Geological CO2 Storage as a Climate Change Mitigation Option

Carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ capture and storage is increasingly being considered as an important climate change mitigation option. This paper explores provisions for including geological CO₂ storage in climate policy. The storage capacity of Norway's Continental Shelf is alone sufficient to store a large share of European CO₂ emissions for many decades. If CO₂ is injected into oil reservoirs there is an additional benefit in terms of enhanced oil recovery. However, there are significant technical and economic challenges, including the large investment in infrastructure required, with related economies of scale properties. Thus CO₂ capture, transportation and storage projects are likely to be more economically attractive if developed on a large scale, which could mean involving two or more nations. An additional challenge is the risk of future leakages from storage sites, where the government must take on a major responsibility. In institutional and policy terms, important challenges are the unsettled status of geological CO₂ storage as a policy measure in the Kyoto Protocol, lack of relevant reporting and verification procedures, and lack of decisions on how the option should be linked to the flexibility mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol. In terms of competitiveness with expected prices for CO₂ permits under Kyoto Protocol trading, the relatively high costs per tonne of CO₂ stored means that geological CO₂ storage is primarily of interest where enhanced oil recovery is possible. These shortcomings and uncertainties mean that companies and governments today only have weak incentives to venture into geological CO₂ storage.     

Comment: Investor demand and spot commodity prices

Tilton et al. claim in their article “Investor demand and spot commodity prices” to show that “investor demand can be pushing up a commodity's price even when investor stocks are falling.” In the present comment, it is argued that in both the cases described by Tilton et al., investors are supplying the market, putting physical material into it, rather than adding to demand. Thus, the reasoning by Tilton et al. is not concerned with the phenomenon referred to in the traditional theory, where, in the absence of changes in demand and supply fundamentals, prices rise as a result of increased investor demand for futures contracts.     

Price and volatility transmission between primary and scrap metal markets

The relationship between primary and scrap prices has been hypothesized for the most part as unidirectional, characterized by spillovers from primary to scrap prices. The purpose of this study is to evaluate empirically the dynamic interactions between primary and scrap metal prices through multivariate time series methods. In addition, the study expands the investigation at the level of volatility transmission, which has not been previously examined. The metal prices utilized are for copper, lead, and zinc for the period 1984–2001. The paper demonstrates differing long run and short run links. Scrap prices do not improve the long run interpretation of primary prices, but information flows from the scrap to the primary markets exist in the short run. Additionally, the copper and lead markets exhibit bidirectional information flows in terms of volatility transmission. The analysis provides valuable insight into the interactions of the primary and scrap metal sectors which can be used to improve forecasting and planning.     

Seven thousand years in the service of humanity—the history of copper, the red metal

Measured by weight, copper is the third most important metal used by man. The annual value of its 2007 output was on a par with the GDP of e.g. Ukraine. Copper is also one of the oldest metals, its employment going back 7000 years. For millennia, it was predominantly employed for decorative purposes, coinage and in warfare. Technical breakthroughs in antiquity, like smelting and alloying, expanded its production and enhanced its utility. Copper's true heyday occurred after 1850, with the usage of electricity. In the period since then, volumes increased 300-fold, while costs and prices declined. With impressive progress in the technology of its production and consumption, the red metal has been able to hold its own, despite the emergence over history of formidable substitutes like iron, aluminum, plastics and optic fiber.     

Understanding world metals prices—Returns,volatility and diversification

In recent times, the prices of internationally traded metals have reached record highs and there is considerable uncertainty regarding their future. This phenomenon is partially driven by strong demand from a small number of emerging economies, such as China and India. This paper uses a long time-series (1900–2007) on 21 metals prices to investigate their properties, and presents unique features of their volatility, including a decomposition into within- and between-group components. If most volatility is commodity-specific rather than “global”, then metals-exporting dependent economies can smooth income via diversification.     

The Role of Prices in Conserving Critical Natural Capital

Abstract: Until recent decades, economic decision makers have largely ignored the nonmarket benefits provided by nature, resulting in unprecedented threats to ecological life‐support functions. The economic challenge today is to decide how much ecosystem structure can be converted to economic production and how much must be conserved to provide essential ecosystem services. Many economists and a growing number of life scientists hope to address this challenge by estimating the marginal value of environmental benefits and then using this information to make economic decisions. I assessed this approach first by examining the role and effectiveness of the price mechanism in a well‐functioning market economy, second by identifying the issues that prevent markets from pricing many ecological benefits, and third by focusing on problems inherent to valuing services generated by complex and poorly understood ecosystems subject to irreversible change. I then focus on critical natural capital (CNC), which generates benefits that are essential to human welfare and have few if any substitutes. When imminent ecological thresholds threaten CNC, conservation is essential and marginal valuation becomes inappropriate. Once conservation needs have been met, remaining ecosystem structure is potentially available for economic production. Demand for this available supply will determine prices. In other words, conservation needs should be price determining, not price determined. Conservation science must help identify CNC and the quantity and quality of ecosystem structure required to ensure its sustained provision.     

基于前向神经网络的广义环境系统评价普适模型

为了建立由水环境、空气环境、生态环境、水资源环境、灾害环境、遥感环境、社会经济环境等不同环境系统组成的广义环境系统评价都能普适、通用的神经网络模型,针对BP神经网络因收敛速度慢、易于陷入局部极值而使实用性受限的缺陷,提出以双极性sigmoid函数作为网络隐层节点(神经元)的激活函数,而网络输出为所有隐层节点输出的线性求和的前向神经网络的广义环境系统评价模型.在设置广义环境系统指标参照值和指标值规范变换式,并对指标值进行规范变换的基础上,分别构建了适用于广义环境系统评价的任意2个指标规范值的前向神经网模型(NV-FNN(2)结构)和任意3个指标规范值的前向神经网模型(NV-FNN(3)结构).而对于指标较多的广义环境系统评价,只要将多指标分解为以上2个指标和3个指标的两种简单结构的前向神经网络的广义环境系统评价模型的组合表示即可.理论分析和实例检验结果表明:该模型对任意广义环境系统的规范指标值皆普适、通用,因而使不同环境系统的评价变得简洁、统一.规范变换和优化算法相结合的建模思想和方法对简化广义环境系统评价的多元回归、投影寻踪回归、回归支持向量机和径向基神经网络建模亦有借鉴和启迪作用.     

The idea of sustainable development

In this lecture, I demonstrate how very different macroeconomic history begins to look if Nature is included as a capital asset in production activities. The tentative conclusions I draw from the evidence are: (1) high population growth in the world’s poorest regions (South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) has been an obstacle to the achievement of sustainable economic development there; relatedly, (2) when population growth is taken into account, the accumulation of manufactured capital, knowledge, and human capital (health and education) has not compensated for the degradation of natural capital in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa and, in all probability, even in the UK and the US; (3) China is possibly an exception to (1) and (2). This article is based on the Keynote Lecture delivered at the international symposium on “Sustainability in an Unequal World”, held in Tokyo on November 24, 2006. The exposition relies on my book, Economics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007. The author is the Frank Ramsey Professor of Economics at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St. John’s College, Cambridge.     

气候变化和人类活动对东部沿海地区NDVI变化的影响分析

植被是陆地生态系统的重要组成部分,特别是在人类活动密集地区,良好的植被覆盖对于维持区域生态环境稳定、增进居民生活福祉和促进社会经济可持续发展意义重大.基于归一化植被指数(NDVI)、气温、降水和太阳辐射数据,采用趋势分析、偏相关分析和残差分析等方法,探究了1982～2019年中国东部沿海地区NDVI时空变化特征及其与气候因子的关系,评估了气候因素和人类活动等非气候因素对NDVI变化的影响.结果表明：(1)1982～2019年研究区NDVI变化趋势具有明显区域性、阶段性和季节性差异,就区域平均而言,2000年以前(第一阶段)的生长季NDVI比2001年以后(第二阶段)增加更快,而两阶段春季NDVI增加速率均为各季节最快;(2)同一阶段NDVI与各气候因子的关系在不同季节存在差异,而同一季节NDVI的主要气候控制因子在不同阶段也不一致,并且NDVI与气候因子的关系具有很大空间差异.总体上,1982～2019年研究区生长季NDVI的增加与气温的持续上升关系紧密,第二阶段降水和太阳辐射的增加也产生了积极作用;(3)相比于人类活动等非气候因素的影响,气候变化对近38年来研究区生长季NDVI变化的...     

Do energy prices affect employment? Decomposed international evidence

This paper analyzes the energy price-employment nexus and contributes to the literature by showing that it is important to decompose the regulatory effect into demand, cost, and factor-shift effects. This is done by means of a cross-country multi-sectoral dataset. The results show that both rising energy prices and shadow prices of energy have no significant effect on net employment when the manufacturing sectors only are analyzed. While finding significant variations across countries, the average employment effects become significantly positive once jobs in the economy as a whole are considered. This change is driven mainly by larger positive cost effects, which more than offset the negative demand effects and reductions in the positive factor-shift effects. Moreover, the paper reveals that the often implemented approach of using a simple regulation regressor, instead of decomposing the employment effect, can result in biased estimates.