Evaluation Of Environmental Projects Research Articles

Collaborations in Environmental Initiatives for an Effective “Adaptive Governance” of Social–Ecological Systems: What Existing Literature Suggests

Moving from the scientific literature on the evaluation of environmental projects and programs, this study identifies how and under which conditions collaborations in environmentally sustainable projects are considered effective for the adaptive governance of SES. The method adopted is a systematic literature review based on the quantitative and qualitative analysis of 56 articles selected through specific queries on the SCOPUS database and published from 2004 to 2020. Results of the quantitative analysis identify conditions able to evaluate collaborations, highlighting the need to adopt a transdisciplinary approach analysing both social and ecological challenges and assessing both social and ecological results. Moreover, they suggest preferring using primary data involving multi-sector and multi-scale actors and enlarging the geographical context to the most vulnerable countries. The results of the qualitative analysis provide specific recommendations for collaborations being effective when related to communication, equity, foresight, and respect, which need to be further strengthened by all actors. Multiplicity in visions and approaches should be seen as a resource able to stimulate creativity in social arrangements and environmental practices, making collaborations in environmental projects instrumental for the effectiveness of adaptive governance of SES.

Declining DiscountRate Estimate in the Long-Term Economic Evaluation of Environmental Projects

The decision-making processes regarding projects with long-term environmental implications are strongly influenced by the estimate of the Social Discount Rate (SDR). An economic parameter that makes it possible to compare financially the Cash Flows (CFs) that occur at different time points, in the discounting the SDR reduces excessively the costs and benefits more distant over time. If this problem is particularly marked in the Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) conducted with time-invariant discount rates, it can be overcome by adopting time-declining discount rates. Thus, starting from the examination of the potentialities connected with the application of hyperbolic discounting in the CBAs, the aim of the work is to characterize an innovative probabilistic model for estimating the Declining Discount Rate (DDR), able to overcome the limits of the theoretical approaches recognized in the literature. The model is implemented on the data of the Italian economy and the DDRs estimated in this way are used in the economic feasibility study of an irrigation reconversion intervention. The processing proves that the adoption of time-declining discount rate allows attributing greater “weight” to the positive long-term externalities that characterize the interventions that promote sustainable development. This with decisive repercussions on the priority order of the initiatives to be financed and therefore on the entire allocation process of resources to be used to projects with intergenerational environmental implications. (*) The contribution to this paper is the result of the joint work of the two authors, to which the paper has to be attributed in equal parts.

A Case Study of an Environmental Project Evaluation in a Major Industrial Installation in the Greater Asopos River Area in Greece

A Case Study of an Environmental Project Evaluation in a Major Industrial Installation in the Greater Asopos River Area in Greece

ЭКОНОМИЧЕСКАЯ ОЦЕНКА ЭКОЛОГИЧЕСКИХ МЕРОПРИЯТИЙ НА ОБЪЕКТАХ ТЕПЛОВОЙ ГЕНЕРАЦИИ (НА ПРИМЕРЕ НОВОЧЕРКАССКОЙ ГРЭС)

В работе даны характеристики экологических проблем, возникающих при эксплуатации газоочистного оборудования в филиале «ОГК-2» Новочеркасская ГРЭС, предложены мероприятия по замене газоочистного оборудования, рассчитана экономия от их внедрения и сделаны выводы об экологической и экономической эффективности данных мероприятий. В результате замены устаревшего и низкоэффективного газоочистного оборудования на новое получен не только экологический эффект, но и годовая экономия в размере 123,26 млн руб. Срок окупаемости инвестиций составил 2,21 года. Анализ полученных показателей позволяет сделать вывод о целесообразности проводимых мероприятий по замене газоочистного оборудования.

Improved Project Management via Advancement in Evaluation Methodology of Regional Cooperation Environmental Projects

Abstract The financial mechanism within the European Union that is accessible for environmental issues is a tool by which it is possible to maintain and improve the state of the environment in the Baltic Sea region countries. However, the accessibility and use of finances cannot be considered indicators which mark the success of a programme. There are various evaluation types which can be conducted, such as ex ante to assess the impact desirable to help gauge what projects best to support. Ex post evaluations can also be applied to pool lessons learned to make recommendations for further development. Evaluation is important for checking progress, to further support successful initiatives and to avoid financing activities which do not produce results. Evaluation of environmental projects can be particularly difficult due to their diversity in approaches and applied technologies, however currently there is a risk to limit the assessment of projects to the activity-level (what outputs have been produced, such as number of seminars and publications or campaigns, technologies installed), rather than on the primary goal - specific impacts made on the environment. The goal of this research is to develop a methodology and set of indicators for the evaluation of environmental projects to improve the evaluation of project efficiency, impact and sustainability. Regional Cooperation Environmental Projects are selected and an evaluation is conducted on these projects.

Environmental project evaluation: IRR-based decision support with a Monte Carlo simulation algorithm

One of the most widely used methods for investment assessment is the internal rate of return (IRR) that is based on the discounted cash flow analysis. Furthermore, the quantitative risk analysis technique is commonly used during the project's initial stage, simply by weighting the financial performance with the incurred risks. Herein, we introduce a decision support algorithm for environmental project evaluation and we focus on its application to solid waste management projects. The proposed algorithm includes some basic steps that should be followed by decision-makers, in order to evaluate a project's options. Specifically, different probability distributions are assigned to all variables that influence the options’ IRRs and Monte Carlo simulation is enforced to compute their expected IRR values. The algorithm presented here can be a useful tool to risk-neutral decision-makers, as it helps them to evaluate an environmental project's options and to select the one with the greatest expected profits.

On the financial and risk analysis of waste treatment projects in greece

Risk assessment is one of the most critical procedures for the evaluation of environmental projects. Over the last decades, there are several methods and techniques developed in the risk assessment literature establishing the quantitative risk analysis of waste treatment projects. Herein, the authors focus on the correlation between the fi nancial sustainability evaluation and the quantitative risk analysis of waste treatment projects, which are implemented with Build-Operate-Transfer contracts in Greece. Particularly, the authors use a formula for the investor's profi t rate computation, which corresponds in positive cash fl ows throughout the project's operational phase and ensures the partnership's fi nancial sustainability. Documentation of the specifi c formula is achieved through the quantitative risk analysis of a waste treatment project, where the uncertainty of the project's fi nancial sustainability is analyzed and useful conclusions are discussed. Over the past two decades, public private partnership (PPP) contracts are used by many governments for the purpose of delivering a project or a service that is traditionally provided by the public sector. Generally, these types of contracts include the collaboration between the public and the private sector, while in most cases the private partner is responsible for the project funding and the invested capital is recovered through the operation revenue over the concession period. According to the World Bank Group's database (1), for the period 1990-2009, there are 400 investments with private participation implemented in the waste treatment (WT) fi eld. Since the PPP projects are becoming a popular option for the public services delivery, there are many authors who refer to specifi c large WT projects imple- mented in different countries (2-4), while other researchers focus on the identifi cation and analysis of their key aspects (5). These projects are mainly implemented following a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) contract, which is the most commonly used contract type in PPPs (6). Generally, BOT contracts can be defi ned as long-term cooperation agreements for the provision of high quality infrastructure, products, or services (7), with which signifi cant technical, legal, political, and economic risks are shared between the public and private sectors (8). In a previous study, we examined the fi nancial sus- tainability of the WT projects that were implemented through PPPs in Greece (9) and we developed a formula for the computation of the investor's profi t rate (PR). The PR's minimum value that is calcu- lated through the specifi c formula can be used by decision makers to achieve the positive cash fl ows on behalf of the private sector throughout the project's time horizon, ensuring the partnership's fi nancial sustainability. Herein, we use the results arising through the above formula and we implement the quantitative risk analysis (QRA) of a WT project to validate the project's fi nancial sustainability. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The framework of the BOT contracts is presented in Section 2 and the review of the literature on the commonly used methods for the fi nancial analysis and the QRA are presented in Section 3. A QRA for the evaluation of a WT project is implemented in Section 4, while the results are discussed in Section 5 and useful conclusions are summarized in Section 6.

Andness-Directed Weighted Averaging Operators: Possibilities for Environmental Project Evaluation

Some of the conventional methods of aggregating the performance of infrastructure projects with respect to multiple factors/impacts are considered. It is suggested that alternative forms of aggregation might be more useful; in particular, the ordered weighted averaging (OWA) operator introduced by Ronald Yager. Factor importance weights and fuzzy satisfaction of factors by projects may be aggregated prior to aggregation via an OWA operator. In this case OWA operator weights may be based on the attitudinal character of the decision-maker expressed in terms of the degree of orness and andness of the aggregation. One approach is maximum entropy aggregation where weights are derived to be as even (or as minimally dispersed) as possible subject to satisfying a given orness or andness constraint. Recently aggregation processes based on andness have been proposed by Henrik Larsen which have several desirable properties and may also be considered as alternative forms of aggregation. A simple example based on a hypothetical but realistic example by Horsak and Damico is given which involves the location of a hazardous waste disposal facility (PCB-contaminated transformer fluids) at one of three sites based on ten factors.

Local Environmental Investments and Sustainable Development: The evaluation of environmental projects in Scotland supported by the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund

In the UK for the period 1994-99, a broad range of environmental projects were given financial support through the European Agriculture Guidance and Guarantee Fund under the Objective 1 and Objective 5b programmes. This paper is concerned with the ex-post evaluation of these projects set within a Sustainable Development framework. The aim was to identify project types or characteristics that offered the greatest return on investment. A classification of six broad project types was adopted. The evaluation revealed that there were significant differences between individual projects with respect to the type and scale, and temporal and social distribution of the benefits they delivered. In particular, as well as delivering environmental and economic benefits, many projects made a significant contribution to the development of human and social capital. The paper concludes that it is possible to improve the basis for future project selection in order to maximise the returns on environmental investments in the context of sustainable development.

Preferences in their Place

In at least some of their forms, Cost-Benefit techniques for the evaluation of environmental projects and policies treat the preferences of citizens as the sole determinants of the value of outcomes. There are two salient ways in which this supposition might be defended. The first is metaethical and appeals to considerations about how we must understand talk of environmental and other values. The second is political and appeals to considerations about democratic legitimacy and the proper aims of public policy. Metaethical considerations, I argue, are something of a red herring here. Roughly subjectivist understandings of our talk of values may be appealingly metaphysically unassuming, but in their most plausible formulations they do not support a view of preferences as the sole determinants of value. Political considerations, on the other hand, are to be taken very seriously. They offer, however, no straightforward rationale for any crudely preferentialist measure of social value. Findings obtained from the use of cost-benefit techniques might sometimes have a legitimate role as an input into, but not as a substitute for, political deliberation. Questions about the scope and limits of such legitimacy are properly addressed in political and not in metaethical terms.

Strategic evaluation of environmental projects in SMEs

Strategic evaluation of environmental projects in SMEs

Strategic evaluation of environmental projects in SMEs

Strategic evaluation of environmental projects in SMEs

Environmental Project Evaluation Based on Fuzzy Relational Equations

The article examines the use of fuzzy relational equations in the context of the evaluation of projects with environmental consequences such as road and transit projects. Projects are characterized in terms of linguistic expressions of performance with respect to impacts or factors and the importance of those impacts or factors. An illustrative example is developed.

Environmental project evaluation: a fuzzy logic based method

The paper illustrates the potential of fuzzy logic and approximate reasoning in the context of the evaluation of a set of transport projects characterized in terms of multiple environmental factors or impacts. A method involving fragments of imprecise information (conditional propositions, implications), where antecedents are environmental impacts or factors and the consequent is a measure of satisfaction associated with those factors, is illustrated in the context of the evaluation of road projects. Each factor is defined as a fuzzy subset of the set of projects. A simple example is given involving four road projects and six factors (travel-time saved, social impact, flora/fauna impact, noise impact, air quality impact, capital cost).