Environmental Economics

Standards vs economic incentives

Erik Paul Johnson in Resource and Energy Economics:

Renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) have become a popular tool for state governments to promote renewable electricity generation and to decrease carbon dioxide emissions within a state or region. Renewable portfolio standards are a policy tool likely to persist for many decades due to the long term goals of many state RPSs and the likely creation of a federal RPS alongside any comprehensive climate change bill. Even though RPSs have become a popular policy tool, there is little empirical evidence about their costs. Using the temporal and regional variation in RPS requirements, I estimate the long-run price elasticity of supply of renewable electricity generation to be 2.67 (95% CI of 1.74, 3.60). Using my preferred elasticity estimate, I calculate the marginal cost of abatement from RPSs is at least $11 per ton of CO₂ compared to a marginal cost of abatement of $3 per ton in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

via www.sciencedirect.com

How much self-promotion can a guy cram into an 85 word post?

From the comments:

I was wondering if there is a table of contents available somewhere.

Here is a PDF that contains all of the front and back matter (except for the introduction) of the Encyclopedia of Environmental and Resource Economics: Download Contents etc. 

Here is a PDF of a sample entry (CVM, by Haab and Whitehead), complete with a reference to the, ahem, other book:  Download CVM. 

This should be enough information to make you want to buy the Encyclopedia of Environmental and Resource Economics. 

Yes, the federal government does close stuff down

Unfortunately, in this case it is a research lab:

For more than a century, federal scientists have worked on Pivers Island near the historic town of Beaufort and the beaches of Emerald Isle studying the ocean and the fish, turtles and dolphins of its seagrass estuaries and rocky reefs.

Surrounded by three university labs, it’s one of a handful of oceanography hubs in the nation and the only government research center between New Jersey and Miami studying Atlantic fish populations.

So it came as a surprise when the federal government proposed doing away with the ocean science laboratory, which opened in 1899.

Tucked in President Barack Obama’s 218-page proposed budget for 2015 was a one-sentence mention of a plan to close an unnamed lab to save money. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration subsequently identified it as North Carolina’s historic research station. ...

The coastal and ocean agency plans to shift instead to grants to non-agency scientists. Closing the lab would mean the loss of 108 jobs locally. NOAA intends to relocate the federal scientists. What will happen to the lab’s 31 government contractors is less clear. ...

The lab sits just inside Beaufort Inlet, one of a handful of safe deepwater passages through the state’s barrier islands to the open sea. Duke University has a research station next door. NCSU and UNC-Chapel Hill labs are a short drive away.

Most people in the state think of coastal Carteret County, with its beaches, rental cottages and Beaufort’s historic district, as being all about tourism. But marine science has grown into a major local employer. NOAA and the three universities have a combined 163,000 square feet of research buildings and 40 labs. All told, marine science directly employs more than 500 people locally and injects $58 million into the economy, according to the county economic development council.

via www.newsobserver.com

In addition, the state Division of Marine Resources is located in the area giving the place an awesome research atmosphere. My sources (yes, I have "sources"!) tell me it is just too expensive to keep the aging Beaufort Lab open. And I'll believe it (additional grants substituting for the federal research) when I see it. 

"Response to Typepad Downtime this week"

From Typepad:

What happened? Beginning Thursday evening, Typepad was hit with a distributed denial of service (DDoS) off and on through today. A DDoS attack is an attempt to make services unavailable, but in no way was your Typepad account compromised. All information in your Typepad account is secure, including billing information. The attack on Typepad was similar to an attack on Basecamp which you can read about here.

via everything.typepad.com

Funny, being in a haze of chocolate bunnies, I didn't even notice the blog was down until I got an email Tuesday morning.

Daily Demand and Supply: Florida Orange Supply Decrease

A citrus disease spread by a tiny insect has devastated Florida's orange crop, which is expected to be the worst in nearly 30 years, and sent juice prices soaring on New York markets.

 

The culprit? The gnat-sized Asian citrus psyllid, which is infecting citrus trees across the Sunshine State with huanglongbing, or citrus greening disease, which causes fruit to taste bitter and fall from trees too soon.

"It feels we are losing the fight," said Ellis Hunt, the head of a family-run citrus farm spread over about 5,000 acres (2,000 hectares) in the central Florida town of Lake Wales.

The deadly bacteria has slashed his annual production over the past few years from one million boxes of fruit to 750,000.

Citrus greening disease has become such a problem this year that the US government has lowered its forecast for the upcoming harvest four times.

The latest figures, published earlier this month by the US Department of Agriculture, predict production of 110 million boxes of fruit, or roughly 4.95 million tons.

That is 18 percent less than last year, and the lowest since 1985, when citrus groves were hit by a deep freeze. It is also far from the record 244 million boxes collected in 1998.

via news.yahoo.com

1) Supply decreases increase prices today.
2) Expected future supply decreases increase prices...today.

I'm not as smug as Mark Trail touring the Lost Forest but, still, it is a good day

Never choose the "very satisfied" response in a life satisfaction survey question

The Comics Curmudgeon:

New-school Mark Trail: not only does he consort with geese but he also expresses the human emotion of affection for his wife? Bizarre. I mean, at least he’s doing it from a distance of several miles, so he won’t be expected to hug or kiss or touch or look at her. Seems relatively safe. Also, notice how he pairs up “being married to you” and “living here in Lost Forest”: if I have my LoFo lore right, the Trails’ cabin home is actually owned by Cherry’s father Doc. So, yes, this actually makes sense: every once in a while, Mark needs to placate Cherry’s intense, terrifying, incomprehensible feelings with an absolute minimum physical contact, so that he can continue to live rent-free in a cabin next to a forest, which is all he’s ever wanted in life. “I’ll be home later, honey!” he says. SPOILER ALERT: He’ll be home a lot later.

Mark Trail has been basking in his own glory all week (e.g., Tuesday and the end of last week). I've learned very little about life over the past 50+ years but I have learned this, whenever you are at a local optimum on your utility surface, life is about to slap you back down that surface. Is there any chance he'll drive his Jeep into the falls? Or the ill-tempered grizzly bear chews his leg off? We can only hope. 

And here is some unsolicited advice, never be too happy. Life has a way of knowing when you are too happy. 

Another opportunity to explore the extent of solar subsidies

Mark Thoma:

Paul Krugman:

Rising Sun: Joe Romm draws our attention to the third slice of the latest IPCC report on climate change, on the costs of mitigation; the panel finds that these costs aren’t that big — a few percent of GDP even by the end of the century, which means only a trivial hit to the growth rate. ...

In fact, you should be optimistic...: the technological prospects for a low-emission economy have gotten dramatically better.

It’s kind of odd how little attention the media give to the solar revolution, but this is really huge stuff:

In fact, it’s possible that solar will displace coal even without special incentives. But we can’t count on that. What we do know is that it’s no longer remotely true that we need to keep burning coal to satisfy electricity demand. The way is open to a drastic reduction in emissions, at not very high cost.

via economistsview.typepad.com

By the power of transitivity, Paul Krugman loves Joe Romm (as his climate expert) and Joe Romm hates economists, therefore ... Paul Krugman hates economists? 

I wonder how much of that cost path is due to subsidies? I'll just be left wondering, because there is no way I'm going to trouble myself reading the Solar Market Report (when I know that Mike Giberson will do it for me, I hope)! 

zebrafinch3 didn't even give it a chance

I saw Tim's post and clicked on the Amazon link. I love the listing -- "Used - Like New". Also, Amazon is finally recognizing that a PhD from an SEC school is not a real PhD. 

 

 

Well it's about dang time...

In the mail yesterday--get yours today (it will help our publisher recoup our whopping advance):