Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

The World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership (GGFR) today called on oil producing countries and companies in the Middle East to join worldwide efforts in reducing the burning of natural gas or flaring, and in increasing energy efficiency to mitigate impact on climate change. A World Bank delegation is participating at the 13th Annual Middle East Gas Summit in Doha, Qatar, on March 5th and 6th.
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The GGFR partnership estimates that globally at least 150 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas are flared or wasted every year, adding about 400 million tons of greenhouse gases in annual emissions. This is equivalent to almost all the potential yearly emission reductions from projects currently submitted under the Kyoto mechanisms.

Gas Flaring in the Middle East and North Africa region is about 50 billion cubic meters annually, which makes it the second flaring region in the world after Russia and the Caspian region (about 60 bcm). Sub-Saharan Africa flares about 35 bcm. The amount of gas flared in the Middle East alone (about 30 bcm) could feed a 20 million ton liquefied natural gas plant.

“Each cubic meter of gas flared is a waste of resources that also generates two kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere,” said Bent Svensson, Manager of the Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership, who explained that gas flaring reduction has been most successful where there is country buy-in, high-level support and an effective local partnership between government and industry.

According to satellite data released by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) last August, in 2006 oil producing countries and companies burned about 170 billion cubic meters (bcm) of natural gas worldwide or nearly five trillion cubic feet. That’s equivalent to 27% of total U.S. natural gas consumption and 5.5% of total global production of natural gas for the year. If the gas had been sold in the United States instead of being flared, the total US market value would have been about $40 billion.

These satellite observations also show that some countries in the Middle East and North Africa region have increased gas flaring over the past 12 years. These include: Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen.

On the other hand, the satellite observations show that other countries have decreased gas flaring from 1995 to 2006, including Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and UAE. And other countries have had largely stable gas flaring across those 12 years. These include Iran and Kuwait.

GGFR is a public-private partnership of governments, state-owned companies and major international oil companies committed to reducing flaring and venting worldwide. The GGFR partnership facilitates and supports national efforts to use the associated gas that comes with oil production and thus reduce flaring, by tackling the lack of effective regulatory frameworks and the constraints on gas utilization, such as insufficient infrastructure and poor access to local and international energy markets, particularly in developing countries.

The top 20 major flaring countries in the world include: Russia, Nigeria, Iran, Iraq, Angola, Venezuela, Qatar, Algeria, the United States, Kuwait, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Mexico, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Congo, the United Kingdom, and Gabon.

To learn more about the GGFR partnership and gas flaring, please visit: www.worldbank.org/ggfr

Background information:

What is gas flaring?
When crude oil is brought to the surface from several kilometers below, gas associated with such oil extraction usually comes to the surface as well. If oil is produced in areas of the world which lack gas infrastructure or a nearby gas market, a significant portion of this associated gas may be released into the atmosphere, un-ignited (vented) or ignited (flared).

On GGFR
Launched at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002, the GGFR public-private partnership brings around the table representatives of governments of oil-producing countries, state-owned companies and major international oil companies so that they can together overcome the barriers to reducing gas flaring by sharing global best practices and implementing country specific programs in gas flaring countries, with funding provided in part by the European Union, the World Bank, oil companies and countries.

The World Bank www.WorldBank.org
http://go.worldbank.org/V4NBWE2EN0
March 5, 2008

Abstract: Billions of dollars are now spent annually in the United States and Europe for spatially delineated environmental services such as agricultural landscape management and river restoration programs, yet little is known about the spatial distribution of the benefits from these policies. This paper develops a framework for recovering information on this question from the spatial pattern of votes cast for referenda on the provision of spatially delineated public goods. We specify a model linking voter support for environmental improvement to the distance at which such improvements are expected to occur. The empirical application is to a river restoration referendum in the Swiss canton of Bern. The results indicate that the benefits from river restoration have a strong local component, sufficiently strong that voter approval would not occur if only canton-wide benefits were at stake. Surprisingly, support of river restoration is no greater, and in some specifications is actually lower, in locations where rivers are a prominent feature in the environment.

by Robert T. Deacon 1 and Felix Schläpfer 2
1. University of California, Santa Barbara; Department of Economics; Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA (deacon@econ.ucsb.edu)
2. Socioeconomic Institute, University of Zurich, Switzerland

University of California, Santa Barbara www.ucsb.edu; Department of Economics
Working Paper 05-07; June 21, 2007
http://repositories.cdlib.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1209&context=ucsbecon

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Consider this: the new environmental awareness is unleashing a wave of innovation in every category of technology - including portable music and video players.

Already, there are two [self-powered]... players: the Media Street eMotion Solar ($160 to $190, capacities from 1 to 4 gigabytes) and the Baylis Eco Media Player ($200 from realgoods.com, 2 gigabytes). Neither needs batteries or power from a cord; they can live completely off the grid.

The eMotion Solar (5.5. x 3 x 1 inch) opens like a book, revealing two broad, black, shiny solar panels. To charge this machine, you just stick it where the sun does shine, like on a windowsill. Even on an overcast day, its little Recharge indicator light pops on. The battery recharges after 12 to 15 hours of exposure to sunlight, which the company says is enough for nine hours of music playback.... If you're in direct sun, you don't even care about the battery; sunlight alone is enough to drive music playback.

The Eco Player, on the other hand, has a built-in crank on the back, no more obtrusive than a belt clip.... According to the company, one minute of winding generates enough power for 40 minutes of music playback. A fully charged battery can play music for 20 hours, or video for 10.

FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/13/technology/personaltech/13pogue.html?_r=2&8cir=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&emc=cir&adxnnlx=1206245854-7BhX0BvwBp9pob9R4F8UsQ&oref=slogin
The New York Times www.NYTimes.com

Abstract: The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss some of the important and critical decision criteria including cleaner production implementation of an efficient system to prioritize competitive priorities. Fuzzy analytic network process (FANP) based methodology is discussed to tackle the different decision criteria involved in the selection of competitive priorities in current business scenario. FANP is an efficient tool to handle the fuzziness of the data involved in deciding the preferences of different decision variables. The linguistic level of comparisons produced by the professionals and experts for each comparison are tapped in the form of triangular fuzzy numbers to construct fuzzy pairwise comparison matrices. The implementation of the system is demonstrated by a problem having four stages of hierarchy which contains different criteria, attributes and alternatives at wider perspective. The proposed model can provide a hierarchical framework for the cleaner production implemented organization to select on its competitive priorities.

Keywords: Cleaner production (CP), Competitive priority, Fuzzy analytic network process (FANP)

by M. L. Tseng 1, Y. H. Lin 1, A. S. F. Chiu 2 and J. C. H. Liao 2
1. Department of Business Administration, Ming-Dao University, #369 Wen-Hwa Road, Peetou Township, Changhua County, 52345, Taiwan; Email: ml.tseng@mdu.edu.tw
2. De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy via Springer Publishing www.SpringerLink.com
Volume 10, Number 1; February, 2008; Pages 17-29
DOI: 10.1007/s10098-007-0109-4
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r57605x0765t75x6/

Abstract: Whereas life expectancy continues to increase in most industrialized countries, many developing and transition countries are today confronted with decreases in life expectancy. Usual measures employed to compare welfare over time and space fail to deal with such demographic change and may lead to the so-called ‘repugnant conclusion’ that lower life expectancy involves higher welfare per capita. We illustrate this type of transmission channel using various welfare criteria and reference populations. We also consider feed-back effects from the demography on the economy using a neo-classical growth model. We show that the ‘repugnant conclusion’ can be avoided if we choose a lifetime welfare measure instead of a period (or snapshot) welfare measure. All concepts are illustrated empirically using a small sample of developed and developing countries.

by Michael Grimm 1 and Kenneth Harttgen 2
1. Institute of Social Studies, Kortenaerkade 12, P.O. Box 29776, 2502 LT, The Hague, The Netherlands; University of Göttingen, Germany; DIAL, Paris, France; DIW, Berlin, Germany; e-mail: grimm@iss.nl
2. University of Göttingen, Department of Economics, Platz der Göttinger Sieben 3, 37073 Göttingen, Germany; e-mail: k.harttgen@wiwi.uni-goettingen.de

Oxford Economic Papers via Oxford University Press
Volume 60, Issue 2; 2008; Pages 193-211
doi:10.1093/oep/gpm025
http://oep.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/60/2/193?etoc

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The Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon.... Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation....

This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.

...The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010....

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.
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By Michael Grunwald
FOR FULL STORY GO TO:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html
Time www.Times.com
March 27, 2008