Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Abstract: Equity weighting has been proposed as a way of allowing welfare equivalents to be included in the social cost of carbon since a dollar to a poor person is worth more than a dollar to a rich one. Here we use the PAGE2002 integrated assessment model to show that the social cost of carbon is higher without equity weights (an elasticity of marginal utility with respect to income of 0) than with them.

This might seem counter-intuitive, but it comes about because of the logical link between equity weights and discount rates; as the elasticity goes from 0 to − 0.5 to − 1.0, the social rate of time preference rises, and the drop in present values that results far outweighs the small increase in impacts that equity weights bring.

Keywords: Climate change; Integrated assessment; Equity weights; Social cost of carbon

by Chris Hope; Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

Energy Economics via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
Volume 30, Issue 3; May, 2008; Pages 1011-1019
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2006.11.006

Range Fuels, which ... produces cellulosic ethanol out of wood scraps, has raised $100 million to build a 100-million-gallon-a-year plant in Georgia, according to VentureWire.... Investors in the round include Khosla Ventures....

Earlier, the company received grants from the U.S. Department of Energy worth up to $76 million, as well as other venture funds.

CEO Mitch Mandich, said ... the plant would cost around $150 million. ... The company is trying to ...to produce 20 million gallons a year.

Range Fuels uses thermochemical processes to convert forestry wastes into ethanol. The alcohol can be mixed into gas, or be turned into E85, which is 85 percent ethanol. There are only a few cars on the road that can run on E85 and only about 1,400 stations in the U.S. that sell it, but both numbers are expected to climb.
...
Many cellulosic companies say they can make fuel and sell it for $1 to $1.50 a gallon once it's in mass production. Efficiency, however, is paramount in this market, and companies are racing to see who can get the most fuel out of a ton of scraps. ZeaChem, a rival, says it can get 160 gallons per ton. Others have claimed more than 100 gallons.

Coskata, which wants to make cellulosic ethanol out of garbage, got $19.5 million. And in the solar world, rumors swirl that Nanosolar and Solyndra are trying to raise money for factories and telling investors they are worth $2 billion and $1 billion respectively. Neither company is in mass production.

See/listen also to
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16019184&ft=1&f=1001

CNET www.CNET.com
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9894584-54.html?dlbk