Environmental Economics

Pig poop economics

Progress Energy to study hog waste:

Progress Energy, the Raleigh-based electric utility, will evaluate the feasibility of making electricity from hog waste.

The pilot project will be conducted with participation from hog farms throughout the state, according to an announcement this morning from N.C. Pork Council.

The study will be done with Smithfield Foods' hog production subsidiary, Murphy-Brown.

Renewable energy advocates contend that animal waste -- along with solar, wind and other alternative energy sources -- could help offset the need for coal and nuclear power as energy sources for running electrical power plants. North Carolina is home to some of the nation's largest hog producers for whom turning hog waste into fuel would eliminate a continuing environmental concern created by waste accumulation.

Converting hog waste into fuel has long been considered too expensive and impractical. But the pilot project will test a new technology for converting hog waste into electricity.

Taking Wetlands to the Bank

When land is developed, it often comes at the expense of environmental services provided by the land.  The lost environmental services are particularly troublesome when the lands developed are wetlands. In Ohio, developers that want to develop wetlands are required to "create new wetlands or buy into existing wetlands in "mitigation banks" to replace what they destroy."  The program is called wetland banking and it is controversial.  Much of the controversy hinges around the definition of replacement.

As I see it,  there are three options for determining the meaning of 'replacing what they destroy.'

1. Replace acre for acre.
2. Replace lost ecosystem services with equivalent ecosystem services.
3. Replace lost economic value with equivalent economic value.

Let's discuss.

Install the Environmental Economics blog on your website

Did you ever think aloud: jeez, I wish I could get the Environmental Economics blog posts on my own blog or website? Thanks to one of Typepad's partners, Widgetbox, now you can!

There are two ways to do it. If you have a blog, click the "get widget" icon at the environmental economics site at Widgetbox and follow the directions. If you have a website that you'd like to add it to then paste this code into your website:

Check out how it looks below the fold or at the bottom of our right hand column.

I had a snow day

A few inches of snow hit Snaggy Mountain this morning so I took the opportunity to play hookie and goof around on the blog. My goofs:

• I've reorganized the Who, What and Archive lists that used to be in the left hand side column into an Info list.
• I've added a "five most recent links" widget (courtesy of MyBlogLog.com).
• I've added a "recent posts" widget, courtesy of Widgetbox.com. You can get this one for yourself, more details are here.
• I've added Kanoodle Ads from Typepad in the right hand side column. Just a test, if any regular reader really hates it I'll take them off (we've been through this before and it seemed OK). But, they might help me pay my Typepad bill and, therefore, interest me greatly.
  

Enjoy!

Yet, there is a chance that these things might reduce the functionality of this blog (e.g., slow loading times). Comments and complaints welcome. Thanks!

Rah-Rah

N.C. a leader in response to warming (their headline, not mine):

North Carolina-based companies are leaders, not laggards, when it comes to responding to the business challenges posed by global warming, state Treasurer Richard Moore said.

Moore, participating in a teleconference Tuesday morning in which 10 U.S. companies were cited for lagging behind their competitors in response to climate change, pointed out that not one company with North Carolina headquarters made the list. His remark was a response to a question posed by a reporter.

In addition, he mentioned five North Carolina companies as leaders on the issue: Duke Energy, Progress Energy, Lowe's, Wachovia and Bank of America.

Hmmm. Two energy companies and two banks. The first two (? or is it just Duke?) claim to want a carbon tax while also trying to build coal-fired power plants. The second two, hmmmm, are they refusing to lend money to the first two? Or, like Tim, are they switching to the light bulbs that env-econ readers like so much? If the latter, BFD.

Non sequiturs and things that don't follow

Would you be willing to pay $400-$500M to prevent frogs from becoming extinct?

Ponds and swamps are becoming eerily silent. The familiar melody of ribbits, croaks and chirps is disappearing as a mysterious killer fungus wipes out frog populations around the globe, a phenomenon likened to the extinction of dinosaurs.

Scientists from around the world are meeting today and Friday in Atlanta to organize a worldwide effort to stem the deaths by asking zoos, aquariums and botanical gardens to take in threatened frogs until the fungus can be stopped.

A fungus is killing frogs.  Get that?  A fungus is the causal effect in wiping out frog populations.  I repeat--a mysterious killer fungus is threatening to completely wipe out the entire world's population of frogs.

So here's today's quiz: 

Q: What is causing the depletion of the world's frog populations

A: Climate change.

More Doom and Gloom

From the Columbus Dispatch on Tuesday:

Right now, Earth’s carrying capacity is thought to be somewhere in the range of 4 billion to 5 billion people.

There are 6.5 billion of us.

...

"If we were to replace our reliance on fossil fuels and instead grow fuel plants, that would require setting aside lots of land to produce ethanol," [Ohio State University ecologist Tom Waite*] said.

"We don’t have enough land worldwide to meet those demands."

Demand for food, fuel and materials already consumes more trees and crops than are being grown worldwide.

*Not to be confused with Tom Waits.

New book from RFF Press

Just launched at RFF on 2/13:

Reality Check: The Nature and Performance of Voluntary Environmental Programs in the United States, Europe, and Japan
   
Richard D. Morgenstern and William A. Pizer, Editors

I'll send you the book if you promise, promise, to provide a quick and dirty, informal review for this blog within about six months.

Update: We have a reviewer!

RFF books

Env-econ reader Erik Nordman tells us to check out the sidebar on page 27 of the RFF Press Spring/Summer 2007 Catalog [pdf]:

I am a fan of materials provided by Resources for the Future, and this book was right in line with my reasons for trusting RFF.

-- Environmental Economics Blog

And that reminds me, I think we have a few books out for review ... are any of those reviews half-way written yet?

A morning chuckle

For only the second time in the 7 years I've been in Ohio, THE OSU is closed today.  So I got a chuckle out of this from Drudge:

The Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality hearing scheduled for Wednesday, February 14, 2007, at 10:00 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building has been postponed due to inclement weather. The hearing is entitled “Climate Change: Are Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Human Activities Contributing to a Warming of the Planet?”