The government of Ukraine has adopted the Renewable Energy Directive (RED) with clear goals and a roadmap to facilitate its energy transition towards renewable sources. This is done because of both climate concerns as well as reasons related to Ukraine’s foreign policy which led the government to decide that Ukraine should work more on its own energy independence. Currently the percentage of renewable energy sources in Ukraine is among the lowest of the entire Europe and there is only slow development in terms of the growth of the sector, even though there is a lot of available biomass, given the large and flat surface of the country with a well-developed agricultural sector. As in most countries in the world, there is a quite intensive and well-developed debate in Ukraine about the energy sector, energy usage and the necessary transition towards more renewable types of energy. One of the consequences of it is that Ukraine is one of the partner countries in the Paris agreement and committed itself to reducing the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the future. That means that a transformation towards renewable energy is needed, even though currently in Ukraine only a low percentage of energy is generated by sustainable sources. The general picture is that in Ukraine the development of the renewable energy sector is going not as fast as could have been. In other words, there are several barriers present that hinder the energy transition. One of the issues behind such a barrier may be a limited access to technology, or problems with legislation or other issues which may be unknown so far, but certainly relevant for foreign investors. The Ukrainian government adopted the so-called Renewable Energy Directive (RED), set goals for the energy transition and support the transition itself. In some areas progress was made, for example in the growing number of biomass fired boilers, but still Ukraine remains one of the European countries with the lowest percentage of renewable energy production. Therefore, in order to identify currently existing barriers and help to find possible applications of new technologies in Ukraine, the Dutch Enterprise Agency (Rijksdienst voor Ondernemerschap) commissioned this study. It was done within the framework of the Partners in Business on Bioenergy program. The focus of this study is on analysing the renewable energy sector, with special attention for biomass, in the form of biomass-based heating and biomass for biofuels. Of course, other parts of the renewable energy sector such as solar and wind energy are also taken into consideration. The second part consists of a case study to determine the business case for direct processing of sugar beets with Betaprocess as a possible application of biomass to biofuel production in Ukraine. The third study is aiming at determining the amount of biomass that can safely be taken from the fields, without negatively affecting the fertility of the soil. These sub-studies mentioned in the previous paragraph offer a better understanding of the renewable energy market in general and biomass/biofuel applications in particular. This study sheds light on several important questions that entrepreneurs and/or other foreign investors may have about investing in Ukraine. Even though it is well-known that doing business in Ukraine is challenging, it is also very important to have a clear picture of the opportunities that this country offers, within the limits that nature sets, in order to avoid negative consequences like soil degradation. The objective of this report is to find out about which opportunities and barriers exist in the Ukrainian transition towards renewable energy generation, to calculate the profitability of new biomass-processing technologies as well as finding out limitations of biomass usage.
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Burgers en politici hebben behoefte aan verantwoording over ingezette middelen voor ontwikkelingshulp en de bereikte doelen. De resultatenrapportage van het Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken biedt in theorie een mooi overzicht dat ten dele inzicht verschaft. Het rapport schetst echter een te mooi beeld. Met behulp van de kwantitatieve analyse op performance indicatoren wordt een causale relatie verondersteld die in werkelijkheid niet zomaar kan worden aangenomen. Zo is bij de doelstelling 'succesvolle lobby op het gebied van goed bestuur ' niet duidelijk wat er onder succesvol wordt verstaan. Het wordt zo wel erg makkelijk om te zeggen: het is gelukt! In de resultaatketen is bovendien geen ruimte voor alle andere partijen die aan dezelfde doelstellingen werken. Er wordt dus een relatie verondersteld tussen de output van Nederland en het totale maatschappelijke effect. Doordat overheden op basis van kwantitatieve monitoring effecten claimen, ontstaat mogelijk een schijnwerkelijkheid die burgers en Kamerleden tevreden moet stellen en die de legitimatie zou moeten zijn voor toekomstige toekenning van middelen. Het rapport besteedt eveneens geen aandacht aan het samenspel van effecten of de mogelijk tegengestelde effecten als outcome van het handelen. In dit artikel wordt beargumenteerd dat op basis van de kwantitatieve resultaten alleen niet zomaar conclusies getrokken mogen worden over behaalde effecten onder meer omdat dat de kwantitatieve resultaten zoals die zijn voorgesteld weinig zeggen over de kwaliteit ervan. Bovendien komt naar voren dat de kwantitatieve verantwoording over de resultaten bij alle donorlanden uitnodigt tot interne attributie waar het om positieve maatschappelijke effecten gaat en uitnodigen tot strategisch gedrag. Tot slot is modelmatig weergegeven dat de verhouding tussen input van het donorland en de maatschappelijke effecten zoals in het rapport wordt voorgesteld veel te simplistisch is. ABSTRACT Citizens and politicians need information on the used resources for development aid and the reached goals. The result report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs gives a nice overview that gives insight to a certain extent. However, the picture is painted too optimistic. Using the quantitative analysis based on performance indicators a causal relation is assumed that in reality may not exist. One of the issues is the limited objective quantifiability of the output. The goal "creating a successful lobby for good governance " doesn't specify what would be considered successful. This makes it very easy to say: we did it! The result chain doesn't show all other parties striving for the same goals. A relation is assumed between the Dutch output and the total changes in society. Because governments make claims based on quantitative monitoring alone, a false view on reality that should satisfy both citizens and politicians and that should be a legitimation for future investments, may arise. The report doesn't acknowledge the combination of effects or the possible counterproductive effects as outcome of the actions. This article argues that no conclusions may be drawn on realized effects based on quantitative information alone, among other reasons because the quantitative date as presented give no view of the achieved quality. Moreover the article shows that the quantitative way of accounting for the investment of resources with all donor countries invites strategic behavior and internal attribution as far as the positive results are concerned. A model was drawn to show that the relation between input from the donor country and societal effects as the proclaimed in the report are way too simplistic.
We empirically investigate the factors that drive the uneven regional distribution of foreign direct investment (FDI) across Chinese provinces from 1995 to 2006. We first perform a factor analysis to summarize information embodied in around 40 variables and derive four FDI determinants: ‘institutional quality’, ‘labour costs’, ‘market size’, and ‘geography’. Applying these estimated factors, we then employ instrumental variable (IV) estimation to account for endogeneity. In line with theoretical predictions, we find that foreign firms invest in provinces with good institutions, low labour costs, and large market size. The Arellano-Bond dynamic panel generalised method of moments (GMM) results show strong agglomeration effects that multinationals tend to invest in provinces which attract other foreign firms, consistent with the economic geography literature. Several robustness tests indicate that low labour costs combined with improvements in institutions are the key for attracting FDI in China.
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