Environmental Economics

EPA: Separating human and natural influences on climate

From the EPA's climage change webpage:

Caption:

Models that account only for the effects of natural processes are not able to explain the warming observed over the past century. Models that also account for the greenhouse gases emitted by humans are able to explain this warming.

EPA: The greenhouse effect

From the EPA's climage change webpage:

Since the Industrial Revolution began around 1750, human activities have contributed substantially to climate change by adding CO₂ and other heat-trapping gases to the atmosphere. These greenhouse gas emissions have increased the greenhouse effect and caused Earth’s surface temperature to rise. The primary human activity affecting the amount and rate of climate change is greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

"Trump administration tells EPA to cut climate page from website"

This has been a little unexpected:

U.S. President Donald Trump's administration has instructed the Environmental Protection Agency to remove the climate change page from its website, two agency employees told Reuters, the latest move by the newly minted leadership to erase ex-President Barack Obama's climate change initiatives.

The employees were notified by EPA officials on Tuesday that the administration had instructed EPA's communications team to remove the website's climate change page, which contains links to scientific global warming research, as well as detailed data on emissions. The page could go down as early as Wednesday, the sources said.

"If the website goes dark, years of work we have done on climate change will disappear," one of the EPA staffers told Reuters, who added some employees were scrambling to save some of the information housed on the website, or convince the Trump administration to preserve parts of it.

The sources asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

A Trump administration official did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

via mobile.reuters.com

I can understand a new administration choosing to change direction on environmental policy, but removing information and data seems to be bad government. I'm no expert on politics, but it is hard to imagine that choosing ignorance as official policy is in the long term interests of the Republican Party. 

The website is still available here: https://www.epa.gov/climatechange.

Wind farms: "In the end, the economics trump Trump"

I should add a question mark to the end of that post title. From the NY Times: 

Last fall, five turbines in the waters of Rhode Island — the country’s first offshore farm — began delivering power to the grid. European energy developers like Statoil and Dong Energy are making big investments to bring projects to American waters. Last year in Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker, a Republican, signed into law a mandate that is pushing development forward.

And in New York, after years of stymied progress, the Long Island Power Authority has reached an agreement with Deepwater Wind, which built the Rhode Island turbine array, to drop a much larger farm — 15 turbines capable of running 50,000 average homes — into the ocean about 35 miles from Montauk. If approved by the utility board on Wednesday, the $1 billion installation could become the first of several in a 256-square-mile parcel, with room for as many as 200 turbines, that Deepwater is leasing from the federal government. ...

These projects could also become an important test case in establishing just how far states can go to to pursue their clean energy agendas under the Trump administration. Before putting steel in the water, the project would need federal approvals and policies that are in doubt amid Washington’s changing of the guard.

Wind power has finally become viable for a number of delicately interlaced reasons. It has taken favorable state policies and technological and economic advances to spur the current level of activity, as well as interest among developers and investors, including foreign oil and gas companies that see offshore wind as an important part of their corporate strategies. In Europe, where the offshore wind industry is far ahead of the United States’, costs have plummeted to roughly half of what they were five years ago, said Thomas Brostrom, who runs United States operations for Dong Energy, the Danish oil and gas giant and a leading offshore wind developer.

As the industry has grown, manufacturers have been able to take advantage of economies of scale and cut their prices. At the same time, turbines have grown ever larger, allowing them to capture and produce more energy on the same site. ...

Statoil, the Norwegian fossil-fuel giant, has been aiming to get into the offshore business in the United States for years, and proposed in 2011 to build a farm off the Maine coast using floating platforms it had designed. The company withdrew the project two years later amid uncertainty over changing state policies, eventually deciding to build off the Scottish coast.

Now it is back, having won a 33-round auction to secure a 79,000-acre site south of Jones Beach on Long Island. Statoil beat out several other bidders, including the state’s energy agency, Dong and a subsidiary of Iberdrola, a leading energy company based in Spain. Statoil pledged $42.5 million for the lease, which still awaits final signoffs, far more than the $16 million generated by all earlier offshore wind auctions combined. ...

Officials at the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which approved the Cape Wind site in 2010, have spent years clarifying rules and identifying marine parcels suitable for wind power development in an effort to balance several often-competing concerns. Those include the needs of marine life and of industry, along with those of coastal communities. They also include the demand for economic development and clean energy sources, from states concerned about both job losses and climate change. Since 2013, the agency has conducted six competitive auctions of long-term leases for parcels from New England to Virginia, and in the past week it announced a seventh, for North Carolina, scheduled to take place in March. ...

That momentum may be difficult to slow, even if new federal policies put a stop to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s leasing activities for wind energy, its proponents say. The active leases alone, if developed, are enough to create an industry, they say. And the commitments of states like New York and Massachusetts, and experienced multinational developers, show that the struggle to harness Atlantic breezes is no longer the same as tilting at windmills.

“It is a sign of something that’s inevitable, which is the addition of offshore wind into the energy mix,” said Erik Gordon, a clinical assistant professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “It’s just going to be too appealing. In the end, the economics trump Trump.”

Famous last words?

 

If a conference is cancelled does that mean the climate is not changing?

Strategic retreat or minimizing cost hassle?

With little warning or explanation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently canceled a major climate change conference that had been scheduled for next month in Atlanta.

The Climate and Health Summit, which had been in the works for months, was intended as a chance for public health officials around the country to learn more about the mounting evidence of the risks to human health posed by the changing climate. But CDC officials abruptly canceled the conference before President Trump’s inauguration, sending a terse email on Jan. 9 to those who had been scheduled to speak at the event. The message did not explain the reason behind the decision.

“Unfortunately, we are unable to hold the Summit in February 2017,” CDC officials wrote, adding that the agency is “currently exploring” whether it could reschedule the event later in the year.

In a statement on Monday, the CDC did not offer any further explanation about the reasons for the cancellation, which was first reported by E&E News. The agency said only that it began notifying registered participants on Dec. 22 that the meeting had been postponed. It also said it was considering options for rescheduling the even “while considering budget priorities for the fiscal year 2017.” Officials noted the “potential overlap” with an American Public Health Association conference planned on the same topic later this year.

APHA’s executive director, Georges Benjamin — who was scheduled to be a keynote speaker at the CDC summit next month — said agency officials decided to preemptively call off the event, rather than risk running afoul of an incoming president who has repeatedly called climate change a “hoax” and has nominated climate change skeptics to his Cabinet.

“They ran it up the flagpole and realized that it was so close to the inauguration, the chances of it being canceled were pretty real with the administration that was coming in,” said Benjamin, whose organization was one of the summit’s promoters. “Some might argue they should have said, ‘We’re going to do this and make them tell us no.’ But that was the decision they made. We should think of this as a strategic retreat.”

Just trying to survive the first wave of shock and awe so we can get back to economics.

"EPA Freezes Grants, Tells Employees Not To Talk About It"

My guess is that there are some economics projects left hanging:

EPA staff has been instructed to freeze all its grants ― an extensive program that includes funding for research, redevelopment of former industrial sites, air quality monitoring and education, among other things ― and told not to discuss this order with anyone outside the agency, according to a Hill source with knowledge of the situation. ...

It’s unclear whether the freeze is indefinite or temporary as the agency transitions fully to the Trump administration; the Senate has not yet confirmed Trump’s pick for EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt. It’s also not clear the immediate impact the grant freeze would have on programs across the country, since EPA grants are distributed at varying intervals and frequency. ...

The Huffington Post also received a message that was reportedly sent to staff Monday that seems to cover the current agency guidance on talking to the press in general, not just about the directive on grants. The memo states that the agency is imposing tight controls on external communication, including press releases, blog posts, social media and content on the agency website.

I just returned from a briefing for Communication Directors where the following information was provided. These restrictions are effective immediately and will remain in place until further direction is received from the new Administration’s Beach Team. Please review this material and share with all appropriate individuals in your organization. If anyone on your staff receives a press inquiry of any kind, it must be referred to me so I can coordinate with the appropriate individuals in OPA.

• No press releases will be going out to external audiences.
• No social media will be going out. A Digital Strategist will be coming on board to oversee social media. Existing, individually controlled, social media accounts may become more centrally controlled.
• No blog messages.
• The Beach Team will review the list of upcoming webinars and decide which ones will go forward.
• Please send me a list of any external speaking engagements that are currently scheduled among any of your staff from today through February.
• Incoming media requests will be carefully screened.
• No new content can be placed on any website. Only do clean up where essential.
• List servers will be reviewed. Only send out critical messages, as messages can be shared broadly and end up in the press.

I will provide updates to this information as soon as I receive it.

(”Beach team” refers to staffers for the new administration working at the various agencies while new leadership is put in place; “OPA” most likely refers to the “Office of Public Affairs.”)

via www.huffingtonpost.com

And some blog posts that won't get written.

Plan to Increase Access to Results of EPA-Funded Scientific Research

Speaking of data:

On February 22, 2013, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) directed federal agencies that conduct research to develop plans ensuring peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals and related digital scientific research data resulting from federally-funded scientific research are accessible to the public.  In response, our Plan to Increase Access to Results of EPA-Funded Scientific Research describes the steps EPA will take to meet those directives.  The Plan was finalized on December 5, 2016.  Now that the plan has been completed, we will be working towards implementing it in phases.

• Phase 1 – ORD intramural research publications and related research data effective January 1, 2016.
• Phase 2 – Non-ORD intramural research publications effective during 2017.  Non-ORD intramural research data effective during 2018.
• Phase 3 – All EPA extramural research publications and related data effective with funding agreements completed during 2018.

(Note that the URL in the first line is to EPA's Open Goverment page and the quoted text comes from a text box on that page. I couldn't find a static URL to quote from.)

I think this is great news, especially for replication--it should be a lot easier for researchers to get the data sets necessary for publication. The ability for more people to read publications funded by taxpayer dollars also seems like a really good thing.

The links I had to the original memo and a page with links to the plans from other agencies no longer work (as of today, it appears, I can't imagine why). But for now that information is available at https://www.cendi.gov/projects/Public_Access_Plans_US_Fed_Agencies.html.

 p.s. I could have sworn that either Tim or I posted on this, but I can't find it.

This work is not a product of the United States Government or the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the author is not doing this work in any governmental capacity.  The views expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the United States or the US EPA.

 

This work is not a product of the United States Government or the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the author is not doing this work in any governmental capacity.  The views expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the United States or the US EPA.

This is cool and sad (and I probably shouldn't comment anyway)

According to Wired:

AT 10 AM the Saturday before inauguration day, on the sixth floor of the Van Pelt Library at the University of Pennsylvania, roughly 60 hackers, scientists, archivists, and librarians were hunched over laptops, drawing flow charts on whiteboards, and shouting opinions on computer scripts across the room. They had hundreds of government web pages and data sets to get through before the end of the day—all strategically chosen from the pages of the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—any of which, they felt, might be deleted, altered, or removed from the public domain by the incoming Trump administration.

So it's very cool that people are doing this, but of course sad that they feel like they have to. (I've been teleworking because of the security stuff downtown and won't be able to read the Inside EPA article that Wired cites until I'm back in the office.)

At the other end of the table, Nova Fallen, a Penn computer science grad student, was puzzling over an interactive EPA map of the US showing facilities that violated EPA’s rules.

“There’s a 100,000 limit on downloading these. But it’s just a web form, so I’m trying to see if there’s a Python way to fill out the form programmatically,” said Fallen. Roughly 4 million violations filled the system. “This might take a few more hours,” she said.

I am pretty sure there's an easier way to get that data.

HT: Justin Wolfers

 

This work is not a product of the United States Government or the United States Environmental Protection Agency, and the author is not doing this work in any governmental capacity.  The views expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily represent those of the United States or the US EPA.

Environmental regulations have always been an easy target

There is theory to suggest that constraints on economic activity (e.g., regulations) will reduce economic activity. But, in a very large and dynamic macroeconomy, the negative impacts are likely to be small. From Jaffe et al. (1995) in the Journal of Economic Literature:

More than two decades ago, the first Earth Day in 1970 marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement. Since that time, the United States has spent more than $1 trillion to prevent or reduce environmental damages created by industrial and commercial activities. During the latter part of this period, the U.S. economy has moved
from a position of approximate trade balance on a long-term basis to a position of chronic trade deficit. The coincidence of these two major trends has led many to suspect that environmental regulation may be playing a major causal role in impairing the "competitiveness" of U.S. firms. (pp. 132-33)

...

Overall, there is relatively little evidence to support the hypothesis that environmental regulations have had a large adverse effect on competitiveness, however that elusive term is defined. Although the long-run social costs of environmental regulation may be significant, including adverse effects on productivity, studies attempting to measure the effect of environmental regulation on net exports, overall trade flows, and plant-location decisions have produced estimates that are either small, statistically insignificant, or not robust to tests of model specification. (pp. 157-58)

I don't know of a more recent review articles (suggestions?) but would be surprised of the results have changed (Note: not a review article but Aldy and Pizer is on my reading list). 

Reference:

Adam B. Jaffe, Steven R. Peterson, Paul R. Portney and Robert N. Stavins, Environmental Regulation and the Competitiveness of U.S. Manufacturing: What Does the Evidence Tell Us? Journal of Economic Literature 33(1) (1995): 132-163. [http://www.jstor.org/stable/2728912]

Aldy, Joseph E., and William A. Pizer. "The competitiveness impacts of climate change mitigation policies." Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists 2(4) (2015): 565-595. [http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/683305]

 

Greg Mankiw's Blog: You are not entitled to your own facts

Mankiw's title is quaint, given that we are now aware of "alternative facts." :

Readers of this blog will surely want to know about a new website: econofact.org, non-partisan publication designed to bring key facts and incisive analysis to the national debate on economic and social policies. It is written by leading academic economists from across the country who belong to the EconoFact Network, and published by the Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World at The Fletcher School at Tufts University."

via gregmankiw.blogspot.com

There are a handful of issues posted there. None of these are focused on environmental economics but they are all very important to the workings of the U.S. economy.