Open Access
Tracking water for human activities: from the ivory tower to the ground
(Elsevier, 2021) Martínez Aldaya, Maite; Sesma Martín, Diego; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa
Water policy requires well established metrics for success. Precise metrics allow for quantifying progress and adjusting processes to produce the desired outcomes. We analyze the different schools of thought, nomenclatures and indicators developed for tracking water for human activities. After comparing a variety of terms related to water accounting used to serve the different purposes (environmental vs. ecological economics), we found that the different approaches to water tracking utilize identical terms to refer to distinctive concepts. The characterization of widely used terms such as 'water use' varies across different branches of literature. Different approaches to water measurement and its efficiency have an impact on water allocation. Our paper points out that the current definitions and methods for tracking water for human activities may offer contradictory advice over whether progress is being made towards desirable objectives, which may differ across stakeholders. This review aims at helping the transfer of academic results to empirical decision-making by discerning the differences among the variety of indicators available in the literature and their empirical implications. The ambiguity in the water terminology should be clarified before policy decisions can be useful in practice for guiding actions.
Open Access
Water for whom?: unravelling the allocation of water storage capacity between irrigation and electricity uses in Spain during the 20th century
(Sociedad Española de Historia Agraria, SEHA, 2024-12-01) Bartolomé-Rodríguez, María Isabel; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Sesma Martín, Diego; Economía; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
Esta investigación examina la complejidad de la relación entre la asignación de recursos hídricos, la generación de energía y el regadío en España. Esta tarea se acomete tras el examen de la evolución del marco regulatorio de la asignación de recursos hidráulicos e introduciendo un enfoque novedoso para cuantificar los usos del agua. Por vez primera, se descompone la categoría de usos mixtos, que corresponde a la mayoría de los embalses de propiedad pública, gracias a la información disponible sobre las entidades que disponen no de la propiedad sino de las concesiones de agua. Nuestros resultados revelan el significativo peso de las compañías eléctricas privadas en la gestión de los recursos hidráulicos, pese a la prevalencia de la propiedad pública de las infraestructuras. La hegemonía hidroeléctrica en la asignación del agua contribuye a hacer patente la complejidad de la relación entre la propiedad pública y la gestión privada de las infraestructuras por parte de las compañías eléctricas. Finalmente, la contribución a una mejor comprensión de la singularidad histórica de la gobernanza del agua en España apuntala la necesidad de consideraciones más matizadas en el terreno de políticas que conciernen las relaciones entre agricultura y energía.
Open Access
The energy and gross domestic product causality nexus in Latin America 1900-2010
(EconJournals, 2020) Leiva, Benjamín; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
A better understanding of the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is important for the less developed regions of the world such as Africa or Latin America, which future might be compromised by the imposition of the transition to a lower carbon economy. Studies on the energy-GDP nexus for Latin America have been few and bounded to short periods. We fill this gap by searching for causal paths between energy and GDP for 20 Latin American countries using a newly compiled dataset spanning the 20th century. Our main identification strategy is based on super exogeneity, which we complement with Granger tests, Toda and Yamamoto and enrich by controlling for structural breaks and the False Discovery Rate. The results highlight the inexistence of a homogeneous relation between energy and GDP in highly heterogeneous spatial and temporal dimensions, and thus the need to enhance our theoretical understanding of this relation. The policy implication is that designing and implementing energy policies coming from a single methodological approach and based on aggregated results should be avoided.
Open Access
Indicators and recommendations for assessing sustainable healthy diets
(MDPI, 2021) Martínez Aldaya, Maite; Ibáñez Moya, Francisco C.; Domínguez-Lacueva, Paula; Murillo Arbizu, María Teresa; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Soret Lafraya, Beatriz; Beriain Apesteguía, María José; Institute on Innovation and Sustainable Development in Food Chain - ISFOOD; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
Research coupling human nutrition and sustainability concerns is a rapidly developing field, which is essential to guide governments' policies. This critical and comprehensive review analyzes indicators and approaches to 'sustainable healthy diets' published in the literature since this discipline's emergence a few years ago, identifying robust gauges and highlighting the flaws of the most commonly used models. The reviewed studies largely focus on one or two domains such as greenhouse gas emissions or water use, while overlooking potential impact shifts to other sectors or resources. The present study covers a comprehensive set of indicators from the health, environmental and socio-economic viewpoints. This assessment concludes that in order to identify the best food option in sustainability assessments and nutrition analysis of diets, some aspects such as the classification and disaggregation of food groups, the impacts of the rates of local food consumption and seasonality, preservation methods, agrobiodiversity and organic food and different production systems, together with consequences for low-income countries, require further analysis and consideration.
Open Access
Nuclear engineering and technology transfer: the Spanish strategies to deal with US, French and German nuclear manufacturers, 1955–1985
(Routledge, 2020) Torre Campo, Joseba de la; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Sánchez Sánchez, Esther M.; Sanz Lafuente, María Gloria; Ekonomia; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE; Economía
We analysed the process of construction and connection to the electrical grid of four Spanish nuclear power plants with different financial and technological foreign partners: those of Zorita (PWR by Westinghouse), Garoña (BWR by General Electric) and Vandellós I (GCR by EDF) (belonging to the first generation of atomic plants and producing electricity from 1969–72) and that of Trillo I (PWR by KWU, connected in 1988). These four examples allow us to observe how the learning curve of nuclear engineering and the acquisition of skills by Spanish companies evolved. Progressively the domestic industry achieved higher levels of participation, fostered by the Ministry of Industry and Energy. When the atomic plants under construction were paralysed by the nuclear moratorium of 1984, and several other projects were abandoned by the utilities along the way, Spain had developed an industrial sector around the fabrication of service components and engineering for nuclear power plants to compete internationally.
Open Access
The power of persuasion: exploring the relationship between advertising and nuclear energy in Spain
(Emerald, 2024-12-09) Aramendia Muneta, María Elena; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Torre Campo, Joseba de la; Economía; Ekonomia; Gestión de Empresas; Enpresen Kudeaketa; Universidad Pública de Navarra / Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa, PJUPNA2023–11931
Purpose: this study aims to examine how the nuclear energy issue was used for advertising purposes at the dawn of the atomic era in Spain. Design/methodology/approach: newspapers and magazines from the atomic era were reviewed to assess the impact of nuclear energy on advertising campaigns for all kinds of unrelated products. This study interprets the message and information contained in several marketing campaigns from the detonation of the first nuclear bomb in 1945 until the inauguration of the first nuclear facility in Spain in 1968. Findings: private companies leapt at the chance to use the new technology, with its promises of a brighter future, to promote their products, including watches, Venetian blinds, anisette, chocolates, pencils and fountain pens, spa resorts, books and encyclopaedias, laundry detergents, pressure cookers, concentrate feeds and hair restorers. This study makes a major contribution to the history of marketing literature, focusing on nuclear energy as an influential agent in industry, advertising agencies and popular culture. It shows how advertising campaigns used terms such as 'nuclear', 'atomic' and 'atomic bomb' and images of mushroom clouds or atom symbols to denote modernity and allure and explores how government policies - in this case, concerning nuclear energy - can influence marketers and advertisers. Originality/value: the paper's originality stems from its analysis of Spanish advertisements to explore marketing history through the terms and imagery associated with nuclear energy and its industry. It further contributes to the understanding of how nuclear energy is represented and conceptualised for various purposes in popular culture.
Open Access
Estados Unidos y el despliegue nuclear español
(Sociedad Nuclear Española (SNE), 2024) Torre Campo, Joseba de la; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Economía; Ekonomia
En este capítulo pretendemos, básicamente, ofrecer una síntesis del papel fundamental que desempeñó Estados Unidos en el despliegue de la energía nuclear en España en cada una de sus vertientes, y especialmente en el ámbito del capital humano, la transferencia de tecnología y la transformación del ecosistema industrial.
Open Access
Energy transition(s)
(Edward Elgar, 2023-09-28) Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Economía; Ekonomia
Any meaningful change from one state of an energy system to another one may constitute an energy transition. Given the many components related to the production, conversion, delivery, and use of energy, it is worth referring to energy transitions in plural. Most of the academic literature about energy transition(s) concentrates on the shifts of the structure of the primary energy supply in the long run, while in parallel, energy systems endure enormous transformations in the quantity, the quality, the methods of conversion and delivery and the destination of final energy. Meanwhile, "the energy transition" has been increasingly adopted as a shorthand for describing a pathway towards transforming the global energy sector away from fossil-based into low carbon emissions, becoming the commonest usage of the term among the public. The concept has evolved from an historical observation about energy systems into a necessary tool for achieving desirable future energy scenarios.
Open Access
At the crossroad between green and thirsty: carbon emissions and water consumption of Spanish thermoelectricity generation, 1969–2019
(Elsevier, 2022) Cano-Rodríguez, Sara; Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Sesma Martín, Diego; Institute for Advanced Research in Business and Economics - INARBE
The energy sector is the main contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and one of the thirstiest sectors worldwide. Within the energy sector, thermoelectricity directly impacts on both emissions and water. This study assesses the evolution of the direct CO2 emissions and operational water consumption of the Spanish thermoelectricity generation from 1969 to 2019. Both carbon emissions and water consumption correlate over time, led by the trends in total thermal generation, although over the past half century, water requirements swelled far more than carbon emissions. This results in a long-term trade-off between carbon emissions and consumptive water use in relative terms: while the CO2 per thermal MWh generated halved since 1969 in Spain, the operational water consumption per MWh of thermoelectricity generated more than doubled due to switching from coal burning to nuclear and combined cycle technologies. We find no real trade-off in absolute levels. Although moving towards smaller environmental impacts since the mid-2000s, thermoelectricity remains one of the largest carbon emitters while becoming one of thirstiest energy technologies in Spain.
Open Access
Historia del uranio en España: de la minería a la fabricación del combustible nuclear, c. 1900-1986: reseña
(Asociación Española de Historia Económica, 2022) Rubio Varas, María del Mar; Economía; Ekonomia
Reseña del libro de Esther Sánchez y Santiago López en el que se aborda la historia del uranio en España que, en términos generales, no ha recibido tanta atención historiográfica como las centrales nucleares. Se trata de un libro de encargo, elaborado en colaboración con la Sociedad Nuclear Española (SNE) y está organizado en cuatro grandes capítulos.