BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: La demanda de electricidad de los hogares españoles durante la crisis: efectos sobre el bienestar
Dr. Desiderio Romero-Jordán,
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos y FUNCAS
La crisis económica y el rápido incremento de los precios de la electricidad han tenido importantes repercusiones sobre su demanda. Utilizando microdatos de la EPF, este trabajo analiza a partir de una regresión cuantílica los cambios en las respuestas a precios y renta ocurridos en el período 2006 a 2012 (distinguiendo los años previos a la crisis del resto). En segundo lugar se analizan los efectos del shock en precios sobre el bienestar de los hogares. Los resultados muestran el incremento del precio de la electricidad (junto a la crisis económica) ha acentuado tanto la forma de U de la elasticidad precio como la forma de N de la elasticidad renta. Los resultados sugieren además que las pérdidas relativas de bienestar generadas por el fuerte aumento de los precios son una función decreciente de la renta.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Green accounting in a multi-sector model with terrestrial ecosystems
Itziar Ruiz de Gauna Ruiz de Loizaga
Instituto de Políticas y Bienes Públicos, CSIC
There is an increasing interest in extending national accounts to ecosystem services not recorded by official accounting systems but that are relevant to society, such as biodiversity conservation or public recreation. However, theoretical and applied green accounting analyses are not completely consistent, especially for the case of terrestrial ecosystems. First, most theoretical literature has so far assumed that forests are made up of a single species and that its growth is instantaneous, obtaining the result that it is enough to use information for the current year. On the contrary, the SNA and the SEEA recommend the use of future values. Our analysis show that using values for the current year only holds for strong and probably unrealistic assumptions. Second, many applications calculate the value of market goods and services using exchange values and then estimate consumer surplus for non-market ecosystem services. The SNA and the SEEA do not use of consumer surplus and theoretical interpretations of Net National Product as a welfare indicator also take it out. Our results confirm that non-market ecosystem services should be incorporated into national accounting using exchange values. We extend the analysis to cover a monopoly and a monopolistic competition. The latter markets structures are especially relevant for the recreational use of National Parks which are unique. We also present the empirical results of the valuation of public recreation in two types of forests in Spain, comparing compensating variation estimates and exchange values for the same valuation exercise.
BC3-UPV/EHU Summer School 2015: “Climate Change On the Road to Paris “
Miramar Palace Paseo Miraconcha, 48, San Sebastian, Gipuzkoa, SpainDirectors: Prof. Anil Markandya (BC3, Basque Centre for Climate Change) and Dr. Ibon Galarraga (BC3, Basque Centre for Climate Change). The objective of the BC3 […]
Workshop CECILIA 2050 Bilbao
This workshop, to be held on the 23rd of October 2015 at BC3 offices (Alameda Urquijo 4, 48008 Bilbao) will present the main results of the CECILIA2050 research project with a focus on its ultimate goal: to assess the current EU climate policies in order to formulate near-term and medium-term policy recommendations.
In this workshop we will address relevant questions such as:
How effective and efficient have the EU climate policies been in the past?
How could and should the EU climate policy mix evolve to put the EU on track towards a low-carbon economy?
How should climate and energy policy should interact? What are the risks associated to climate policy fragmentation?
Klimagune Workshop 2015: “Communicating climate science: Opportunities and challenges “
Bizkaia Aretoa Conference Hall Avda Abandoibarra, 3, Bilbao, SpainThe Klimagune Workshop is a science-policy forum on Climate Change, open to all agents in the Basque Science and Technology Network as well as to other social agents interested in climate change. The aim of this initiative is to share knowledge, new ideas and developments in terms of scientific and policy advancements on climate change. It is aimed at strengthening the synergies and cooperation among research groups, organisations and various administrative bodies that address climate change issues in the Basque Country. Since its first edition four years ago, 400 people have participated in this annual event. To date the Klimagune Workshop has launched five crosscutting themes, including, adaptation strategies in the Basque Country, the Green economy and transitions towards sustainability and the opportunities and challenges for rural areas in the context of climate change.
The sixth edition of the Klimagune will focus on “Communicating climate science: Opportunities and challenges” and will take place on the 23rd of November, at the Bizkaia Aretoa in Bilbao.
BC3 Seminars: Smart mature resilience: towards more resilient cities in Europe
BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change Sede Building 1, 1st floor, Scientific Park of the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Bizkaia, SpainDr. Jose Mari Sarriegi
Tecnum
The 21st Century has been termed "the century of disasters" (Jan Egeland, former United Nations Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, February 2011). Worldwide there were twice as many disasters and catastrophes in the first decade of this century as in the last decade of the 20th Century. Europe is no exception: our continent is affected directly and indirectly. And the trend continues, fuelled by climate change and social dynamics.
The need for resilience is emphasized. But how to best deal with known risks and prepare for the unexpected is enormously complex and still nascent. The much needed operationalization of resilience – the breaking down of the resilience concept into a holistic framework of measurable interventions – must be seen as a directed dynamic process: a process that unfolds over time following the resilience management guideline.
Smart Mature Resilience (SMR) project will develop and validate Resilience Management Guideline, using three pilot projects covering different security sectors in Critical Infrastructures, as well as climate change and social dynamics, as a prototype to European Resilience Management Guideline. SMR's Resilience Management Guideline will provide a robust shield against man-made and natural hazards, enabling society to resist, absorb, accommodate and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, as well as plan for, including through the preservation and restoration of essential structures and functions. The following set of tools operationalize five crucial interdependent supporting structures of SMR's Resilience Management Guideline: 1) a Resilience Maturity Model defining the trajectory of an entity (system, community or society) through measurable resilience levels; 2) a Systemic Risk Assessment Questionnaire that, beyond assessing the entity's risk, determines its resilience maturity level; 3) a portfolio of Resilience Building Policies that enable the entity's progression towards higher maturity levels; 4) a System Dynamics Model (computer simulation model) that embodies the Resilience Maturity Model, allowing to diagnose, monitor and explore the entity's resilience trajectory as determined by resilience building policies, and, last not least, 5) a Resilience Engagement and Communication Tool to integrate the wider public in community resilience, including public-private cooperation.
Beyond delivering the validated Resilience Management Guideline and the five supporting tools the SMR project establishes as a project result an emergent European Resilience Backbone consisting of adopters, from fully committed through direct project participation to alerted potential adopters.
The adopters are vertebrae in the European Resilience Backbone. The SMR project's powerful impact maximizing measures will assist the implementation of the European Resilience Management Guideline by consolidating the resilience vertebrae as mutually supporting functional units of a growing and fortified European Resilience Backbone.
Finally, the five tools operationalizing the five crucial interdependent supporting structures of the Resilience Management Guideline will commercialized, targeting users in Europe and beyond.
BC3 Seminars: Climate risk management for the Loss & Damage Debate: Acting on principles of distributional and compensatory justice
BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change Sede Building 1, 1st floor, Scientific Park of the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Bizkaia, SpainProf. Dr. Reinhard Mechler
IIASA and Vienna University of Economics and Business
Thomas Schinko
IIASA & Wegener Centre, University of Graz
The Warsaw Loss and Damage Mechanism holds high appeal for transforming action on mitigation and responses for dealing with climate-related risks. The terrain is extremely contested, as ‘Southern countries’ at risk demand climate justice, while OECD negotiators have been unwilling to even consider such framing and related action; while compensation is currently ruled out via the Paris agreement, those countries are willing to support comprehensive risk management, as evidenced by debates based on moral responsibility that informed the approval of the Sendai Framework of Action on disaster risk reduction earlier in 2015. At the same time, the science behind climate-related risks relevant for the Loss and Damage debate is equally complex. It has made great leaps forward as summarized in recent IPCC reports. Yet, while attribution of events, such as heat and drought, with anthropogenic climate change has been partially successful, risk attribution has not been achieved due to the role of human agency involved in shaping risks, thus hampering the application of the principle of strict liability for climate risks. We are suggesting an actionable way forward for the deliberations based on the concept of climate risk management and principles of distributional and compensatory justice. The approach involves in a needs-based perspective, support for risk management beyond countries ability to absorb risk; in a rights-based perspective it upholds a consideration for liabilities attributable to climate change. We support our suggestions with country-level stress-test modelling and good practice examples of disaster risk management using the CATSIM model. The calculated cost for absorbing high-level climate-related risk are in the billions of USD, but if efforts are well linked to risk reduction incentives, such an approach may lead to helping to reduce the adaptation, which for many contexts is large already today. Importantly, our analytics provide an entry point for understanding the physical and socio-economic limits to adaptation and risk coping, and thus send a strong signal to the mitigation discussion underlining the strong need for decarbonization, but also harnessing synergies of development-centred approaches for mitigation and building resilience.
BC3 Seminars: Understanding ecosystem responses under a mosaic of land sparing and sharing
BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change Sede Building 1, 1st floor, Scientific Park of the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Bizkaia, SpainPhD. Maria Joao Ferreira dos Santos
Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University
In an era when biodiversity is highly threatened by changes in climate and land use, it is unclear whether our past conservation efforts will remain effective, and we do not know whether they have been effective so far. Reconstructing conservation and restoration histories provide a framework to answer this question through the digital development of conservation and restoration actions, and subsequent analysis and interpretation of the process of conservation and management of natural resources. Here I present two case studies: (i) reconstructing California conservation history and (ii) Putting bison to work, which illustrate the process of conservation and restoration at two spatial scales. These two case studies also illustrate what have been the goals for conservation and restoration actions, which are the stressors and what external factors limit their success. The conclusion is that effective conservation and restoration is dependent on the legacy of policies and activities on the ground. It is important to ally conservation and restoration as while much area has been conserved, much still needs to be done once conservation status is attributed. Future conservation decisions are not independent of the history of the conservation practice, as conservation is influenced by what has already been accomplished.
BC3 Spring University of Ecosystem Services Modeling (4th edition), 2016
KBI digital Matiko Kalea, 6, 48007 Bilbo, Bizkaia, BilbaoThe Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) in collaboration with Conservation International and the University of Vermont, organizes the 2016 edition of the International Spring University on Ecosystem Services Modeling.
The International Spring University (ISU) on Ecosystem Services Modelling is the fourth edition of an annual 2-week intensive course that is building a new generation of scientists and policy analysts who can effectively use coupled human-environmental models in research, policy and management to address and solve sustainability problems.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars : An overview of energy-economy-environment (E3) systems analysis
Dr. Michael Carbajales-Dale
Clemson University, Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences
Energy-economy-environment (E3) systems analysis is becoming more and more important in the drive for sustainable development and to better understand the necessary future energy transition. E3 necessary spans a multitude of scales and disciplines. This talk will focus on a physical sciences/engineering-based approach at three different scales: life cycle assessment of renewable electricity technologies, net energy analysis of the global PV and wind industries, and a physical input-output framework for national or global economies.
