Workshop “Flood risks assessment in the Ebro river basin”
The Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) is organizing a workshop focused on flood risks assessment and prevention policies. This workshop is framed within the project PREEMPT, funded by the European Commission, DG Humanitarian and Aid and Civil Protection – ECHO.
The aim of this project is to assist the relevant authorities to better appreciate the risks posted by droughts and floods. It does so by collecting the data about past disasters, filling-up the knowledge gaps - in particular about indirect and intangible losses, both economic and social ones, and by improving risk assessment methods and approaches in place in four participating countries: Italy, Spain, Belgium and Germany (further information at http://www.feem-project.net/preempt/index.html ).
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Impact of climate policy and external shocks on innovation in renewable energy technologies
Dr Pia Weiss,
Lecturer for Industrial Economics (Nottingham University Business School)
Environmental regulations enforced after 1997 in signatory states of the Kyoto Protocol were partly designed to meet the emission reduction targets to which the countries committed to. One of the pillars of climate change policy is to boost development and use of renewable energy technologies (RET). A number of empirical studies investigated the impact of environmental regulations on innovative activities in RET. Since they rely an traditional empirical methods, they present an incomplete picture. We complement this view by applying innovative methods frequently employed in social network analysis.
We show that the first oil price shock and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol had a profound effect on the patenting activities in RET. Both shocks resulted in research that looked beyond the known traditional knowledge fields to find better solutions in RET. Above all, we find that both shocks led researchers to exploit synergies in apparently distinct technology fields.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: A Water Agency faced with Quantity-Quality Management of a Groundwater Resource
Katrin Erdlenbruch
Research Fellow, Irstea, Montpellier, France
We consider a problem of groundwater management in which a group of farmers over-exploits a groundwater stock and causes excessive pollution. A Water Agency wishes to regulate the farmer's activity, in order to reach a minimum quantity and quality level but she is subject to a budget constraint and cannot credibly commit to time-dependent optimal policies. We construct a Stackelberg game to determine a set of constant policies that brings the groundwater resource back to the desired state. We define a set of conditions for which constant policies exist and compute the amount of these instruments in an example.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Natural resource management and property rights under uncertainty
Christopher Costello
Bren School of Environmental Science & Management.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Impact of climate policy and external shocks on innovation in renewable energy technologies
Dr Pia Weiss,
Lecturer for Industrial Economics (Nottingham University Business School)
Environmental regulations enforced after 1997 in signatory states of the Kyoto Protocol were partly designed to meet the emission reduction targets to which the countries committed to. One of the pillars of climate change policy is to boost development and use of renewable energy technologies (RET). A number of empirical studies investigated the impact of environmental regulations on innovative activities in RET. Since they rely an traditional empirical methods, they present an incomplete picture. We complement this view by applying innovative methods frequently employed in social network analysis.
We show that the first oil price shock and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol had a profound effect on the patenting activities in RET. Both shocks resulted in research that looked beyond the known traditional knowledge fields to find better solutions in RET. Above all, we find that both shocks led researchers to exploit synergies in apparently distinct technology fields.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Climate policy negotiations with incomplete information
Professor Kai A. Konrad
Managing Director at the MaxPlanck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance ( Munich)
We analyze bargaining over international climate agreements in a setting with incomplete information about abatement costs. Incomplete information is known as one of the key reasons why negotiations may fail more generally, and why efficiency gains cannot be exploited. We ask whether unilateral commitment to high abatement reduces or increases the likelihood for an efficient negotiation outcome. We find that such commitment behavior reduces the gains from global cooperation, and that, in turn, this reduces the probability of reaching efficient international environmental agreements.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: The Value of Adaptation: Climate Change and Timberland Management
BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change Sede Building 1, 1st floor, Scientific Park of the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Bizkaia, SpainProf. Christopher Costello
Research Professor at Bren School of Environmental Science & Management (UC Santa Barbara)
Adaptation to exogenous change occurs on both intensive and extensive margins. Whether and how one accounts for human adaptation directly affects estimates of the economic consequences of environmental change, estimates that are both critical in informing policy decisions and notoriously difficult to value. This paper introduces and applies an analytical framework for placing an economic value on adaptation. We explore the issue first in a stylized model that facilitates making concrete generalizations about the kinds of adaptations that generate high or low economic value. We then test the soundness of our insights by incorporating learning and adaptive decision-making into a structural dynamic forestry model where climate change is imposed exogenously and agents respond optimally. Using downscaled climate projections integrated with site- and species-specific timber productivity data, we estimate the economic value of adaptation to climate change within the California timber industry. We find on the intensive margin, changing the rotation intervals will yield a low value of adaptation, but on the extensive margin, replanting more suitable tree species can yield significant value.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Useful work accounting in Portugal from 1856 to 2009. Intensities and recent European patterns
André González Cabrera (PhD student)
Honório Serrenho (Researcher)
IN+, Center for Innovation, Technology and Policy Research, and Department of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon
Useful work is distinct from conventional primary and/or final energy analysis, because useful work is much closer to productive energy uses within an economy, providing better insights on the relation between economic growth and energy use.
A useful work accounting methodology is applied to Portugal from 1856 to 2009, considering five different useful work categories: heat, mechanical drive, light, other electric uses and muscle work and final–‘to–‘useful efficiencies for all energy uses, in contrast to previous useful work assessments. From historic energy records, final exergy was estimated, as well as its allocations to useful work categories and final–‘to–‘useful efficiencies for the entire Portuguese economy. The overall efficiency starts rising in the 1920’s with an increase in high temperature heat uses. The most significant increase in efficiency occurs from 1950 to 1980 as a consequence of electrification. From 1980 onwards the efficiency tends to stabilize due to an increase of the share of mechanical drive uses from oil products.
In spite of GDP and useful work having grown nearly by a factor of 30 from 1856 to 2009, we show that useful work economic intensity (useful work / GDP) varied by no more than 20% above and below its 154-year average, in contrast to the final energy and exergy intensities that decreased by a factor of 4 in the same timespan. This result reinforces the argument for a close relationship between economic growth and useful work and suggests that a reduction in the intensity of the use of energy resources can only be achieved by increasing energy efficiencies.
BC3-UPV/EHU Seminars: Improving Global Public Goods Supply Through Conditional Transfers – The International Adaptation Transfer Riddle
BC3-Basque Centre for Climate Change Sede Building 1, 1st floor, Scientific Park of the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Bizkaia, SpainProf. Dr. Karen Pittel
Ifo Institute for Economic Research, Munich
Head of Department Energy, Environment and Exhaustible Resources
In order to overcome the underprovision of global public goods various different policy approaches have been proposed. In the climate policy arena, international transfers are frequently seen as an effective means to raise the provision of the global public good ‘climate change mitigation’. This paper focuses on a specific type of international transfer that aims at raising mitigation while also reducing the damages from climate change: conditional adaptation support. Especially since the COP in Copenhagen 2009, preparations are on-going to significantly expand international transfers that help developing countries to adapt to climate change. While there are extensive discussions in the policy arena about the required amount of adaptation funding and the best ways to raise, manage and disburse these funds, hardly any attention is paid to the international allocative effects of these transfers. The answer to the question of ‘why’ international adaptation transfers are paid at all, is often relegated to fairness considerations only. As adaptation benefits are largely local and adaptation transfers reduce the recipients’ incentives to contribute to climate change mitigation, one would, however, expect at least unease in donor countries about plans to significantly expand international adaptation support. In this study, we compare two alternative conditional transfer schemes: one plainly subsidizes mitigation efforts, while the other provides adaptation support which is conditional on other agents’ mitigation contributions. Disregarding distributional and fairness aspects the paper evaluates and compares the allocative effects of either policy scheme. It is shown that while both policy schemes can be beneficial for developing as well as industrialized countries, this outcome relies strongly on the productivity of mitigation and adaptation technologies.
BC3-UPC/EHU Seminars: Integrated challenges to achieving global prosperity for everyone: energy, climate, economics, and resources
Prof. Tyler Volk
Dept. of Biology, NYU, New York, NY, USA
The gross world product has been growing at roughly 3% annually for nearly half a century. The result has been unprecedented economic well-being for large masses of people. If the trend continues then by year 2050 the average world’s lifestyle will be approximately equal to that of developed nations today. Will that be possible to achieve? Issues such as energy consumption, CO2 emissions, climate change, food production, water, and material fluxes are intricately tied together as a global system. In this talk I will review what global numbers, trends, and differences in consumption rates across various resources and region could mean for the challenges that lay ahead of all of us, collectively, in the future.
