Search results for "Natural resource economics"

Economic feasibility study for intensive and extensive wastewater treatment considering greenhouse gases emissions

2013

Economic feasibility assessments represent a key issue for selecting which wastewater treatment processes should be implemented. The few applications that exist focus on the positive economic value of externalities, overlooking the existence of negative externalities. However, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) consume a significant amount of energy, contributing to climate change. In this context, as a pioneering approach, greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) have been incorporated as a negative externality of wastewater treatment. Within this framework, this study aims to compare the economic feasibility of five technologies, both intensive and extensive, for small communities. The results sho…

Successive alkalinity producing system for the treatment of acid sulphate soil runoff: preliminary results of a field trial

2005

A successive alkalinity producing system (SAPS) has been investigated as a potential passive treatment option for acid, metal containing runoff from acid sulphate soil. A pilot-scale system was installed at an agricultural land site in Rintala embankment area in mid-western Finland. The experimental layout consists of three parallel treatment units: two different SAPS cells and one limestone-filled cell for comparison of performance. The SAPS cells are composed of a bottom layer of limestone and a top layer of compost supplemented with sand. One of the SAPS cells contains sulphate-rich, waste gypsum mixed with the compost layer in order to enhance the metal reduction by sulphate reducing-ba…

Fuel for commercial politics: the nucleus of early commercial proliferation of atomic energy in three acts

2020

Historical research into the nuclear industry has focussed upon military and commercial aspects of the technology whilst ignoring fuel. This article discusses nuclear fuel, the resource at the centre of the industry and the role superpower politics played in its supply. Starting with the context of superpower competition, we examine the spread of nuclear technology from its beginnings in post-war Britain via West Germany in the 1950s to Finland in the 1960s and 1970s. We demonstrate that each country had varied interests affecting the choice of nuclear fuel for early energy projects; British fuel choices were constrained by its weapons programme and Germany needed legitimacy in the face of …

Competitiveness and sustainability in horticulture: strategy for small businesses

2018

Vegetable cultivation has a significant history in the countries of the Mediterranean basin. Italy is an important horticultural producer and, in this context, Sicily offers ideal conditions for the protected cultivation of field vegetables. Apart from a few well-organised producers, in many areas horticulture is characterised by backward entrepreneurial systems and fragmented production lines that make the vegetable market one that is very close to being a rigged competition in which companies must accept the price and have no negotiating power. This situation has been aggravated even further by the recent economic crisis and the subsequent recession, resulting in the disappearance of the …

Ethics, resource rent, environment and petroleum policy: the case of a small open economy

2021

This paper contributes to the understanding of how the environment, ethics, values, and historical contingencies shape public policy. It explains the accomplishment of petroleum resource management in the small open economy of Norway. The study is conducted by mapping policy decisions and the arguments behind them regarding environmental and ethical issues. This is done by studying available governmental and parliamentary papers along with statements from politicians and central governmental officials. The paper also seeks to illuminate some of the decisions by quantitative measures. The paper firstly describes a model of Ricardian resource rent. Secondly, it investigates the set of values …

The impact of privatization approaches on the productivity growth of the water industry: A case study of Chile

2015

Abstract The water industry faces the challenge of implementing privatization reforms. This process mainly adopts the following two approaches: the privatization of public water and sewerage services (WSS) and the privatization of water companies’ ownership. This paper investigates the impact of both privatization approaches on changes in productivity in the water industry. In doing so, the Luenberger productivity indicator (LPI) was computed for a sample of Chilean water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) for the period 1997–2013. Unlike the most commonly applied index (Malmquist productivity index), the LPI simultaneously takes into account output expansion and input contraction. The results …

Methodological approaches to the valuation of forest ecosystem services: An overview of recent international research trends

2021

Forests represent the most important source of ecosystem services (ES) on a global level both for the production of goods and for the provision of services and externalities, nevertheless scientific research in the economic field is lacking. Currently the number of documents relating to ES is 16 673, of which only 1 379 concern the forestry sector. The aim of this study is to provide an overview of scientific research trends in the field of economic evaluation of forest ecosystem services (FES). To this end, an on-line bibliographic survey was carried out on the main scientific search engines, which made it possible to quantify the works and at the same time to detect the main evaluation me…

Biproportional Methods And Interindustry Dynamics: The Case of Energy in France

1996

Wine - investment: a profitable alternative investment or a simple long term pleasure?

2014

International audience; The purpose of this work is twofold: - to make a first historic analysis of performance through an investment in wine by comparing its performance with those that would have been possible to obtain at the same time by providing financial term investments; - to introduce the regional diversity of performance by considering the situation in the three selected geographic areas.

Is there a Market Value for Energy Performance in a Local Private Housing Market ? An efficiency analysis approach

2018

This paper aims to find evidence of a “green value” in a local housing market using notarial data on a small urban area in France. We use frontier functions, an original approach that departs from customary hedonistic regressions, to model housing market prices as a production set bordered by an efficiency frontier estimated by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). The paper tests if difference in prices (i.e. the distance from the frontier) can be explained by energy performance measured as a normalized categorical ascending kWh/m²/year grade (or Energy Performance Certificate -EPC). We show that there is significative evidence for energy performance's market value. The “Green Property Value” i…