur if the backstop is sufficiently cheap relative to marginal global warming damages (e.g., nuclear energy) as then it is attractive to leave fossil fuels unexploited and thus limit CO2 emissions. We show that, without a CO2 tax, subsidizing the backstop might enhance welfare. If the backstop is relatively dirty and cheap (e.g., coal), there might be a period with simultaneous use of the non-renewable and renewable fuels. If the backstop is very dirty compared to oil or gas (e.g., tar sands), there is no simultaneous use. The optimum policy requires an initially rising CO2 tax followed by a gradually declining CO2 tax once the dirty backstop has been introduced. We also discuss the potential for limit pricing when the non-renewable resource is owned by a monopolist."

"The objective of this paper is to critically assess the use of simple rules for the social cost of carbon (SCC) that employ a rudimentary form of the Ramsey Rule. Two interrelated caveats apply. First, if climate change poses a serious problem, it is hard to justify an exogenous constant growth rate of consumption and GDP, as is done in several contributions by prominent scholars. Second, to derive the optimal SCC one needs full knowledge of the entire future, in spite of the use of popular ways to try to get around this. Moreover, it is shown that some simple rules suffer from inconsistencies in their derivation."

"In this article we draw upon early lessons from the 2020 Covid-19 crisis and discuss how these may relate to a future research agenda in environmental economics. In particular, we describe how the events surrounding the Covid-19 crisis may inform environmental research related to globalization and cooperation, the green transition, pricing carbon externalities, as well as the role of uncertainty and timing of policy inventions. We also discuss the implications for future empirical research in this area."