Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss the methodological approach and the results of the investigation of greenhouse gas emission abatement costs in Upper Austria.

The assessment covers the quantification of marginal abatement costs (MACs) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and the emission reduction potentials of various energy efficiency and fuel switch measures with a special emphasis on the heat, electricity and transport sectors in Upper Austria during the period from 2010 to 2030.

The expert‐based assessment in Upper Austria shows negative abatement costs for 19 of 56 evaluated strategies. While these measures are very efficient from an economic point of view, the remaining 37 measures are associated with higher costs. The evaluation reveals a significant reduction potential of 5.2 million tons CO₂e (which represent 21 per cent) of the current GHG emissions in Upper Austria for the examined period.

MACs are generally limited to a certain time frame. Furthermore, the expert‐based approach is based on several assumptions and neglects behavioural and learning aspects.

This contribution uses a multi‐criteria approach that reveals the economic efficiency and the ecological effectiveness of the considered strategies/technologies with regard to greenhouse gas emission reductions, the improvement of the overall energy efficiency, and the competitiveness of a fuel switch towards renewable energy sources. Drawing upon the findings of this study, policy recommendations can be elaborated and the necessary improvements of the regulative framework can be implemented.

We examine the effect of firm ownership status on three environmentally relevant variables: energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and spending on pollution abatement. Prior research has demonstrated that public firms invest less than private firms and suggests this difference is due pressure from investors to strongly favor short over long-term earnings. We extend this logic to other firm behavior, examining whether publicly owned facilities invest in energy efficiency and pollution reduction differently than privately owned facilities. Using data from the US Census of Manufactures from 1980 to 2009, information on pollution from the Environmental Protection Agency Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) and pollution abatement spending from the Pollution Abatement Costs and Expenditures survey, we find that facilities switching to public ownership are less energy efficient and spend less on pollution abatement than their privately owned counterparts. However, we also find that facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions than other facilities. We also examine how different sources of external pressures alter these results and find that increased regulatory scrutiny is correlated with increased energy efficiency, toxic emissions, and abatement spending. More concentrated institutional ownership in public firms is associated with lower energy efficiency as is a greater brand focus. These latter results are broadly consistent with the idea that publicly owned firms respond to pressures from investors with a reduced focus on environmentally relevant variables. However, since facilities switching to public ownership have lower toxic emissions, this suggests that there are two competing pressures in publicly owned facilities: cost pressures, consistent with lowered energy efficiency, and public perceptions, consistent with lower toxic emissions, particularly since TRI data became available. In this sense, the combination of ownership and transparency of information appears to influence how firms prioritize different stakeholders.

This study estimated greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation and sought systems that could manage these emissions based on the IPCC guidelines to prepare for greenhouse gas regulations on international airlines. For this purpose, policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation were developed based on international agreements and the cases of advanced countries. In addition, marginal abatement costs and greenhouse gas reduction measures were derived for the effective execution of these policies. While estimating greenhouse gas emissions from aviation transportation, it was found that there has been an average increase of 3.9% and 12.9% for domestic and international flights, indicating that it is urgent that we prepare global greenhouse gas regulations. The estimated marginal abatement cost of greenhouse gas from airplanes was approximately. USD 123, and this amount could be used to decide the price of emission rights, the amount of carbon tax, and could be referred to when distributing incentives for voluntary agreements.

The measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for aviation transportation were classified into four types: voluntary agreements, international collaboration, greenhouse gas reduction technology and operation process development, and application of emission trading and carbon tax.

The paper aims to describe and compare multiple methods for estimating the technical efficiency of 113 US oil refineries in operation in 2006 and 2007, considering undesirable output in a production process.

A technology that satisfies weak disposability between desirable and undesirable outputs is constructed by allowing different abatement factors across all refineries. Several measures based on data envelopment analysis approaches are implemented and compared to study the impact of disposability assumptions and to investigate the effects of using non‐uniform abatement factors. A hyperbolic efficiency measure is used to analyze the potential output loss of each refinery due to environmental regulations.

The results indicate that domestic refineries can improve efficiencies regardless of the disposability assumptions and that environmental regulations reduce the amount of potentially desirable outputs produced by some facilities. However, refineries in the western USA appear to be the most affected by regulations. In general, efficient refineries are less likely to be affected.

Undesirable outputs are limited to toxic release. Undesirable outputs generated from refining crude oil, such as greenhouse gases, can be used when data are available. The desirable outputs in this paper do not include premium products, such as lubricants, which could raise the efficiency estimates of complex refineries.

To the authors' knowledge, this paper is the first implementation of the weakly disposable technology constructed by different uniform abatement factors. Further, the paper investigates the effects of various disposability assumptions on efficiency estimation. The result clearly identifies refineries that use their resources efficiently. The paper suggests that the data may be used to augment managerial decision‐making regarding benchmarking and best practices.

With more cities aiming to achieve climate neutrality, identifying the funding to support these plans is essential. The purpose of this paper is to exploit the present of a structured green bonds framework in Sweden to investigate the typology of abatement projects Swedish municipalities invested in and understand their effectiveness.

Marginal abatement cost curves of the green bond measures are constructed by using the financial and abatement data provided by municipalities on an annual basis.

The results highlight the economic competitiveness of clean energy production, measured in abatement potential per unit of currency, even when compared to other emerging technologies that have attracted the interest of policymakers. A comparison with previous studies on the cost efficiency of carbon capture storage reveals that clean energy projects, especially wind energy production, can contribute to the reduction of emissions in a more efficient way. The Swedish carbon tax is a good incentive tool for investments in clean energy projects.

The improvement concerning previous applications is twofold: the authors expand the financial considerations to include the whole life-cycle costs, and the authors consider all the greenhouse gases. This research constitutes a prime in using financial and environmental data produced by local governments to assess the effectiveness of their environmental measures.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and classify the various initiatives developed and implemented across the globe for the abatement of maritime air emissions.

In this paper, an extensive survey of various sources was conducted, including the official reports of international and regional institutions, government policy documents, port authority websites, classification society pages, private firms’ sites and the academic literature. The initiatives were then categorized in accordance with the classification of the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and analyzed using the SPSS Statistics software to give some insight into their frequencies and the interrelationships between them.

This exploratory review resulted in the establishment of a comprehensive global database of initiatives encouraged by the whole range of shipping stakeholders and decision-makers for the reduction of shipping air emissions. According to the findings, economic incentives that provide motivation for the adoption of less environmentally damaging practices are the most commonly used initiative, followed by infrastructure investments and informative policies.

The results provide implications for further research that include an in-depth analysis of ports’ policies, as well as an evaluation of initiatives applied on a large scale to map their emissions reduction potential for shipping.

The main contribution of this paper is the identification and analysis of all the diverse initiatives implemented globally in a comprehensive way and its dealing with air pollution from shipping as a whole.

Logistics as a sector has a key role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and in reducing the dependency of our economy on non-renewable energy sources. The challenges are enormous: by 2050 the sector needs to have achieved about 50% lower fossil fuel use and CO₂ emissions. If freight volumes grow according to expectations, this requires over 70% less CO₂ emissions per unit of transport. This chapter explores the options for reducing CO₂ emissions from freight transport and their reduction potential, and analyses whether the logistic sector would be likely to achieve the required reduction based on its intrinsic drive for cost reduction alone.

In this conceptual chapter we identify options for sustainable logistics and discuss the necessary economic conditions for their deployment using a simple cost/benefit analysis framework. We distinguish between three regimes of measures for improving sustainability: efficiency measures with net negative costs (‘low hanging fruit’), cost-neutral measures and measures that allow to reach societal targets at net positive costs. Policy measures are discussed that may help the sector to implement cost-effective greenhouse gas abatement measures that, in the absence of incentives, go beyond the point of lowest cost from an end user perspective.

Sufficient energy saving options are available to be implemented in the short to medium term, which can lead to operational cost savings with a short return on investments period. The potential contribution of the logistics sector to sustainability is larger, however, as logistics can make large steps ahead in sustainability with cost neutrality or with small cost increases. The full potential has been underrated by many stakeholders and should be explored further.

Efficiency measures are a necessary but insufficient condition for sustainable logistics. The industry will need to go beyond cost saving measures, or even cost-neutral measures to reach the long-term energy saving and emission reduction targets for freight transport. We provide a systematic presentation of these options and discuss the additional necessary measures.

Aims to focus on air pollution as one of the environmental problems that tends to improve at higher income levels.Design/methodology/approach – The paper provides a combination of narrative with argument and analysis.Findings – Between the early 1970s and the mid‐1980s, air pollution in Japan, in particular that caused by sulfur dioxide (SO₂), was reduced to a remarkable degree. This reduction resulted from responses to mounting civil protest: governmental regulation policy on the one hand, and innovation of abatement technology and energy efficiency on the other. In large Southeast Asian cities, despite rapid economic growth, air pollution is less severe than it was in Japan in the early 1970s. This is because both government and industry in Southeast Asia took early initiatives to prevent environmental degradation, learning from the experiences of developed countries.Originality/value – The conclusions drawn help in understanding the prerequisites for reducing CO₂ emissions. If developed countries actually succeed in creating abatement technology for CO₂, this will surely affect the development policy in developing countries.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of activism in determining the identity of the “green” median voter and the influence of the green voter on environmental regulatory stringency in the US states.

Regulatory stringency is measured using output weighted abatement spending and an industry concentration adjusted index of state environmental compliance costs for the period 1989-1994. Activism measures include environmental initiatives, median support for pollution standards and voter ideology. Fixed-effects panel methodology is used in empirical estimation.

The authors find that activism increases stringency in regulating overall as well as media-specific pollution. The results particularly highlight the nuances of different approaches to activism and their varied impact across pollution media.

A drawback of the empirical estimation is the lack of continuous historical abatement spending data. A longer panel with alternative stringency measure(s) would add explanatory power to activism, especially since some activism measures capture slow-changing institutional factors.

The study identifies the conditions under which activism can have the most impact on a society's environmental outcomes since pollution varies in damages, hence abatement costs, across pollution media.

The paper adds to the existing literature by incorporating three alternative measures of environmental activism to systematically investigate its impact on environmental stringency within a fixed-effects regression design. It also promotes a deeper understanding of the efficacy of the activism process by deconstructing policy stringency across pollution media to show that activism and its impacts are more nuanced than previously studied.

In August 2015, the Government Accounting Standards Board (GASB) adopted Statement 77, requiring government disclosure in audited financial reports of a particular type of tax expenditure, tax abatements. GASB's reporting standards move tax abatements from a budgetary environment to an accounting environment. This paper evaluates GASB 77's provisions to encourage an early and on-going dialogue about the Statement's prospects for achieving greater transparency compared to existing tax expenditure reporting efforts. We conclude that GASB 77 will be most beneficial to consumers of financial information in medium and large jurisdictions where there is no alternative tax abatement disclosure platform, or where the alternative offers less transparency than what can be achieved through financial reporting.