Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Link: http://www.oecd.org/document/1/0,3343,en_2649_33713_41468801_1_1_1_1,00.html

Countries today face numerous environmental challenges, such as climate change, air and water pollution, natural resource management, natural disasters and industrial accidents. The costs of not responding adequately to these challenges can be considerable, in some cases representing a significant drag on Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies.

Based on a literature review in selected areas of environmental policy, the OECD report suggests that the economic costs of failing to introduce environmental policies that are “sufficiently ambitious”, can be considerable – i.e. a non-negligible share of GDP. For example:

• The costs of not introducing the European Commission’s “Thematic Strategy on Air Pollution” have been estimated to represent about 0.35 1.0% of EU 25 GDP in 2020 (EC, 2005).
• In non-OECD countries, 1.7 million deaths and 4.4% of the burden of disease (e.g. reduced years of healty life) have been attributed to unsafe water supply, sanitation and hygiene according to the WHO. Ninety per cent of the deaths involve children under 5 years old (Prüss-Üstün et al., 2004).
• Estimates of the economic costs of climate change vary widely, with recent assessments generating figures as high as 14.4% in terms of per capita “consumption equivalents” (Stern, 2007), when both market and non-market impacts are included.
• The costs of natural disasters (e.g. floods, windstorm, earthquakes, etc.) for the poorest countries can be as much as 13% of annual GDP (The World Bank, 2006).
• Inefficient management of the east Atlantic bluefin tuna fishery may be resulting in reduced fishery yields with a value of USD 1 3 billion (Bjørndal and Brasão) (2005).

Some of these costs are already being reflected in public budgets, firms’ balance sheets as well as household budgets (e.g. increased public and private health expenditures, unemployment benefits for out-of-work fishers, remediation costs for contaminated sites, dikes and other flood protection infrastructure).

Even when the costs of inaction are deemed important, identifying the areas where environmental policies need to be strengthened still requires careful comparison between the costs of inaction versus costs of action (the latter are not covered by this report). This report provides introductory perspectives on the methodological issues in evaluating costs of inaction, and discusses some of the future problems likely to be encountered in this very complex area.

Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Air and Water Pollution
Chapter 3. Climate Change
Chapter 4. Environment-Related Industrial Accidents and Natural Disasters
Chapter 5. Natural Resource Management
Chapter 6. Summary and Conclusions

Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) www.OECD.org
October, 2008

Link: http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/news/progress_alerts.cfm/pa_id=126

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have released the first technical support documents to show 50% energy savings in commercial retail buildings. The two reports provide recommendations on how to achieve 50% energy savings over the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Standard 90.1-2004 in grocery stores and medium-sized retail buildings.

Conducted by NREL's Commercial Buildings team, under the direction of DOE's Building Technologies Program, the studies support DOE's goal of producing market-ready, net-zero energy commercial buildings by 2025. They follow the August launch of DOE's Net-Zero Energy Commercial Building Initiative (the umbrella initiative of the net-zero energy goal) and the National Laboratory Collaborative on Building Technologies, which focuses scientific expertise and resources of five national laboratories toward reaching the goal. NREL is one of the laboratories in the collaborative.

The reports found that achieving 50% energy savings is possible for medium-sized retail buildings with plug load levels no greater than 1.76 W/sq. ft. (18.9 W/sq. m.) and for grocery stores in each climate zone in the United States. According to the reports, reaching 50% is a positive return on investment at today's energy prices and can be met without photovoltaic electricity generation.

[Reaching 50% is largely cost-effective for stores with low plug load levels, but costs as much as 17% more than baseline for medium plug load stores, and as much as 22% more for high plug load stores, based on a five-year total life cycle cost. Several efficiency measures are recommended for all stores (all climates and all plug load levels), but customized paths are required to finish the work of achieving 50% energy savings.

The 50% recommendations are intended to serve as starting points for project-specific analyses. The recommendations are not meant for specific design guidance for an actual project because of project-specific variations in economic criteria and energy design measures. Project-specific analyses are also recommended because they can account for site specific rebate programs that may improve the cost-effectiveness of certain efficiency measures.]

DOE commissions technical support documents to describe the assumptions, methodologies, and analyses used to achieve certain levels of energy performance. In many cases, the documents are the basis for Advanced Energy Design Guides (AEDGs)—"how to" guides that show how to achieve above-code exemplary energy performance for buildings. AEDGs target architects, engineers, and other design practitioners and demonstrate that a pathway to energy savings exists today with available technology.

The ASHRAE AEDGs are developed by ASHRAE, DOE, the American Institute of Architects, the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and the U.S. Green Building Council. To date, four AEDGs have been published and all have targeted 30% energy savings:

* The ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings—Office Buildings up to 20,000 sq.ft.2
* The ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Retail Buildings—Retail Spaces up to 20,000 sq.ft.2
* The ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guide for K-12 School Buildings—Elementary, Middle, and High School Buildings
* The ASHRAE 30% Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Warehouses and Self-Storage Buildings—Warehouses up to 50,000 ft.2 and self-storage buildings that use unitary heating and air-conditioning.

In addition to the ASHRAE design guides, the results of these studies will be shared with DOE's Retailer Energy Alliance, an alliance of leading retailers dedicated to reducing the energy use and environmental footprint of retail buildings.

The technical support documents are available on the NREL Web site. The following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs.

* Technical Support Document: Development of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Medium Box Retail—50% Energy Savings (PDF 4.3 MB) http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42828.pdf
* Technical Support Document: Development of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Grocery Stores—50% Energy Savings (PDF 2.7 MB) http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42829.pdf

U.S. Department of Energy Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Division http://apps1.eere.energy.gov
November 3, 2008

Link: http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/3825

A new study sponsored by the National Commission on Energy Policy and conducted by the RAND Corporation finds that fuel-cycle carbon emissions for synthetic motor fuel made from oil sands and coal-to-liquids are substantially higher than for conventional crude oil. The analysis, released today, finds that the use of carbon capture and sequestration can substantially reduce the carbon balance of coal-to-liquids, but that even the maximum theoretical carbon capture and storage will, in the best case, only bring the carbon emissions from coal-to-liquids fuels roughly into line with those of conventional petroleum products.

According to the report, synthetic crude produced from oil sands has full fuel-cycle carbon emissions 10-30% higher than convention crude oil. The carbon balance for coal-to-liquids (CTL) is much higher, with lifecycle emissions more than twice those of conventional fuels, the report finds.

“The analysis shows that total carbon emissions from coal-to-liquids are more than double those of conventional oil,” said Sasha Mackler, Research Director for the National Commission on Energy Policy. “Even with aggressive carbon capture and storage, a technology not yet commercially available, coal-to-liquids emissions will be extremely hard pressed to match the level of existing convention petroleum production.”

The National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) commissioned the RAND report in an effort to better understand the full range of options for United States to improve its overall energy and environmental security. Other key findings from the study include:

- Oil sands development is now fully commercialized, with production of 1.3 million barrels per day in 2007 already occurring in Canada, and output expected to grow much higher in coming years;
- The current cost of producing synthetic crude from oil sands ranges between $34-$37 a barrel (all figures in 2005 dollars);
- The cost of CTL production is highly uncertain, and there is currently no commercial CTL production using methods examined by the study, but the study estimates costs for CTL in 2025 of $1.47-$1.76 per gallon diesel equivalent, assuming co-production of electricity which could be sold back to the grid. This figure does not include costs of CCS which would increase fuel costs by as much as 25%. Importantly for purposes of comparison, the study’s projected costs for CTL synthetic diesel are in the range or slightly higher than the Energy Information Administration projected reference case price for conventional diesel fuel in 2025;
- Production of 2 million barrels of synthetic fuels a day from CTL would require an additional 400 million tons of coal per year, or a 35% increase in US coal production (current US annual coal production is about 1.1 billion tons). The US currently consumes roughly 21 million barrels of oil a day;
- First-of-a-kind CTL facility capital costs are estimated to range from $3.1 billion to $3.8 billion without CCS; including CCS raises capital plant costs by approximately $200 million.
- A price on carbon emissions significantly affects the cost competitiveness of CTL technologies because of their high fuel cycle carbon emissions; by contrast, cost competitiveness of oil sands is not strongly affected by policies to constrain carbon unless the price of carbon is extremely high.
- Although oil shale is also a potentially important unconventional fossil-based fuel resource, the study does not address it because fundamental uncertainty continues about the technology that could ultimately be used for large-scale extraction, its costs, and environmental implications.

“The Energy Commission has consistently recommended policies that address climate change and oil security together, recognizing we cannot afford to sacrifice one for the other. While unconventional fossil sources of oil represent an option for diversifying petroleum supplies, it is critical that we understand their true economic and environmental costs,” Mackler said. “We believe the data from this study will help fill in some of the remaining information gaps. In particular, a clearer picture is emerging on the sizeable risks – both to the investor and to the global climate – that are on the line when considering the enormous sums of money and greenhouse gas emissions associated with CTL facilities. Hopefully this assessment provides policymakers with a better sense for how to balance the complex set of challenges and opportunities regarding these fuels.”

The report can be downloaded free of charge at http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/3825

The National Commission on Energy Policy is a project of the Bipartisan Policy Center. For more information on the BPC, please visit: http://www.bipartisanpolicy.org/. For more information on the NCEP research agenda and policy recommendations, please visit: http://www.energycommission.org/.

Bipartisan Policy Center www.bipartisanpolicy.org
October 8, 2008

Link: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5925?emc=el&m=162742&l=5&v=ad6aa139d6

Summary:

The pursuit of so-called "green jobs"-employment that contributes to protecting the environment and reducing humanity's carbon footprint-will be a key economic driver of the 21st century. "Climate-proofing" the global economy will involve large-scale investments in new technologies, equipment, buildings, and infrastructure, which will provide a major stimulus for much-needed new employment and an opportunity for retaining and transforming existing jobs.

The number of green jobs is on the rise. The renewable energy sector has seen rapid expansion in recent years, with current employment in renewables and supplier industries estimated at a conservative 2.3 million worldwide. The wind power industry employs some 300,000 people, the solar photovoltaics (PV) sector an estimated 170,000, and the solar thermal industry more than 600,000.More than 1 million jobs are found in the biofuels industry growing and processing a variety of feedstocks into ethanol and biodiesel.

Construction jobs can be greened by ensuringthat new buildings meet high performance standards. And retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy-efficient has huge job potential for construction workers, architects, energy auditors, engineers, and others. The weatherization of some 200,000 apartments in Germany created 25,000 new jobs and helped retain 116,000 existing jobs in 2002-04.

The transportation industry is a cornerstone of modern economies, but it also has the fastest-rising carbon emissions of any sector. Relatively green auto manufacturing jobs- those in manufacturing the most-efficient cars currently available-today number no more than about 250,000 out of roughly 8 million in the auto sector worldwide.

Modern rail and urban transit systems offer a greener alternative, but they need fresh commitment and investments to reverse the job erosion of recent decades. In growing numbers of cities, good jobs are being generated by the emergence of bus rapid transit systems. There are also substantial green employment opportunities in retrofitting old diesel buses to reduce air pollutants and in replacing old equipment with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) or hybrid-electric buses. In New Delhi, the introduction of 6,100 CNG busesby 2009 is expected to create 18,000 new jobs.

The steel, aluminum, cement, and paper industries are highly energy-intensive and polluting. But increasing scrap use, greater energy efficiency, and reliance on alternative energy sources may at least render them a pale shade of green. Worldwide, more than 40 percent of steel output and one-quarter of aluminum production is based on recycled scrap, possibly employing more than a quarter million people.

Recycling and remanufacturing jobs worldwide number many millions, but incompatible definitions and a lack of data gathering make a global tally impossible. China alone is thought to have some 10 million jobs in this sector, and the United States has more than 1 million. In developing countries, recycling is often done by informal networks of scavengers. Brazil, which boasts a high rate of aluminum recycling, relies on some 500,000 scrap collectors. Cairo's 70,000 Zabaleen recycle as much as 85 percent of the materials they collect.

Agriculture and forestry often still account for the bulk of employment and livelihoods in many developing countries. Small farms are more labor- and knowledge-intensive than agroindustrial farms are, and they use fewer energy and chemical inputs. But relatively sustainable forms of smallholder agriculture are being squeezed hard by energy- and pesticide-intensive farms and by global supply chains. Organic farming is still limited. But because it is more labor-intensive than industrialized agriculture, it can be a source of growing green employment.
...

by Michael Renner

Worldwatch Institute www.WorldWatch.org
ISBN 13: 978-1878071866; Paperback; 60 pages; $12.95