Pollution Taxes and Pollution Abatement in an Oligopoly Supergame

This paper investigates the effects of an emissions tax on the incentives for oligopolists to acquire alternative pollution abatement technologies. The analysis is conducted in terms of a repeated game and it is demonstrated that there are circumstances in which the firms may reject the option of acquiring the pollution abatement equipment, even when this lowers their production costs.     

Estimation of the cost of air pollution control regulation

Estimates of hydrocarbon pollution control costs under the alternative regulatory approaches of individual source or process standards, plant standards, and regionally marketable permits are presented. The estimates are obtained from data supplied by the DuPont Company based on a 1976 in-house engineering study. The estimation procedure is unique in that the data are based on uniform percentage control across sources while the estimated cost equations allow variable control at each source. The cost simulations show that considerable cost savings are available from allowing firms more flexibility in meeting a given environmental standard. The effect of plant relocation and monopoly in the pollution permit market are also investigated.     

Key role for nuclear energy in global biodiversity conservation

Modern society uses massive amounts of energy. Usage rises as population and affluence increase, and energy production and use often have an impact on biodiversity or natural areas. To avoid a business‐as‐usual dependence on coal, oil, and gas over the coming decades, society must map out a future energy mix that incorporates alternative sources. This exercise can lead to radically different opinions on what a sustainable energy portfolio might entail, so an objective assessment of the relative costs and benefits of different energy sources is required. We evaluated the land use, emissions, climate, and cost implications of 3 published but divergent storylines for future energy production, none of which was optimal for all environmental and economic indicators. Using multicriteria decision‐making analysis, we ranked 7 major electricity‐generation sources (coal, gas, nuclear, biomass, hydro, wind, and solar) based on costs and benefits and tested the sensitivity of the rankings to biases stemming from contrasting philosophical ideals. Irrespective of weightings, nuclear and wind energy had the highest benefit‐to‐cost ratio. Although the environmental movement has historically rejected the nuclear energy option, new‐generation reactor technologies that fully recycle waste and incorporate passive safety systems might resolve their concerns and ought to be more widely understood. Because there is no perfect energy source however, conservation professionals ultimately need to take an evidence‐based approach to consider carefully the integrated effects of energy mixes on biodiversity conservation. Trade‐offs and compromises are inevitable and require advocating energy mixes that minimize net environmental damage. Society cannot afford to risk wholesale failure to address energy‐related biodiversity impacts because of preconceived notions and ideals.     

Life cycle analysis and choice of natural gas-based automotive alternative fuels in Chongqing Municipality, China

Road transport produces significant amounts of emissions by using crude oil as the primary energy source. A reduction of emissions can be achieved by implementing alternative fuel chains. The objective of this study is to carry out an economic, environmental and energy (EEE) life cycle study on natural gas-based automotive fuels with conventional gasoline in an abundant region of China. A set of indices of four fuels/vehicle systems on the basis of life cycle are assessed in terms of impact of EEE, in which natural gas produces compressed natural gas (CNG), methanol, dimethylether (DME) and Fischer Tropsch diesel (FTD). The study included fuel production, vehicle production, vehicle operation, infrastructure and vehicle end of life as a system for each fuel/vehicle system. A generic gasoline fueled car is used as a baseline. Data have been reviewed and modified based on the best knowledge available to Chongqing local sources. Results indicated that when we could not change electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles into commercial vehicles on a large scale, direct use of CNG in a dedicated or bi-fuel vehicle is an economical choice for the region which is most energy efficient and more environmental friendly. The study can be used to support decisions on how natural gas resources can best be utilized as a fuel/energy resource for automobiles, and what issues need to be resolved in Chongqing. The models and approaches for this study can be applied to other regions of China as long as all the assumptions are well defined and modified to find a substitute automotive energy source and establish an energy policy in a specific region.     

江苏省水污染的危害及其原因分析

论述了江苏省水污染事故及水环境污染对渔业生产、饮用水源、农牧业生产、工业生产的影响及造成的经济损失；指出河网地区水流滞缓流向不定，感潮河段水流往复运动是造成江苏省水体污染加剧的环境水力学因素，入境河流携带大量废水、污水也是造成局部地区水污染危害的重要原因     

Global justice and the opportunity costs of conservation

Opportunity costs can represent a significant portion of the costs associated with conservation projects and frequently outstrip other kinds of cost. They are typically understood to refer to the benefits someone would have obtained if conservation projects had not required them to give up current activities, such as farming or hunting or if the land had been available for uses other than conservation. This familiar way of identifying opportunity costs is flawed, however, because it threatens to condone, or take advantage of, the injustices that many people face that affect their opportunities. I integrated ideas from the political theory of global justice to examine how the analysis of opportunity costs illustrates the importance of considering conservation and issues of global justice together, rather than thinking about them in isolation. I distinguish four baselines for defining opportunity costs. A status quo baseline defines opportunity costs by asking what people would have earned had a conservation project not happened. A willingness to accept baseline defines them by asking people what it would take to make them indifferent to whether a conservation project takes place or not. An antipoverty baseline suggests that opportunity costs have been met when people affected by a project are not left in poverty. An egalitarian baseline suggests opportunity costs have been met when people are not left in relative disadvantage, with worse than average opportunities. I argue that the egalitarian baseline is the most acceptable from the point of view of justice. Such a baseline would suggest that, in practice, many of the world's poor are being unjustly treated, or even exploited, as a result of conservation activities.     

Externalities and the urban rent and population density functions: The case of air pollution

In this paper, we introduce external diseconomies into the standard model of urban land rent via the case of air pollution, exploring the implications of law making on the urban structure. Three alternative legal arrangements of air pollution damage costs are analyzed: first, the recipient bears the cost; second, the producer bears the cost; and third, the compulsory use of emission control systems in the car.     

Expansion of sugarcane ethanol production in Brazil: environmental and social challenges.

Several geopolitical factors, aggravated by worries of global warming, have been fueling the search for and production of renewable energy worldwide for the past few years. Such demand for renewable energy is likely to benefit the sugarcane ethanol industry in Brazil, not only because sugarcane ethanol has a positive energetic balance and relatively low production costs, but also because Brazilian ethanol has been successfully produced and used as biofuel in the country since the 1970s. However, environmental and social impacts associated with ethanol production in Brazil can become important obstacles to sustainable biofuel production worldwide. Atmospheric pollution from burning of sugarcane for harvesting, degradation of soils and aquatic systems, and the exploitation of cane cutters are among the issues that deserve immediate attention from the Brazilian government and international societies. The expansion of sugarcane crops to the areas presently cultivated for soybeans also represent an environmental threat, because it may increase deforestation pressure from soybean crops in the Amazon region. In this paper, we discuss environmental and social issues linked to the expansion of sugarcane in Brazil for ethanol production, and we provide recommendations to help policy makers and the Brazilian government establish new initiatives to produce a code for ethanol production that is environmentally sustainable and economically fair. Recommendations include proper planning and environmental risk assessments for the expansion of sugarcane to new regions such as Central Brazil, improvement of land use practices to reduce soil erosion and nitrogen pollution, proper protection of streams and riparian ecosystems, banning of sugarcane burning practices, and fair working conditions for sugarcane cutters. We also support the creation of a more constructive approach for international stakeholders and trade organizations to promote sustainable development for biofuel production in developing countries such as Brazil. Finally, we support the inclusion of environmental values in the price of biofuels in order to discourage excessive replacement of natural ecosystems such as forests, wetlands, and pasture by bioenergy crops.     

Tiefentschwefelte Kraftstoffe

In recent years, much attention has been given to the desulphurization of fuels like diesel oil and gasoline, since exhaust gases containing SOx cause air pollution and acid rain. Moreover, a lower sulphur content of fuels would allow the use of new engines and catalytic systems for the reduction of CO, particle and NOx-emissions, and a more efficient fuel consumption. The S-level in fuels is presently limited in Germany for gasoline and diesel oll to 150 ppm and 350 ppm, respectively. In 2005 the level will be decreased Europe-wide for all vehicle-fuels down to 50 ppm; in some countries, fuels are or will be on the market with even less sulphur. The current technology of hydrodesulphurization (heterogeneous, catalyzed hydrorreating of organic sulphur compounds) can desulphurize quite adequately down to today’s S-level. The process, however, is limited for the production of ultra-low sulphur fuels, and the expenses (pressure, reactor size, investment costs, energy consumption, specific active catalysts) are high to meet future requirements. alternative processes, which are not limited to hydrotreating, are therefore desirable. Beside an overview about hydrotreating, this paper presents two quite different alternatives: Extraction of sulphur compounds by ionic liquids and the synthetic production of S-free fuels from natural gas by Fischer-Tropsch-synthesis. Ionic liquids (ILs) are low melting (<100°C) salts which represent a new class of non-molecular, ionic solvents. In the experiments presented, extraction of model diesel oils (dibenzothiophene and dodecanthiol in n-dodecane) as well as of a real predesulphurized diesel oil (with about 400 ppm S) were investigated. The results show the excellent and selective extraction properties of ILs for organic sulphur compounds, especially with regard to those compounds which are very difficult to remove by common hydrodesulphurization. As expected, the desulphurization by extraction is much more complicated in case of real diesel oil (compared to a model oil) due to its complex chemical composition including many different sulphur compounds and other impurities like organic nitrogen and metal-compounds. Nevertheless, the results with pre-desulphurized diesel oil are also very promising. So, extraction of sulphur components by ILs is a new approach for deep desulphurization of diesel oil. The application of very mild process conditions (low pressure and temperature) in comparison to traditional hydrotreating is an additional advantage of this new concept. An alternative to today’s fuels based on crude oil is the production of gasoline and diesel oil from natural gas (or other fossil fuels like coal) by Fischer-Tropsch-synthesis (FTS). The products like diesel oil are completely free of sulphur and other impurities like nitrogen and metal compounds. Although several FTS-processes have been investigated and developed, and some processes are already running on a technical scale, a real breakthrough was not obtained up to now. The production costs of these capital-intensive processes are probably above the breakeven point, at least at today’s oil price. In this paper, a ‘lowcost’ process is discussed, which is based on nitrogen-rich syngas. In contrast to classical FTS-processes with nitrogen-free syngas, the investment costs are probably lower: The syngas is produced by partial oxidation with ait, which eliminates the need of an air separation plant, while a process with nitrogen-rich syngas does not utilize a recycle loop and a recycle compressor.     

A laboratory study of auctions for reducing non-point source pollution

Non-point source pollution, such as nutrient runoff to waterways from agricultural production, is an environmental problem that typically involves asymmetric information. Land use changes to reduce pollution incur opportunity costs that are privately known to landholders, but these changes provide environmental benefits that may be more accurately estimated by regulators. This paper reports a testbed laboratory experiment in which landholder/sellers in sealed-offer auctions compete to obtain part of a fixed budget allocated by the regulator to subsidize abatement. In one treatment the regulator reveals to landholders the environmental benefits estimated for their projects, and in another treatment the regulator conceals the potential projects’ “environmental quality.” The results show that sellers’ offers misrepresent their costs more for high-quality projects when quality is revealed, so total abatement is lower and seller profits are higher when landholders know their projects’ environmental benefits. This suggests that concealing this information may improve regulatory efficiency.     

Theoretically optimal environmental metrics and their surrogates

Many environmental pollutants are thought to produce several classes of effects, e.g., morbidity, mortality, property damage. It would be possible to specify a unique theoretically optimal metric for each class of effects. Alternatively a single surrogate metric could be used to represent the combined impact of all classes of effects. Here, the use of surrogates is discussed in the context of regulation of ambient air pollution. It is demonstrated that costs may be associated with the use of surrogates, and that these costs are caused by (1) imprecision in the relationships between the surrogate and each of the theoretically optimal metrics, and (2) reduction in dimensionality of the set of exposure metrics. The factors which govern the magnitude of costs incurred are explored. It is noted that any savings inherent in the operation of simplified systems of monitoring and data management offset to some degree the costs generated by the use of surrogates.     

Operational dumping and the pollution of the sea by oil: An evaluation of preventive measures

The recent dispute over the impact of economic growth on the environment relative to the (predicted) physical limits imposed by the ecological system hinges on the role of pollution-preventive technology. This paper attempts a cost-effectiveness evaluation of alternative methods of preventing the largest source of marine oil pollution. The first major result of the analysis is that the technology which minimizes internal costs (and is favored by the oil companies) does not minimize the social costs of pollution prevention. The second is that relative to the price of oil the cost of pollution-prevention processes is very small indeed.     

Optimal pollution in the presence of adjustment costs

This paper explores optimal pollution control when pollution is considered a stock and costs of treating pollution are a function both of the level and rate of change of pollution control. It is shown that even if the long run optimum stock of pollution is below the initial level adjustment costs may imply an optimally increasing stock of pollution in the short run. The results obtained are contrasted with those which emerge when adjustment costs are absent and when damages are taken to be a function of the flow of pollution; the appropriate tax rates of polluting discharges are examined.     

An empirical analysis of economic strategies for controlling air pollution

In evaluating current environmental protection policy, economists often note that current regulations are more costly than necessary to meet environmental quality standards. While the a priori case is strong that current regulatory approaches are resulting in higher-than-necessary costs to attain environmental standards, there is relatively little empirical evidence to support this claim. The purpose of this paper is to supply some of the missing evidence by presenting the results of one study that assesses some of the potential savings associated with implementing economic, rather than command-and-control, regulatory approaches to abate one type of air pollution in one region of the country. Specifically, the paper examines the costs of meeting a prospective short-term standard for nitrogen dioxide under a range of alternative emissions control strategies for stationary sources of nitrogen oxide emissions in the Chicago Air Quality Control Region. The alternative strategies that are considered range from those that might result under current regulatory policy to those that economic policy approaches (such as emissions charges or marketable permits) are designed to implement. The analysis shows that the most efficient program of emissions controls may be more than an order of magnitude less costly than current regulatory strategies, and that economic approaches have additional advantages over more conventional regulatory approaches.     

Feedstocks,catalysts, process variables and techniques for biodiesel production by one-pot extraction-transesterification: a review

Environmental Chemistry Letters - Biodiesel is a sustainable alternative to petroleum diesel. The main bottlenecks in the commercialization of biodiesel are production costs and suitable industrial...     

An anatomy of a groundwater contamination episode

Using the contamination episode at Price Landfill, New Jersey, as a case study, major analytical and informational issues characterizing groundwater pollution, with special emphasis on uncertainty associated with the environmental medium, especially solute-transport processes, and the valuation of health risks, principally dose-response relationships, are addressed. Alternative approaches to modeling the physical-chemical processes are described and subsequently coupled with mortality risk predictions to derive estimates of expected pollution costs: reduced longevity (pollution damage costs) and cost of control and remedial measures (damage reduction costs).     

Cost-sharing approach for air quality control implementation A case study

The objective of the study was to investigate and develop new alternative approaches to effectively meeting the federal SOx and particulate ambient air quality standards at cost savings. Since air pollution control costs would very likely be passed along to the consumer, it is in the best interests of the consumer and industry to find the least-cost alternative policies. Cost-sharing possesses advantages not shared by other control schemes, such as emissions taxes, auctioning of “pollution certificates,” or other methods. The results of this paper indicate that the cost-sharing approach is useful for particulates control in order to minimize the burden of plants already performing substantial control who may require significant added capital investment beyond their initial amount. For SO_ξ emissions control the cost-sharing analysis calculations show significant savings in nearly all situations, whether or not stack gas treatment methods were assumed available. Furthermore, the cost-sharing approach may allow further savings when the particular cost requirements of an individual firm differ substantially from the average engineering cost estimates. A cost-sharing option should thus be included in implementation plans as an option to be used by industries at their own initiative. The spatial characteristics of emissions resulting from a particular application of the cost-sharing approach are considered. A spatial airshed emissions allocation model is discussed as a useful method of evaluating cost sharing.     

山西省能源圈辐射的环境效应

根据历年<山西统计年鉴>提供的能源输出数据,分析了1985-2007年间山西省煤炭的输出情况,并借助于GIS软件,分析了2006年山西省煤炭的流向及流量.山西省是一个大的能源辐射基地,每年产出煤炭的三分之二左右供应外省市,在外省市的经济水平、人民生活质量不断得到提升的同时,对于为周边地区的发展做出巨大贡献的能源输出地--山西来说,人均地区生产总值却低于全国平均水平,更低于其能源辐射到的其它省市区.山西省在不断向外省市输出能源的同时,也产生了巨大的环境辐射效应,但这种效应对于山西这个能源输出地来说却是负向的.主要表现在:山西省由于煤炭开采导致空气污染、地下水位下降、地面塌陷等地质灾害,而这些环境压力有三分之二是替煤炭输入地所承担的.输送电力,山西省不仅要承担煤炭开采造成的环境破坏,还要承担火力发电所造成的巨大环境二次污染,仅2007年,山西省生产外调电量就产生381.75×10~4 tSO_2,139.98×10~4 tNO_2,2799.51×10~4 t灰粉.     

Conditionally predictive supply elasticity estimates: Secondary materials obtained from municipal residuals

New capital-intensive waste processing plants have been developed that can recover secondary materials and energy from the municipal solid waste stream resulting in lower disposal costs than traditional methods. The potential supply of secondary glass, ferrous metals, aluminum, and energy is estimated using an engineering cost model of secondary materials and energy supply under alternative prices for energy and materials. Econometric estimates of the own- and cross-price elasticities of supply for the materials and energy are then estimated from the data set. Significant cross-price effects are shown.     

An environmental tax-shift with indirect desirable effects

Imposing environmental taxation on external costs of energy will not only affect the environmental impact of the energy sector itself, but it will tend to decrease environmental damage from other sectors of the economy as well. We have assessed the effects of a shift of taxation from taxing labour to taxation of external costs caused in the energy sector. Several examples give results compatible with the hypothesis that the changing price relation between labour and energy resulting from such a tax shift will make re-use, repairs and recycling increasingly competitive and thus tend to decrease mining as well as waste production. Likewise, less energy-intensive commodities and services in general would become increasingly competitive, and would tend to decrease the environmental load further. These environmentally desirable effects are beyond the taxed external effects of the energy sector itself and occur as an indirect effect of the increased relative price of energy.