Dalia Štreimikienė

Assessment of willingness to pay for renewables in Lithuanian households

The paper aims to assess the main drivers of willingness to pay for renewable electricity of Lithuanian households. The paper deals with assessments of willingness to pay for renewables and reviews the situation of renewable electricity generation and consumption in Lithuania and compare achieved results with studies conducted in other countries. The pilot empirical study for the assessment of Lithuanian households willingness to pay for electricity produced from renewables was conducted. Though the estimates of WTP may be biased by due to the possible non-representativeness of the returned questionnaires and social-economic characteristics of focus group and the effects of information provision can be also overestimated some important findings can be obtained from this study. The results of study indicated that information and environmental awareness play the crucial role in willingness to pay for renewables in Lithuanian households. The study also presented that persons having higher income and higher education are willing to pay more for electricity produced from renewables in Lithuania. These results do not contradict with studies conducted in other countries. Information has positive impact on increase of WTP in other studies as well. The gender and age does not have significant impact on WTP. The assessed WTP of Lithuanian households is significantly lower than subsides for renewable electricity provided in the form of feed-in prices in Lithuania, therefore, the paper recommends to review feed-in tariffs for renewable electricity in Lithuania and to develop a reasonable energy pricing and incentive system.

Multiple criteria decision support system for the assessment of energy generation technologies considering the dimension of values

Comprehension of the effect of energy generation technologies on the natural environment, human health and safety leads to a new and responsible approach to the choice and development of technologies. When it comes to preparing energy growth scenarios and handling issues related to the choice and assessment of technologies, environmental studies must be in a particular spotlight. One way to make quantitative and qualitative assessment of the effect of technologies on the environment is through a thorough integrated analysis, which, in addition to economic and technical solutions, also considers other aspects of concern to the public. A changed environment demands for systems of criteria which help consider its changes, the attitudes of the general public, public sentiments toward the effect of technologies, public values and community involvement in the process of important decision-making. The article examines how the dimension of values affects the analysis of the impact of environmental factors on the value of energy generation technologies. It presents a set of criteria for the assessment of energy generation technologies; the set, in addition to technological, economic and environmental criteria, includes criteria which reflect the values. The article also introduces the expert decision support system EGTAV-SPS, which helped assess the effect of environment on energy production technologies.

Integrated Sustainability Index: the Case Study of Lithuania

Sustainable development is the main aim of society development all over the world. It is also the priority policy area in the EU and Lithuania. The main mission of the State in implementing the Sustainable Development Strategy is the coordination and harmonisation of evolution of the main elements of sustainable development (environmental, economic and social spheres), provision of an opportunity for the population to actively participate in the sustainable development process and enjoy the results of the progress made through joint efforts. Measurement of the country’s sustainability and progress achieved towards implementing the sustainable development targets is an important part of the sustainable development policy. Therefore, novel measures and tools are developed to aid the sustainability analysis. Multi-criteria methods can be applied in order to solve the intricate problem. Multicriteria decision making (MCDM) methods are suitable to tackle the sustainability assessment problem. In this study, we will apply two MCDM methods, namely ARAS and TOPSIS for a more robust assessment. The aim of the paper is to analyse and apply several MCDM methodologies for sustainability assessment in Lithuania and to evaluate the progress achieved in implementing sustainable development priorities in the country.

Housing indicators for assessing quality of life in Lithuania

The paper deals with quality of life in terms of housing and develops the indicator system for quality of life assessment in the housing sector. The increase of the quality of life is the main aim of sustainable development. The quality of life is being assessed by applying various dimensions, various indicators. The housing dimension is one of the major issues affecting the quality of life. The housing indicators reflecting the quality of life can be assessed by applying quality of housing, quality of housing environment and housing cost burden indicators. The paper presents the concept of assessment of housing dimension in the quality of life measurements and the main indicators relevant to this dimension of quality of life. The dynamics of housing indicators relevant to quality of life were investigated in Lithuania and other EU Member States, the housing indicators were compared for three Baltic States and policy recommendations were developed.

Smart meters and household electricity consumption: A case study in Ireland:

Our paper focuses on the electricity consumption in the EU countries and smart meters that are gaining growing popularity and widely used by households and businesses for measuring power consumption and helping to reduce the costs of energy. We use the data collected by the Commission for Energy Regulation in the Republic of Ireland in 2009–2011. The trial included two survey questionnaires (pre-trail and post-trial) administered over the telephone and containing both quantitative data (e.g. Likert scales, dummies, selections, etc.) and open-ended questions. In total, 4232 respondents (individual households) involved in pre-trial and 3423 households involved in post-trial. The second questionnaire was administered 12 months after the first one with the same households participating in the trial. Our methodology involves the implementation of various alternative statistical specifications that allow us to test our hypotheses first by using simple binary form of logistic regression and then by employing its extensions. Our results show that households keen on changing their electricity consumption with the help of smart meters (and perhaps the new, even smarter grids of the future) are also those who would change their consumption patterns in order to have the positive impact on environment. Moreover, it appeared that saving on energy might be more relevant for people who do not have their own place to live and are renting their accommodation. Our findings might be relevant for the stakeholders and policy-makers dealing with setting up the new energy policy framework aimed at tackling the increasing use of energy and energy efficiency and paving the way in the direction of the low-carbon future.

Lithuanian health protection system in comparison with countries of Baltic Sea Region

Improving health conditions of population and development of effective health protection system is the main social target of sustainable development. An effective system for public health care aims to ensure adequate health care and improvement in population’s health status. However, investments in the health policy, improving the competencies of public health specialists, infrastructure development, the building of the communities’ health improvement capacities, etc., provide for different results in the Baltic Sea Region countries. Therefore, it is important to analyse the efficiency of health protection systems in the Baltic Sea Region and to define the main factors having impact on health status in specific countries. The aim of the presentation is to review health care resources and health protection systems’ impacts on the health status in Lithuania and other countries in the Baltic Sea Region. The main tasks in order to achieve this aim are: · To compare health care resources and state financing of health protection systems in Lithuania and other Baltic Sea Region countries; · To compare health indicators in Lithuania and other Baltic Sea Region countries;a · To define the efficiency of health protection systems in Lithuania and other Baltic Sea Region countries in terms of achievements in improving health status of the population; · To analyse Lithuanian health protection system and to identify the major gaps and drawbacks; · To discuss the results and findings.

Technical change directions of China’s grain production: application of the bias-corrected Malmquist indices

This paper aims at measuring productivity and efficiency of China’s three most important grain crops–rice, wheat and maize–as well as identifying the main directions of technical change prevailing in their production. The bias-corrected Malmquist production indices are employed to measure the technical changes (TCs) in terms of input-saving or input-using in China’s grain production, by using provincial aggregate data obtained from the National Farm Production Costs and Returns Survey. The research covers the period of 2003–2013. Application of the bias-corrected Malmquist index showed a labor-saving technical change against all the remaining inputs for the three crops under analysis. The highest frequencies of fertilizer- and machinery-using, labor-saving technical changes were observed for wheat farming. Therefore, a reduction in labor intensity should be the most promising for wheat if compared with rice and maize.

Non-parametric analysis of yield risk in Lithuanian crop farming

AbstractSocioeconomic development requires meeting the goals of food security. Yield risk constitutes an important factor of farming business viability. As the Central and Eastern European countries have been affected by both economic and environmental transformations, there is a need to develop a robust methodology for assessment of yield risks in order to propose convincing guidelines for both farmers and government institutions in regards to risk management and viability of agricultural business in general. This paper attempts to devise non-parametric measures of yield risk for Lithuanian crop farming. The research covers the period of 2000–2015. County-level data from Statistics Lithuania are employed for the analysis. The non-parametric analysis of yield risk relies on information diffusion theory and linear moving average. The results indicate that there exist differences in yield trends, yield loss rates and yield risk among crops and regions. Maize, buckwheat and winter rape exhibited the highest ...

The 18th session of the conference of the parties to the united nations convention on climate change (UNFCCC)

The 18th session of the conference of the parties to the United Nations convention on climate change (UNFCCC)