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US-Renewable Energy is the last in a series of WTO disputes involving subsidies schemes with local content requirements. Local content requirements (LCRs) are highly discriminatory and trade distortive instruments and therefore all cases concerning green energy have been found to violate WTO law. However, recent jurisprudence has developed a different definition of prohibited LCRs under the GATT and the SCM agreement, the latter allowing for some leeway to define origin of products under a government subsidy scheme. Depending how the subsidy scheme is framed, it will be able to be excused from the GATT’s more stringent prohibition of LCRs, this raises question of consistency in the application of the LCRs prohibition. Moreover, we review a simple and robust approach that modern welfare economics suggests for framing discussions of subsidy policy. We apply this approach to the case of renewable energy subsidies and discuss some complexities with respect to local content requirements. In conclusion, this allows us to critically assess and review proposals to increase coherence between WTO subsidy policy and green energy promotion policies and submit proposals to achieve better suited WTO subsidy rules.

We examine whether and how newspaper coverage affects firms' toxic emissions. Studying this question helps us understand the ecosystem of regulation by revelation, an increasingly popular environmental policy approach. Using local newspaper closures as an exogenous shock to news coverage, we find that plants located in newspaper closure counties increase toxic emissions by 10 to 19 percent compared to plants of the same firm located in other counties. This effect is not driven by different environmental policies among firms or different economic conditions among counties. Instead, the increase in toxic emissions comes from less effective chemical use during production instead of higher productions. Moreover, the effect is amplified in areas with fewer newspapers before a newspaper closure, where residents care more about environmental issues, and with a low increase in online media presence. Our results suggest that regulation by revelation will become less effective as the newspaper industry's decline continues.

This paper breaks down the renewable energy space in Africa. It researches the types of different renewables, providing a balanced evaluation of every single one. Specifically, it looks at certain companies with potential for massive growth in their respective sectors and regions. Not only this, but it also investigates challenges those companies have faced while converting Africa into a sustainable place. All in all, the use of PEST analysis and quantitative information frames discussions in a simple manner.

This study was conducted to assess the awareness level of the residents of Baliwag, Bulacan, Philippines in terms of the environmental policies implemented by the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office (MENRO). Respondents were selected based on their availability. During the conduct of this study, three programs were being implemented namely, No Segregation, No Collection Policy, Weekly Clean-up Drive, and Exchange for Waste /Cellphone Load for Waste. Each information about these programs was disseminated via discussions and lectures, IEC materials distribution, and social media utilization. And based on the results, the most effective communication strategy used by the MENRO in implementing these policies is the IEC material dissemination obtaining the highest means for every program. The respondents were "extremely aware” of the policy " Waste for Cellphone Load ".The socio-demographic profile of the respondents such as age, gender, and monthly income has no significant relationship to their awareness level. A significant relationship was observed between the respondent's level of awareness and the MENRO's communication strategy in implementing the policies. As the communication strategies become more effective, the awareness of the respondents also increases.

This study was conducted to determine the attitude of the community of Baliuag, Bulacan, Philippines in terms of the environmental policies implemented by the Municipal Environment and Natural Resources Office (MENRO). Respondents were selected based on their availability. During the conduct of this study, three programs were being implemented namely, No Segregation, No Collection Policy, Weekly Clean-up Drive, and Waste for Cellphone Load. Each information about these programs was disseminated via discussions and lectures, IEC materials distribution, and social media utilization. And based on the results, the respondents agreed that the most effective communication strategy used by the MENRO Baliuag in implementing these policies is the IEC material dissemination obtaining the highest means for every program.

This paper aims at explaining the major drivers of bio-diesel market prices by examining agricultural resource prices and gas-oil prices for automotive fuels in the context of the EU environmental policy. The EU policy has enhanced bio-diesel production since 2006. Bio-diesel prices are impacted by the EU policy as well as rapeseed and oil prices which have fluctuated a lot over the last decade. An econometric analysis was performed using monthly data from November 2006 to January 2016. However, tests for structural breaks show several changes in price behavior. This leads us to estimate a regime-switching model which reveals two main regimes for the bio-diesel price pattern. When oil prices are high, bio-diesel, rapeseed and diesel oil prices are related, mainly driven by oil prices. When oil prices are low, bio-diesel prices are mostly related to rapeseed prices according to EU regulations requiring the blending of bio-diesel and gas-oil.

This paper examines the effect of environmental policy stringency on audit pricing. Exploiting the exogenous variation in environmental policies across 26 countries, we find that firms in countries with more stringent environmental policies incur lower audit fees. The inverse association is more pronounced in common law countries, in countries with a higher level of public enforcement of regulations, and in countries with more protection of investors. The lower audit fees are also more prominent for firms followed by more analysts and firms with larger institutional ownership. Furthermore, we find that firms in countries with strong regulations are better and more innovative at managing environmental risk, which implies that better environmental performance of the firms following stronger regulations could lower the business risks and thus, decrease audit fees. Overall, our findings suggest that compliant firms benefit from environmental policy stringency.

Natural gas venting, flaring and leaking (VF&L) are closely intertwined environmental policy issues for U.S. shale oil and gas operations. In this paper, we lay out an agenda for researchers and policymakers. We describe why VF&L are closely related, both physically and in terms of policy. We perform an interdisciplinary literature review on measurement of VF&L. We marshal granular industry data to identify constraints in the natural gas system correlated with upstream VF&L. Motivated by this descriptive analysis, we discuss the economic reasons for VF&L and the market distortions that could exacerbate VF&L. We then discuss the external cost of VF&L. We calculate that reported 2015 and 2019 flaring and venting imposed climate damages of $0.9 to $1.8 billion and $1.7 to $3.4 billion. We calculate that climate damages of 2015 upstream U.S. methane emissions estimated by Alvarez et al. (2018) were $16.8 billion. Finally, we discuss both existing policy and economic insights relevant to future policy.

This special issue contains discussions of cases in European and national practice concerning the interface between competition and environmental policy. Although the common denominator between the cases is a relationship with these two policy areas, a distinction can be drawn between two broad categories of cases. First, as we can imagine, measures taken with the objective of protecting the environment can have anticompetitive effects. In some cases, it is in fact not possible to secure environmental benefits without affecting the degree of competition in a market. The cases in this category illustrate a clear tension between competition and environmental protection, where it is up to the various stakeholders to achieve a balance between the two policy areas. The review of the reported cases also revealed another category of cases in which the anticompetitive behaviour was not a ‘necessary evil’ towards the achievement of an environmental objective, but was simply conducted in the interests of the companies involved, as it would have been done in other ‘ordinary’ anticompetitive practices. The relationship with environmental policy in these cases is that the companies work in environmental sectors, such as waste management and recycling schemes. This foreword covers both types of case and will highlight trends and differences found within European and national cases, primarily based on cases reported in e-Competitions.

We analyze a transboundary pollution control problem in a heterogeneous two-country differential game in which each country’s regulator cares for the implications of environmental policy on its competitiveness. We characterize and compare the noncooperative and the cooperative solutions, showing that under both scenarios, the heterogeneous countries impose different tax rates despite such competitiveness concerns. This may suggest that, while implementing some kind of mitigation policy is necessary to combat climate change, a universally homogeneous environmental tax may not be either desirable or optimal.

Cheng, Haitao, Kato, Hayato and Obashi, Ayako. "Is Environmental Tax Harmonization Desirable in Global Value Chains?" The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, vol. 21, no. 1, 2021, pp. 379-416. https://doi.org/10.1515/bejeap-2019-0346., The spatial unbundling of parts production and assembly currently characterizes globalization, leading to the worldwide dispersion of pollution. We consider socially optimal (cooperative) environmental taxes in a two-country model of global value chains in which the location of both parts and assembly can differ. When unbundling costs are so high that parts and assembly must colocate in the pre-globalized world, pollution is spatially concentrated, and harmonizing environmental taxes maximizes global welfare. In contrast, with low unbundling costs triggering the dispersion of parts and thus pollution throughout the world as today, harmonization fails to maximize global welfare. Similar results hold when the two countries non-cooperatively choose their environmental taxes.

Popular discussions of environmentally-motivated policies include much talk about job loss that can be confusing. Does job loss in a polluting industry mean that others should endure dirty air or that complementary policies are needed? I make sense of the issue by drawing concepts from research on international trade and its effects and applying them to recent job loss in the coal industry. The coal case study illustrates the economic adjustment that could plausibly stem from an environmental policy as well as the equity, efficiency, and political issues that adjustment raises. Each coal job lost reduced earnings in the county by nearly $100,000, and one third of those who lost jobs did not move and remained unemployed. The losses affected counties that were poorer on average, and the losses exacerbated the disparity. They also contributed to a shift towards pro-coal Trump in the 2016 presidential election, a shift that helped him win Pennsylvania. More broadly, a type of environmental adjustment assistance may improve the equity and political feasibility of environmental policies that benefit many but harm some. The how and when of assistance is unclear, but one case for study is the Assistance to Coal Communities initiative.

Legal challenges and transitions of political power cause the future of regulatory policies to be uncertain. In this article, I investigate how uncertainty about environmental policy affects investment and emissions at coal-fired power plants. I exploit a legal challenge to the Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR) that created variation in the probability that individual plants would need to comply with the new policy. I use a difference-in-differences approach to compare pollution reductions at power plants located in states subject to more uncertainty to plants in states that that were not. I find that plants with a lower probability of being regulated invested in fewer capital-intensive pollution controls and reduced pollution by 13% less on average. Many of these plants did switch to capital-intensive pollution controls after the court upheld CAIR. Regulatory uncertainty increased compliance costs by $124 million by delaying efficient investments.

Within the environmental policy framework, one could distinguish two categories, both of which aim at the protection of the environment. The first category is based on the concept of reducing the use of non-renewable resources and energy, as well as on the replacement of “poisonous elements” and “hazardous” types of energy. This second category includes different kind of actions which tackle the issue of unwanted by-products of production and consumption. More specifically, it includes measures that aim at: conversion of leftover substances or materials (e.g. elimination of poisonous gas), utilization of leftover substances or materials, waste avoidance, reduction of waste production, waste “dispersion” which includes “decentralization” (disposal) and “centralization” (collection). “Decentralization” describes the process of controlled diffusion (emission) of waste in water, air and soil. “Centralization” involves waste collection into designated storage premises, which of course need to comply with certain requirements and regulations.

In the European Union (EU) periurban agriculture is under the same agri-environmental policy regime designed for general agriculture. We argue that the specific needs of periurban agriculture may justify ad hoc agri-environmental policy measures. We present results from a Choice Experiment (CE) performed on a sample of 600 people living in the municipality of Milan, which was designed to assess the willingness to pay (WTP) for ecological benefits generated by four agri-environmental practices implementable in the periurban area and already included in the Rural Development Programmes of the Lombardy region. Results suggest that a large population share is willing to pay to support an increase in the use of the agricultural practices studied with an average WTP ranging between 5.6 to 16.3 euro/person/year, according to the type of practice. These results are in contrast with their current low level of adoption. The sub-optimal uptake rate is likely due to an insufficient per hectare compensating payment, which is too low to cover the income foregone consequent to the adoption of sustainable agriculture measures in this area. The mismatch between the low uptake rate and the high social benefits generated by the four agri-environmental agricultural practices sheds light on the need to design agri-environmental policy programmes specifically targeted to periurban areas, where the costs of compliance with AEMs are high and the social benefits of their adoption are large.

Green products have been paid much attention in the domain of market players and environmental policy in recent years. In this study, we first build a Stackelberg game model to investigate the enterprises’ optimal production strategies considering consumers’ willingness to pay and enterprises’ total cost. Our results showed that there always exists one unique equilibrium based different consumers’ willingness to pay and enterprises’ cost. Moreover, the necessary condition for an enterprise to enter the market is that consumers’ willingness to pay is higher than production cost. We then explore the impact of the fluctuation of willingness to pay on enterprises’ production decision and discuss whether an enterprise is willing to use the environmental-friendly material to improve the green degree of product to deal with changes in consumers’ willingness to pay.

Incentive-based policies, such as emissions taxes and emissions permit trading schemes, are increasingly used to regulate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in many jurisdictions around the world. Taxes impose a fixed price on emissions, whereas under tradable permit schemes prices emerge in the secondary permit market. The delayed price discovery under tradable permit schemes creates uncertainty about the future cost of compliance that liable emitters will face. To mitigate this uncertainty, some jurisdictions, including Australia, have designed policies to regulate GHG emissions that commence with an emissions tax that is in force for several years, subsequently transforming into a tradable permit scheme. This paper examines the effects that this type of staged transition – from no regulation to a regulation by an emissions tax, to a regulation by tradable permits – has on several criteria of interest: optimality of abatement investment, overall regulation efficiency, and permit prices.

We demonstrate that environmental policies can decrease the risks in energy generation for private investors when several renewable technologies are simultaneously triggered. This is because diverse renewable technologies can hedge the intermittent generation of other forms of renewable power. Our study is distinct from previous literature, which has not examined environmental policies through a risk-reduction analysis, or has only considered a few technologies—such as wind and solar—when analyzing risk-reduction benefits. This paper is important, as environmental policies can be justified not only due to environmental benefits, but also economically from a risk-reduction perspective by using basic diversification gains.

We investigate how different types of environmental policies and new regional environmental knowledge affect new venture creation in and financing of green (low carbon), brown (fossil fuel) and gray (unrelated to natural resources) technologies across 24 OECD countries and 293 regions over the period 2001-13. We find that new regional environmental knowledge positively impacts new venture creation in green technologies, and moderately in gray industries. Gray industries also benefit from enhanced start-up financing in regions where new environmental knowledge is created, confirming that environmental knowledge creation yields positive externalities beyond the green sector. We also find that a more stringent environmental policy regime negatively impacts the creation of new ventures across sectors, but most prominently, it discourages new fossil fuel ventures. However, once entrepreneurs decide to start a new business, stringent environmental policies have on aggregate a positive effect on new venture financing across sectors, particularly through feed-in-tariffs and emission standards.

Do banks price the risk of stranded fossil fuel reserves? To address this question, we hand collect global data on corporate fossil fuel reserves, match it with syndicated loans, and subsequently compare the loan rate charged to fossil fuel firms — along their climate policy exposure — to non-fossil fuel firms. We find that before 2015 banks did not price climate policy exposure. After 2015, however, our results show an increase in the cost of credit by 16 basis points for a fossil fuel firm with mean proved reserves, implying an increase in the total cost of borrowing for the mean loan by USD 1.5 million. We also provide some evidence that “green banks” charge marginally higher loan rates to fossil fuel firms.

We study the profitability of horizontal mergers in nonrenewable resource industries, which account for a large proportion of merger activities worldwide. Each firm owns a private stock of the resource and uses open-loop strategies when choosing its extraction path. We analytically show that even a small merger (merger of 2 firms) is always profitable when the resource stock owned by each firm is small enough. In the case where pollution is generated by the industry's activity, we show that an environmental policy that increases the firm's production cost or reduces their selling price can deter a merger. This speeds up the industry's extraction and thereby causes emissions to occur earlier than under a laissez-faire scenario.

From both health and environmental policy perspectives, it is advisable to ensure that individuals maximise the nutritional gains from eating meat, without having a significantly adverse environmental impact, i.e. sustainable meat consumption pathways are imperative. This is especially true for developing countries, where rising incomes and growing populations have meant that meat consumption has also risen. India is an example of a country where a large share of the population has been vegetarian due to religious and cultural factors, although this is rapidly changing. In this paper, we hypothesise that social interactions and globalisation are two factors that explain this shift in consumption behaviour, especially amongst Hindu households. These hypotheses are based on the theoretical findings of Levy and Razin (2012). The empirical results show that Hindus that are members of religious groups are less likely to eat meat than non-member Hindus, whereas Hindus that are members of non-religious types of groups are more likely to eat meat than non-members. We also find that Hindu households that frequently use sources of media such as newspapers, the radio or television are more likely to consume meat compared to Hindus that do not. This paper provides important policy implications, both in terms of the formulation of Nationally Recommended Diets in developing countries, and in terms of identifying the channel of influence of both social networks and globalisation on social and religious norms, consumption behaviour, and ultimately, on climate change.

We examine the value consequences of corporate social responsibility through the lens of institutional shareholders. We find a sharp asymmetry between corporate policies that mitigate the firm’s exposure to environmental risk and those that enhance its perceived environmental friendliness (“greenness”). Institutional investors shun stocks with high environmental risk exposure, which we show have lower valuations, as predicted by risk management theory. These findings suggest that corporate environmental policies that mitigate environmental risk exposure create shareholder value. In contrast, firms that increase greenness do not create shareholder value and are also shunned by institutional investors.

Leakage occurs when partial regulation of consumer products results in increased consumption of these products in unregulated domains. This article quantifies plastic leakage from the banning of plastic carryout bags. Using quasi-random policy variation in California, I find the elimination of 40 million pounds of plastic carryout bags is offset by a 12 million pound increase in trash bag purchases—with small, medium, and tall trash bag sales increasing by 120%, 64%, and 6%, respectively. The results further reveal 12–22% of plastic carryout bags were reused as trash bags pre-regulation and show bag bans shift consumers towards fewer but heavier bags. With a substantial proportion of carryout bags already reused in a way that avoided the manufacture and purchase of another plastic bag, policy evaluations that ignore leakage effects overstate the regulation's welfare gains.

Multicriteria mapping (MCM) is an interactive appraisal method for exploring contrasting perspectives on complex strategic and policy issues. The tool aims to help 'open up' technical assessment by systematically 'mapping' the practical implications of alternative options, issues, uncertainties and values. MCM uniquely bridges qualitative and quantitative approaches, and helps to get the best of both. It allows great flexibility, offering an appraisal method that is strongly grounded in theory but highly unconstrained in practice. This versatility has been reflected in its use internationally to explore contentious decisions in the fields of energy strategy, food production, environmental policy, radioactive waste management and public health. This MCM Manual offers basic advice on how to do multicriteria mapping. It suggests how to: design and build a typical MCM project; engage with participants; and analyse results – and get the most out of the online MCM tool. The online MCM software tool provides its own operational help so the manual is more focused on the general approach.

Circular economy (CE) is a sustainable development strategy that is being proposed to tackle urgent problems of environmental degradation and resource scarcity. CE's 3R principles are to reduce, reuse and recycle materials. This study is a review of the rapidly growing literature on CE covering its concept and current practices and assessing its implementation. The review also serves as an assessment of the design, implementation and effectiveness of CE-related policies. It first presents the concept of CE and compares it with the current linear economy. The paper then introduces current practices that have been introduced and discusses standards for the assessment of CE's development and performance. Third, based on an analysis of literature, the paper identifies the underlying problems and challenges to CE in an entrepreneurial perspective. Finally, the review provides a conclusion on CE's current development and gives policy suggestions for its future development.

Sustainable development is considered as the central model of socio-economic development as well as an overarching principle of global environmental policy. Taking measures and effective policy in strategic areas require statistical information from various fields. An important tool in this context is monitoring the progress on implementation of sustainable development. The aim of the article is to analyze the conditions and principles for the measurement of sustainable development in the EU and to assess progress in implementing the European Strategy for Sustainable Development. On the basis of available statistical data it is possible not only to measure the progress and evaluate the effectiveness of policies and programs of the European Union, but also to support decision making at the political level in terms of economic, social and environmental developments. Keywords: sustainable development, sustainable development strategy, indicator; measuring, progress monitoring

Thirty states have adopted renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) that set targets for renewable energy generation by mandating that electric power utilities obtain a minimum percentage of their power from renewable sources. Our synthetic control (SC) model finds that states with RPSs have experienced increases in electricity prices and decreases in electricity demand relative to non-RPS states with similar economic, political and renewable natural resource characteristics. While both RPS and non-RPS SCs experienced increases in renewable energy generation over the sample time period, we do not find evidence that RPS states have experienced increases in renewable energy generation relative to SCs and weak evidence of emissions reductions.

Polluting firms’ relocation results in the efficiency loss of the environmental policy. This paper provides a systematic study of the water pollution relocation driven by the 11th Five-Year Plan pollution reduction mandates in China. We explore a unique dataset of the environmental statistics, which contains 12932 water-polluting firms from 9 major Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD) emitting industries newly established between 2006-2010. Our estimation of the conditional logit model provides strong evidence of the water pollution relocation from the coastal provinces with strict environmental regulations to the west provinces with less strict regulations and demonstrates the distinct relocation patterns of heterogeneous polluting firms. While foreign polluting firms were generally sensitive to the mandates, domestic polluting firms were more resistant. Only heavily polluting firms were driven to the west provinces. We thus argue that there is an efficiency loss of the environmental policy and recommend integrated water management as well as close coordination of the local governments for more efficient environmental regulation in China.

Significant advances have been made in measuring the stringency of environmental policies, and understanding the relationship between environmental action and economic dynamics, particularly in high-income countries. Despite this, unequivocal empirical evidence on the impact of environmental policies on economic performance remains elusive, with conclusions being highly dependent on the conceptual and methodological choices with respect to defining and measuring the stringency of environmental policies. Most importantly, the literature evaluating these issues in developing countries remains sparse and robust findings are even more difficult to extract.Produced through the Green Growth Knowledge Platform's Trade and Competitiveness Research Committee, this study reviews the existing body of work in both developed, and, where available, developing countries. It provides a comprehensive assessment of how environmental policy stringency has been measured, outlining definitional and conceptual challenges. It discusses the advantages and disadvantages of different indicators, and their usefulness for application in developing countries. In an effort to improve our understanding of the impact of environmental policy stringency in middle and low-income countries, the study draws lessons for the prioritization of future data collection and measurement efforts. Through the study, two types of stringency indicators emerge as requiring the most attention: de facto enforcement indicators and de jure explicit measures that capture the stringency of specific environmental laws, rules and regulations. While there is no “best” conceivable measure of the stringency of environmental policies, a multidimensional approach to quantifying stringency in developing countries, with a focus on explicit direct measures, is advocated. Data collection and indicator-improvement efforts need, though, to be updated periodically and supplemented by other proxies for environmental stringency.

In this paper we analyze the eects of environmental policies on the size distribution of …rms. We model a stationary industry where the observed size distribution is a solution to the pro…t maximization problem of heterogeneous …rms that dier in terms of their energy e¢ ciency. We compare the equilibrium size distribution under emission taxes, uniform emission standards, and performance standards. Our results indicate that, unlike emission taxes and performance stan- dards, emission standards introduce regulatory asymmetries favoring small …rms. These asym- metries cause signi…cant detrimental eects on total output and total welfare, yet lead to reduced emissions and help preserve small businesses.

This essay provides an overview of the major emissions trading programs of the past thirty years on which significant documentation exists, and draws a number of important lessons for future applications of this environmental policy instrument. References to a larger number of other emissions trading programs that have been implemented or proposed are included.

The aim of this paper is to assess consumers’ attitudes in monetary terms toward the avoidance of CO2 emissions in the transport sector, using a meta-analysis approach drawing on 30 primary studies. We compute the implicit price for the avoidance of a kilogram of CO2 emissions, named PCO2. Our novel approach combines results from revealed preferences of conventional vehicle drivers for fuel price variation and stated preferences expressed by consumers for alternative fuel vehicles. We compare data collected from two strands of literature. Operationally, we recover the opportunity cost of achieving CO2 emissions reduction from the price elasticity of demand for traditional fossil fuels transport. We interpret the fuel market price response as a signal to estimate the opportunity cost of driving reduction and the related CO2 emissions. Then, we analyze the willingness to pay (willingness to accept) for alternative fuel vehicles, estimating a measure of the cost of CO2 avoidance. Our findings show that contextual and individual characteristics influence the implicit price for CO2 emissions avoidance. This implicit price is on average positive in the case of revealed preferences studies, whereas it is negative in the stated preferences studies. Although there are some important geographical differences, our results show that fuel taxes can be considered as an important additional instrument for environmental policy.

For a long time scholarship has been interested in experimentation with policy-designs. Scholars claim that such experimentation may help to understand how significant legal, social or economic barriers can be overcome. Especially in environmental policy-making experimentation appears to be a dominant trend. This article studies 21 policy-designs that have been experimented with by governments, businesses and citizens in the building sectors in Australia and the Netherlands. Building on the existing literature, it addresses expectations related to policy learning, collaboration, policy-outcomes and experimental biases. The article finds limited support for many of the claims made for experimentation in the current and past literature. This may be a result of a mismatch between real-world experimentation with policy-designs and how academics conceptualize this process.

ObjectiveTo determine key points of intervention in urban food systems to improve the climate resilience, equity and healthfulness of the whole system.DesignThe paper brings together evidence from a 3-year, Australia-based mixed-methods research project focused on climate change adaptation, cities, food systems and health. In an integrated analysis of the three research domains – encompassing the production, distribution and consumption sectors of the food chain – the paper examines the efficacy of various food subsystems (industrial, alternative commercial and civic) in achieving climate resilience and good nutrition.SettingGreater Western Sydney, Australia.SubjectsPrimary producers, retailers and consumers in Western Sydney.ResultsThis overarching analysis of the tripartite study found that: (i) industrial food production systems can be more environmentally sustainable than alternative systems, indicating the importance of multiple food subsystems for food security; (ii) a variety of food distributors stocking healthy and sustainable items is required to ensure that these items are accessible, affordable and available to all; and (iii) it is not enough that healthy and sustainable foods are produced or sold, consumers must also want to consume them. In summary, a resilient urban food system requires that healthy and sustainable food items are produced, that consumers can attain them and that they actually wish to purchase them.ConclusionsThis capstone paper found that the interconnected nature of the different sectors in the food system means that to improve environmental sustainability, equity and population health outcomes, action should focus on the system as a whole and not just on any one sector.

We summarize and review the literature on two types of economic experiments. First we discuss the use of experimental laboratories to testbed market solutions to issues in environmental policy. We concentrate on experiments with one and two-sided markets, and applications in the domain of water allocation, food safety, and tradable permit systems. Second, we explore the consequences for environmental policies of the vast body of literature refuting the assumption that humans are only concerned with their own private welfare. We review the literature addressing whether government intervention is always necessary to protect the environment, and also whether it is always effective in doing so.

This article seeks to explore the impact of environmental incidents on state-level environmental policy-making in the U.S. Environmental policy researchers have identified several factors and their impact on states’ ability and willingness to formulate green policies. Most studies have used binary values to the environmental policy variable. However this strategy can lead to biased estimates because the extent of policy-formulation is not the same across states. We propose an ordinal approach to measurement of environmental policy variable along with Multiple Correspondence Analyses (MCA). We also test for the impact of environmental incidents and its interaction with the strength of environmental organizations on the formulation of green policies. Econometric results from the longitudinal data indicate that the states that witness environmental incidents in the current period are less likely to formulate environmental policies in the same period. However, when environmental organizations root their advocacy programs on previous period’s environmental incident(s), it has a positive and significant impact on environmental policy-making. These results contribute not only to our understanding of critical factors of environmental policy-making, but also indicate that environmental organizations can leverage environmental incidents to influence state-level policy-making.

The present paper aims to map existing and future opportunities for utilizing EU bilateral agreements to promote the protection of environmental rights, as well as available legal avenues to address missed opportunities and possible risks that EU environmental action abroad may negatively impact on environmental rights in third countries. It starts with a brief overview of the external environmental policy of the EU, including constitutional requirements to couple human rights and environmental protection in external relations and an introduction to the practice of EU bilateral agreements. The chapter will then provide a snapshot of the environment-and-human-rights connection in EU law from an internal perspective, to demonstrate the political sensitivity of the issue. Against this background, the central part of the paper will identify six thematic areas in which entry points for the protection of environmental rights exist in the framework of EU bilateral agreements. The final section will offer a preliminary reflection of the human rights risks of current environmental external relations of the Union and possible avenues to tackle these risks in EU and international law.

A longstanding question in the study of energy demand concerns the role of information as a determinant of home-efficiency improvements. Although the provision of information via home energy audits is frequently asserted to be an effective means for governments to encourage the implementation of efficiency-enhancing renovations, empirical support for this assertion is tenuous at best. Apart from self-selection issues with respect to receiving an audit, two other factors have complicated attempts to measure their effect: first, the nature of the information provided by the audit is typically unobserved, and, second, the response to this information may vary over households. Using household-level data from Germany, we address both sources of heterogeneity by estimating a random-parameter model of four retrofitting alternatives. In addition to confirming the importance of costs and savings as determinants of renovation choices, our results suggest that the effects of consultancy vary substantially across households, with some households responding negatively to the provision of information.

An increasingly common type of environmental policy instrument regulates the carbon intensity of transportation and electricity markets. In order to extend the policy's scope beyond point-of-use emissions, regulators assign each competing fuel an emission intensity rating for use in calculating compliance. I show that welfare-maximizing ratings do not generally coincide with the best estimates of actual emissions. In fact, the regulator can achieve a higher level of welfare by properly selecting the emission ratings than possible by selecting only the level of the standard. Moreover, a fuel's optimal rating can actually decrease when its estimated emission intensity increases. Numerical simulations of the California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard suggest that when recent scientific information increased the estimated emissions from conventional ethanol, regulators should have lowered ethanol's rating (making it appear less emission-intensive) so that the fuel market would clear with a lower quantity.A revised version has been published in Environmental and Resource Economics (2016).

New environmental regulations lead to a rearrangement of production away from polluting industries, and workers in those industries are adversely affected. This paper uses linked worker-firm data in the United States to estimate the transitional costs associated with reallocating workers from newly regulated industries to other sectors of the economy. The focus on workers rather than industries as the unit of analysis allows me to examine previously unobserved economic outcomes such as non-employment and long run earnings losses from job transitions, both of which are critical to understanding the reallocative costs associated with these policies. Using panel variation induced by the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments (CAAA), I find that the reallocative costs of environmental policy are significant. Workers in newly regulated plants experienced, in aggregate, more than $9 billion inforegone earnings for the years after the change in policy. Most of these costs are driven by non-employment and lower earnings in future employment, while earnings of workers who remain with their firm change little. Relative to the estimated benefits of the 1990 CAAA, these one-time transitional costs are small. However, the estimated costs far exceed the workforce compensation policies designed to mitigate some of these earnings losses.

Reducing emissions of greenhouse gases will require the development of carbon management technologies that are not currently available or that are not currently cost-effective. While market mechanisms such as carbon pricing must play a central role in stimulating the development of these technologies, governmental policy aimed at fostering carbon management technologies and lowering their costs must also play a part. Both types of policies will form part of an optimal greenhouse gas control portfolio. This article develops a framework of international trade and investment law insofar as they may affect carbon management technologies. While it is commonly perceived that international trade law and investment law usually constrains the development of environmental policy, the flipside is often ignored. In addition to discussing how carbon management policy might be constrained, this article also identifies opportunities within the framework of international trade and investment law in which carbon management technologies might be advanced or supported.

Education and general intelligence both serve to inform opinions, but do they lead to greater attitude extremity? We use questions on economic policy, social issues, and environmental issues from the General Social Survey to test the impact of education and intelligence on attitude extremity, as measured by deviation from centrist or neutral positions. Using quantile regression modeling, we find that intelligence is a moderating force across the entire distribution in economic, social, and environmental policy beliefs. Completing high school strongly correlates to reduced extremity, particularly in the upper quantiles. College education increases attitude extremity in the lower tail of environmental beliefs. The relevance of the low extremity tail (lower quantiles) to potential swing-voters and the high extremity tail (upper quantiles) to a political party’s core are discussed.

This paper provides new evidence on the determinants of environmental expenditure and investment. Also, by employing the Heckman selection models, we study how environmental expenditure and investment by Swedish industrial firms responded to the national and international policies directed to mitigate air pollution during the period 1999 through 2008. We find that firms that use carbon intensive fuels such as oil and gas are more likely to spend to and invest in the environment. Larger, more profitable and more energy intensive firms are more likely to incur environmental expenditure/investment. Overall, an important finding of our econometric analysis is that environmental regulation both on the national and international levels are highly relevant motivations for environmental expenditure and investment.

I model an economy featuring two representative firms in two countries, one in each country, where one firm innovates and generates technological unilateral spillovers. I analyze a partial equilibrium model in two different scenarios: in the first one, the innovating firm is under a domestic emissions taxation, while the other country does not implement any environmental policy. Government of the innovating firm introduces a tax credit aimed at incentivizing investment in cleaner abatement technologies. Finally, in the second scenario, the two countries take part to an international ETS. Comparisons among results from different scenarios are shown in the analytical part of the study. I conclude that, under specific assumpitons, overlapping regulations might be welfare improving.

The paper examines the scope for social and environmental objectives to be included in public procurement procedures. The concept of sustainable public procurement (SPP) is analysed, and the extent of its implementation by European public authorities. The paper then turns to the legal characterisation of SPP measures and the competence of the EU to regulate in this area. Areas of legal uncertainty are found to exist regarding the specification of production processes and methods, the requirement for a ‘link to the subject-matter of the contract’ and the proper role of contract performance clauses. Conclusions are drawn regarding the likely impact of the reforms proposed by the European Commission on these areas, which are also relevant for the implementation of SPP under the revised WTO Government Procurement Agreement. The paper is intended to lay the groundwork for assessing the legality and effectiveness of different approaches to SPP.

Seit sich der Umweltschutz Ende der 1960er Jahre als eigenstandiges Politikfeld etabliert hat, sind mehr als 40 Jahre vergangen. Die Umweltpolitik ist also langst kein neuer Politik-bereich mehr. Dennoch hat sich in der Politikwissenschaft ein Bild vom Umweltschutz als relativ jungem Politikfeld festgesetzt, das sich nur sehr langsam verandert und das – bewusst oder unbewusst – auch heute noch die politikwissenschaftliche Forschungsperspektive pragt. Ausgangspunkt dieses Beitrags ist die Beobachtung, dass es die Umweltpolitologie bis heute versaumt hat, das Erwachsenwerden ihres Untersuchungsgegenstands systematisch zu re-flektieren. Was passiert wenn ein Politikfeld in die Jahre kommt? Wie verandert sich das Aufgabenspektrum staatlicher, gesellschaftlicher und privater Akteure? Wie ihre Strategien und Handlungsressourcen? Wie beeinflussen vergangene Entscheidungen die Chancen kunftigen Politikwandels? Sind die umweltpolitischen Erfolgsbedingungen von Gestern auch in Zukunft noch von Bedeutung? Diesen Fragen hat die Umweltpolitikanalyse bislang zu wenig Aufmerksamkeit gewidmet. In ihnen liegt der Schlussel fur ihre kunftige thematische Ausrichtung. Vor diesem Hintergrund reflektiert der vorliegende Beitrag den Wandel der Umweltpolitik von einem neuen zu einem etablierten Politikfeld und identifiziert blinde Flecken der Umweltpolitikanalyse. In Form von 25 Thesen werden potentielle Forschungsperspektiven aufgezeigt, mit denen die Umweltpolitikanalyse einen Beitrag zum besseren Verstandnis umweltpolitischer Dynamiken leisten und letztlich auch praktische Politikempfehlungen entwickeln kann. More than 40 years have passed since environmental protection established itself as an independent policy field at the end of the 1960s. Therefore, environmental policy cannot be called a new policy area anymore. Nevertheless, the research perspective of many political scientists is -unconsciously or not- dominated by the idea that environmental protection is a relatively new policy area which is changing slowly. The starting point of this paper is the thesis that environmental political science has failed to systematically reflect the adolescence of its reference object. What is happening when a policy field establishes itself over a period of time? How does the range of responsibilities and tasks of state, civil society and private actors develop? What about their strategies and resources of action? How do past decisions influence the pathways of policy developments to come? Will the prerequisites of yesterday’s success still be valid tomorrow? During the last decades environmental policy analysis has not given enough attention to these questions. However, they are the key to finding a new thematic focus for environmental policy analysis. Against this background the article describes the progression of environmental policy from a new to an established field of analysis and identifies its blind spots. Potential research perspectives are identified in the form of 25 theses to facilitate a better understanding of the dynamics in the field and to enable the development of helpful policy recommendations.

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has aimed to encourage the development of low-carbon technologies by putting a price on carbon emissions. Using a newly constructed data set that links 8.5 million European companies with their patenting history and their regulatory status under EU ETS, we investigate the hypothesis that the EU ETS has encouraged development of low-carbon technologies. Exploratory data analysis reveals a rapid increase in low-carbon patenting activities at the EPO since 2005, especially among EU ETS regulated companies during the Scheme's second phase. Naive estimates obtained by comparing EU ETS and non-EU ETS firms suggest that the Scheme may be responsible for up to 30% of the increase in low-carbon patenting of regulated companies. However, more refined estimates that combine matching methods with difference-in-differences provide evidence that the EU ETS has not impacted the direction of technological change. This finding appears to be robust to a number of stability and sensitivity checks. While we cannot completely rule out the possibility that the EU ETS has impacted only large companies for which suitable unregulated comparators cannot be found, our findings suggest that the EU ETS so far has had at best a very limited impact on low-carbon technological change.

Environmental regulation seeks to limit pollution through strict emissions thresholds for existing cars, yet it remains unclear how frequently inspectors enforce these regulations and what impact test manipulation has on policy efficacy. We demonstrate (1) that there is a distinct discontinuous drop in the distribution of emissions results at the regulatory threshold (2) that when the state tightens emissions standards, over 50% of the vehicles newly at risk for failure now pass instantaneously after the regulation changes. These improvements cannot be explained by legitimate repairs but are consistent with facilities exploiting procedural discretion in order to help consumers evade the strengthened regulations.

In this study we investigate how firm level environmental performance (EP) affect firm level economic performance measured as profit efficiency (PE) in a stochastic profit frontier setting. Analyzing firms in Swedish manufacturing 1990-2004, results show that EP induced by environmental policy is not a determinant of PE, while voluntary or non-policy induced EP seem to have a significant (+) effect on firm PE in most sectors. The evidence generally supports the idea that good EP is also good for business, as long as EP is not brought on by policy measures, in this case a CO2 tax.