Additional Ton Research Articles

Impact of productivity on exports: Case of the grape in Peru, 2007-2017 [Impacto de la productividad en las exportaciones: Caso de la uva en Perú, 2007-2017

Peru, in the last 10 years has been experiencing an almost constant growth in the exports of some products of the agricultural sector that have great acceptance in the international market. Among the products most in demand are the grapes, which are exported in significant quantities to the United States, China, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, among others. Although they have been presenting basically climatological problems, the production has followed an encouraging direction, improving its productivity every year, being the departments Piura, Ica, Lima, Lambayeque and La Libertad, the most representative as far as its production is concerned. In this scenario, where international markets open up thanks to agreements and treaties signed, the demands on producers increase, with productivity being the main indicator of continuous improvement, measuring advances in knowledge, techniques and specialization, generating greater production and better quality. Analyzing the impact of productivity on exports, allows us to have an idea of the cause-effect relationships between one and the other, allowing greater emphasis on strategies to generate improvements. The statistical analysis carried out showed that there is a significant impact of export productivity, so that for each additional tonne increased in production per hectare harvested, exports increase by 36,819 tons. This fact must be considered, since the dedication and the impulse that is granted to improve productivity will have very positive results in exports.

Clean Bus Technologies and the Cost-Effectiveness of Emissions Reductions in Latin America

The transport sector in Latin America accounts for over one-third of CO2 emissions. Shifting passengers from private vehicles to high capacity public transit has been identified as critical to relieve congestion and decarbonize transport, and switching to cleaner bus technologies can provide additional benefits in mitigating greenhouse gas emissions while reducing noise and air pollution. The uptake of clean bus technologies in Latin America and the Caribbean is slower than in China, Europe, and the U.S.A. This paper focuses on deepening understanding of the financial barriers to adopting clean bus technologies by developing a cost-effectiveness analysis that (i) assesses the marginal cost of reducing an additional ton of CO2 when switching from diesel buses to clean bus options and (ii) identifies the main drivers that determine this cost. The methodology has been applied to Santiago, the capital city of Chile, and results show that, given the current context, compressed natural gas is not a cost-efficient option for this city, while both hybrid electric and electric buses are already a cost-efficient option to mitigate climate change.

Impact of productivity on exports: Case of the grape in Peru, 2007-2017

Peru, in the last 10 years has been experiencing an almost constant growth in the exports of some products of the agricultural sector that have great acceptance in the international market. Among the products most in demand are the grapes, which are exported in significant quantities to the United States, China, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, among others. Although they have been presenting basically climatological problems, the production has followed an encouraging direction, improving its productivity every year, being the departments Piura, Ica, Lima, Lambayeque and La Libertad, the most representative as far as its production is concerned. In this scenario, where international markets open up thanks to agreements and treaties signed, the demands on producers increase, with productivity being the main indicator of continuous improvement, measuring advances in knowledge, techniques and specialization, generating greater production and better quality. Analyzing the impact of productivity on exports, allows us to have an idea of the cause-effect relationships between one and the other, allowing greater emphasis on strategies to generate improvements. The statistical analysis carried out showed that there is a significant impact of export productivity, so that for each additional tonne increased in production per hectare harvested, exports increase by 36,819 tons. This fact must be considered, since the dedication and the impulse that is granted to improve productivity will have very positive results in exports.

CO2 Storage with Mobility Control

The high mobility contrast between injected CO2 and the formation brine at reservoir conditions makes the displacement efficiency low and can give early breakthrough of injected CO2 into brine extraction wells for pressure management, or early reaching of spill points in structural traps. The storage capacity could in many cases be increased if efficient mobility control methods could be implemented for the injected CO2. In this paper we investigate the potential benefits of mobility control for CO2 injection in saline aquifers using both a commercial reservoir simulator and a specially developed module for the Matlab Reservoir Simulation Toolbox. The mobility control method investigated is surfactants for foam generation. These exists today both as water soluble and CO2 soluble surfactants, and the efficiency of both types are studied. Rough estimates of the cost of additional storage capacity are made. Results show that the storage capacity in some cases can be more than doubled, at a cost the order of 7 $ per additional tonne of stored CO2.

Social cost of carbon under shared socioeconomic pathways

Abstract The Social Carbon Cost (SCC) measures present value of future economic damages caused by an additional ton of carbon emissions, and is widely used by governments to design climate policies. Although the use of SCC is very extensive, its predictions are very difficult. Because the SCC is defined by social welfare associated with economic growth and population, its estimation is necessarily dependent on future assumptions that are difficult to project. Many approaches consider the impact of population or economic growth on the SCC, but these socioeconomic factors must be grounded on solid assumptions concerning political, technological and environmental developments. Over the past seven years, the climate change research community has established five plausible socioeconomic narratives, called ‘Shared Socioeconomic Pathways’ (SSPs), numbered SSP1–SSP5. These scenarios provide descriptions of how the future might unfold in several key areas. To this end, we use the Dynamic Integrated model of Climate and the Economy (DICE) to update the SCC under the five socioeconomic pathways, while also considering alternative damage functions and the social welfare discount rate to address uncertainty. The result of the China Climate Change integrated assessment model (C3IAM) were used to re-estimate parameters in DICE, therefore characterize the SSPs. The results show that, in a world developing towards regional rivalry (SSP3), the SCC today will likely double compared with other scenarios. If emerged developing countries will follow the same path as previous industrializations (SSP5), the SCC will experience a rapid increase after 2060. Inequality (SSP4) will experience low mitigation pressure under a sustainable development scenario (SSP1), while the historical development pattern (SSP2) will have a moderate SCC with higher uncertainty. The results can provide carbon price benchmarks for policy makers who hold different attitudes towards the future and can help address the need to avoid regional rivalries and fossil-fueled development, which may counteract mitigation efforts.

Mimi-PAGE, an open-source implementation of the PAGE09 integrated assessment model

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) have become critical tools for assessing the costs and benefits of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Three models currently inform the social cost of carbon dioxide (SCCO2, the net present value of damages from one additional ton of CO2) used by the US federal government, several states, and Canada. Here we present a new open-source implementation of one of these models (PAGE09) in the Julia programming language using a modular modeling framework (Mimi). Mimi-PAGE was coded using best coding practices (such as multiple code reviews by different individuals during development, automated testing of newly-committed code, and provision of documentation and usage notes) and is publicly available in a GitHub repository for community inspection and use under an open source license. In this paper we describe the Julia implementation of PAGE09, show that output from Mimi-PAGE matches that of the original model, and perform comparisons of the run time between the two implementations.

An Analysis of the Water-Energy-Food-Land Requirements and CO2 Emissions for Food Security of Rice in Japan

The aim of this study is to assess the impact of rice-based food security on water, energy, land, and CO2 emissions from a holistic point of view using the Nexus approach, which analyzes tradeoffs between water, energy, and food management. In Japan, both rice consumption and the area harvested for rice have decreased. Maintaining a high self-sufficiency ratio (SSR) in rice production is an important aspect of food security in Japan, impacting the management of key resources, such as water, energy, and land. This study has, therefore, assessed the impact of various SSRs on rice production, focusing on consumption and land-use trends. First, the rice production SSR is predicted to drop to 87% by 2025 within the logarithmic trend of rice consumption and the polynomial trend line of the harvested area of rice. This reflects the fact that rice production is expected to decline more steeply than consumption between 2016 and 2025. Second, this study sets the SSRs for rice in 2025 between 80% and 100%, reflecting a range of low-to-high food security levels. In comparison with the 2016 baseline, about 0.70 × 10 6 additional tons of rice will be produced. Achieving a rice production SSR of 100% will require 10,195 × 10 6 m3 more of water and 23.31 × 10 6 GJ more of energy. Furthermore, an additional 283,000 tons of CO2 will be emitted in 2025, as more energy is used. By contrast, an 80% rice production SSR scenario would save 1482 × 10 6 m3 of water and 3.39 × 10 6 GJ of energy, as well as making a 398,000-ton reduction in CO2 emissions in 2015. A lower SSR would have a positive impact on resource management but a negative impact on food security. It would also reduce the income and economic status of farmers. It is, therefore, important to consider the tradeoffs between food security and resource savings in order to achieve sustainable water, energy, food, and land management in Japan.

The effect of greenhouse gas emissions on cost of debt: Evidence from Canadian firms

AbstractThe aim of this paper is to investigate the relation between greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and cost of debt and to estimate the cost that lenders are imputing to GHG emissions. Data on GHG emissions were hand‐collected from Carbon Disclosure Project reports, whereas data on the cost of debt and other financial data were obtained from Bloomberg Professional database. Using a sample of Canadian firms, the results show that GHG emissions increase firms' cost of debt. In other words, for each additional tonne of GHG emissions, the cost of debt increases on average by 11–15%. These results imply that creditors incorporate firms' GHG emissions into their lending decisions and they penalize the polluting firms. This could encourage firms to reduce and manage their GHG emissions because there is a cost associated with these emissions. This study is one of the first to examine the relationship between GHG emissions and the cost of debt.

Overlooked trade‐offs of environmentally protective hydropower operation: Impacts to ancillary services and greenhouse gas emissions

AbstractThe relicensing of large hydropower projects in the United States often enforces environmental constraints such as minimum instream flows. These requirements can reduce hydropower's negative environmental impacts but may come at a cost of reduced electric generation and revenue. During the federal hydropower relicensing process, participants negotiate these environmental and economic trade‐offs based on coarse models, often conflating impacts on generation and revenue, overlooking ancillary services (AS) markets, and ignoring potential greenhouse gas (GHG) implications. Using a case study of a 362‐MW hydropower project in California, this research conducts higher resolution modelling to compare energy generation, AS provision, revenue, and GHG impacts of two hydropower operating regimes. The environmentally protective regime reduces average generation by 6% but increases AS provision by 2%. Total average revenue decreases by 3.5% under environmental constraints using current electricity prices (and by only 1.1% when modelled with projected 2030 electricity prices), indicating that generation impacts should not be equated with revenue impacts during relicensing. In the California electricity market, this reduced hydropower generation is replaced primarily by natural gas, resulting in an estimated 30,000 additional tons of CO2 emitted annually. These positive and negative externalities are not adequately examined in the hydropower relicensing process.

Valuing the Global Mortality Consequences of Climate Change Accounting for Adaptation Costs and Benefits

This paper develops the first globally comprehensive and empirically grounded estimates of mortality risk due to future temperature increases caused by climate change. Using 40 countries' subnational data, we estimate age-specific mortality-temperature relationships that enable both extrapolation to countries without data and projection into future years while accounting for adaptation. We uncover a U-shaped relationship where extreme cold and hot temperatures increase mortality rates, especially for the elderly, that is flattened by both higher incomes and adaptation to local climate (e.g., robust heating systems in cold climates and cooling systems in hot climates). Further, we develop a revealed preference approach to recover unobserved adaptation costs. We combine these components with 33 high-resolution climate simulations that together capture scientific uncertainty about the degree of future temperature change. Under a high emissions scenario, we estimate the mean increase in mortality risk is valued at roughly 3.2% of global GDP in 2100, with today's cold locations benefiting and damages being especially large in today's poor and/or hot locations. Finally, we estimate that the release of an additional ton of CO2 today will cause mean [interquartile range] damages of $36.6 [-$7.8, $73.0] under a high emissions scenario and $17.1 [-$24.7, $53.6] under a moderate scenario, using a 2% discount rate that is justified by US Treasury rates over the last two decades. Globally, these empirically grounded estimates substantially exceed the previous literature's estimates that lacked similar empirical grounding, suggesting that revision of the estimated economic damage from climate change is warranted. Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.

Factors associated with profitability in pasture-based systems of milk production

The global dairy industry needs to reappraise the systems of milk production that are operated at farm level with specific focus on enhancing technical efficiency and competitiveness of the sector. The objective of this study was to quantify the factors associated with costs of production, profitability, and pasture use, and the effects of pasture use on financial performance of dairy farms using an internationally recognized representative database over an 8-yr period (2008 to 2015) on pasture-based systems. To examine the associated effects of several farm system and management variables on specific performance measures, a series of multiple regression models were developed. Factors evaluated included pasture use [kg of dry matter/ha and stocking rate (livestock units/ha)], grazing season length, breeding season length, milk recording, herd size, dairy farm size (ha), farmer age, discussion group membership, proportion of purchased feed, protein %, fat %, kg of milk fat and protein per cow, kg of milk fat and protein per hectare, and capital investment in machinery, livestock, and buildings. Multiple regression analysis demonstrated costs of production per hectare differed by year, geographical location, soil type, level of pasture use, proportion of purchased feed, protein %, kg of fat and protein per cow, dairy farm size, breeding season length, and capital investment in machinery, livestock, and buildings per cow. The results of the analysis revealed that farm net profit per hectare was associated with pasture use per hectare, year, location, soil type, grazing season length, proportion of purchased feed, protein %, kg of fat and protein per cow, dairy farm size, and capital investment in machinery and buildings per cow. Pasture use per hectare was associated with year, location, soil type, stocking rate, dairy farm size, fat %, protein %, kg of fat and protein per cow, farmer age, capital investment in machinery and buildings per cow, breeding season length, and discussion group membership. On average, over the 8-yr period, each additional tonne of pasture dry matter used increased gross profit by €278 and net profit by €173 on dairy farms. Conversely, a 10% increase in the proportion of purchased feed in the diet resulted in a reduction in net profit per hectare by €97 and net profit by €207 per tonne of fat and protein. Results from this study, albeit in a quota limited environment, have demonstrated that the profitability of pasture-based dairy systems is significantly associated with the proportion of pasture used at the farm level, being cognizant of the levels of purchased feed.

Modeling Preference and Willingness to Pay for Drought Tolerance (DT) in Maize in Rural Zimbabwe

Maize plays a leading role in the food security of millions in southern Africa, yet it is highly vulnerable to the moisture stress brought about by the erratic rainfall patterns that characterize weather systems in the area. Developing and making drought-tolerant maize varieties available to farmers in the region has thus long been a key goal on the regional development agenda. Farm-level adoption of these varieties, however, depends on local perceptions of the value they add, along with willingness to pay (WTP) for it. Focusing on Zimbabwe, this research aimed at estimating the implicit prices farmers are willing to pay for drought tolerance in maize compared to other preferred traits. Using a choice experiment framework, we generated 12,600 observations from a random sample of 1,400 households in communal areas within 14 districts of Zimbabwe. Taste parameters and heterogeneities were estimated using the generalized multinomial logit model (G-MNL). The results reveal drought tolerance, grain yield, covered cob tip, cob size, and semi-flint texture to be the most preferred traits by farm households in Zimbabwe. The WTP estimates show that farmers are willing to pay a premium for drought tolerance equal to 2.56, 7, 3.2, and 5 times higher than for an additional ton of yield per acre, bigger cob size, larger grain size, and covered cob tip, respectively. We suggest designing and implementing innovative ways of promoting DT maize along with awareness-raising activities to enhance contextual understandings of drought and drought risk to speed adoption of new DT maize varieties by risk-prone farming communities. Given the high level of rural literacy and the high rate of adoption of improved maize, trait-based promotion and marketing of varieties constitutes the right strategy.

Global Electricity Trade Network: Structures and Implications.

Nations increasingly trade electricity, and understanding the structure of the global power grid can help identify nations that are critical for its reliability. This study examines the global grid as a network with nations as nodes and international electricity trade as links. We analyze the structure of the global electricity trade network and find that the network consists of four sub-networks, and provide a detailed analysis of the largest network, Eurasia. Russia, China, Ukraine, and Azerbaijan have high betweenness measures in the Eurasian sub-network, indicating the degrees of centrality of the positions they hold. The analysis reveals that the Eurasian sub-network consists of seven communities based on the network structure. We find that the communities do not fully align with geographical proximity, and that the present international electricity trade in the Eurasian sub-network causes an approximately 11 million additional tons of CO2 emissions.

Bigger is better: Improved nature conservation and economic returns from landscape-level mitigation.

Impact mitigation is a primary mechanism on which countries rely to reduce environmental externalities and balance development with conservation. Mitigation policies are transitioning from traditional project-by-project planning to landscape-level planning. Although this larger-scale approach is expected to provide greater conservation benefits at the lowest cost, empirical justification is still scarce. Using commercial sugarcane expansion in the Brazilian Cerrado as a case study, we apply economic and biophysical steady-state models to quantify the benefits of the Brazilian Forest Code (FC) under landscape- and property-level planning. We find that FC compliance imposes small costs to business but can generate significant long-term benefits to nature: supporting 32 (±37) additional species (largely habitat specialists), storing 593,000 to 2,280,000 additional tons of carbon worth $69 million to $265 million ($ pertains to U.S. dollars), and marginally improving surface water quality. Relative to property-level compliance, we find that landscape-level compliance reduces total business costs by $19 million to $35 million per 6-year sugarcane growing cycle while often supporting more species and storing more carbon. Our results demonstrate that landscape-level mitigation provides cost-effective conservation and can be used to promote sustainable development.

Diminishing Returns or Compounding Benefits of Air Pollution Control? The Case of NOx and Ozone.

A common measure used in air quality benefit-cost assessment is marginal benefit (MB), or the monetized societal benefit of reducing 1 ton of emissions. Traditional depictions of MB for criteria air pollutants are such that each additional ton of emission reduction incurs less benefit than the previous ton. Using adjoint sensitivity analysis in a state-of-the-art air quality model, we estimate MBs for NOx emitted from mobile and point sources, characterized based on the estimated ozone-related premature mortality in the U.S. Our findings indicate that nation-wide emission reductions in the U.S. significantly increase NOx MBs for all sources, without exception. We estimate that MBs for NOx emitted from mobile sources increase by 1.5 and 2.5 times, on average, for 40% and 80% reductions in anthropogenic emissions across the U.S. Our results indicate a strictly concave damage function and compounding benefits of progressively lower levels of NOx emissions, providing economic incentive for higher levels of abatement than were previously advisible. These findings suggest that the traditional perception of a convex damage function and decreasing MB with abatement may not hold true for secondary pollutants such as O3.

Beyond prevalence: importance of estimating drug consumption and expenditures.

Keywords: Cocaine; drug expenditures; drug markets; market disruption; measurement; prevalence

Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey

An expanding branch of research has estimated the potential costs of climate change, which are often expressed as the “Social Cost of Carbon” (SCC) or the costs of an additional ton of CO2 emissions. Estimates of the SCC can be used by policy makers to evaluate climate change policies and greenhouse gas emission reduction projects by means of cost–benefit analyses (CBAs). Such analyses are complicated by the wide range of SCC values that have been reported in the literature, and the large uncertainties involved in estimating the potential economic impacts and related costs of climate change. This study presents a critical review of the reported SCC estimates by examining some neglected consequences of climate change, uncertain and extreme scenarios of climate change, the discounting of future climate change effects, the treatment of individual risk aversion, and assumptions about social welfare. In view of the many uncertainties and omissions in conventional cost–benefit analyses of climate impacts and the SCC, alternative approaches to decision-making should be considered for climate policy.

국내 철강업의 생산요소 간 비효율적 배분을 고려한 CO2저감비용 산정 및 분석: 비용함수접근법

2015년부터 도입예정인 탄소 배출권거래제의 파급효과를 분석하는 데 있어서 산업별, 기업별 <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> 저감비용에 대한 정확한 산정이 요구된다. 기업이 환경규제 등 제약된 환경에서 생산 활동을 할 경우 생산요소의 투입과정에서 비효율적 배분으로 인한 생산비용의 증가가 초래되어 비용최소화 달성에 실패할 개연성이 높아진다. <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> 암묵가격을 측정한 기존 거리함수접근법은 투입요소 간 비효율적 배분 비용을 반영하지 못함에 따라 <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> 저감비용을 과소평가할 수 있다. 본 논문에서는 이러한 거리함수접근법의 한계를 극복하기 위하여 국내 철강업을 대상으로 비용함수접근법을 사용하여 1990-2010 기간 동안 투입요소 간 비효율적 배분 여부를 검증하고, <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> 한계저감비용을 추정하였다. 투입요소 간 배분 효율성 달성은 기각되었으며, 표본기간 동안 <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> 1톤 감축하는 데 연평균 92,000원의 비용을 지불한 것으로 나타났다. Analyzing the effects of carbon emissions trading, which is scheduled to be introduced in Korea in 2015, requires an accurate assessment of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> abatement costs by both industries and firms. Firms faced with regulatory constraints are unlikely to minimize their production costs due to rising production costs caused by allocative inefficiency of inputs. The use of a distance function would results in underestimation of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> abatement costs, because it fails to capture the allocative distortion costs. Recognizing the disadvantage of the previous approach, first, this paper tests for allocative efficiency of input for the Korean steel industry over the period 1990-2010, then derives the marginal <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> abatement costs by applying a cost function approach. The hypothesis of allocative efficiency in inputs is rejected and the steel industry pays an annual average cost of 92,000 won in removing an additional ton of <TEX>$CO_2$</TEX> over the sample period.

Environment: Social Cost of Carbon Statistical Modeling Is Smoke and Mirrors

AbstractIntended to measure the economic damage that an additional ton of carbon dioxide creates via climate change, the social cost of carbon (SCC) estimated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will be used in many regulatory benefit‐cost analyses. This study discusses research conducted at The Heritage Foundation analyzing two of the three main statistical models the EPA uses to estimate the SCC.

Incremental CH4 and N2O mitigation benefits consistent with the US Government's SC-CO2 estimates

Benefit–cost analysis can serve as an informative input into the policy-making process, but only to the degree it characterizes the major impacts of the regulation under consideration. Recently, the US, amongst other nations, has begun to use estimates of the social cost of CO2 (SC-CO2) to develop analyses that more fully capture the climate change impacts of GHG abatement. The SC-CO2 represents the aggregate willingness to pay to avoid the damages associated with an additional tonne of CO2 emissions. In comparison, the social costs of non-CO2 GHGs have received little attention from researchers and policy analysts, despite their non-negligible climate impact. This article addresses this issue by developing a set of social cost estimates for two highly prevalent non-CO2 GHGs, methane and nitrous oxide. By extending existing integrated assessment models, it is possible to develop a set of social cost estimates for these gases that are consistent with the SC-CO2 estimates currently in use by the US federal government.Policy relevanceWithin the benefit–cost analyses that inform the design of major regulations, all Federal agencies within the US Government (USG) use a set of agreed upon SC-CO2 estimates to value the impact of CO2 emissions changes. However, the value of changes in non-CO2 GHG emissions has not been included in USG policy analysis to date. This article addresses that omission by developing a set of social cost estimates for two highly prevalent non-CO2 GHGs, methane and nitrous oxide. These new estimates are designed to be compatible with the USG SC-CO2 estimates currently in use and may therefore be directly applied to value emissions changes for these non-CO2 gases within the benefit–cost analyses used to evaluate future policies.