Search results for "Shadow price"
showing 10 items of 20 documents
Measuring the CO2 shadow price for wastewater treatment: A directional distance function approach
2015
Abstract The estimation of the value of carbon emissions has become a major research and policy topic since the establishment of the Kyoto Protocol. The shadow price of CO2 provides information about the marginal abatement cost of this pollutant. It is an essential element in guiding environmental policy issues, since the CO2 shadow price can be used when fixing carbon tax rates, in environmental cost-benefit analysis and in ascertaining an initial market price for a trading system. The water industry could play an important role in the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This paper estimates the shadow price of CO2 for a sample of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), using a param…
Cost–benefit analysis of water-reuse projects for environmental purposes: A case study for Spanish wastewater treatment plants
2011
Water reuse is an emerging and promising non-conventional water resource. Feasibility studies are essential tools in the decision making process for the implementation of water-reuse projects. However, the methods used to assess economic feasibility tend to focus on internal costs, while external impacts are relegated to unsubstantiated statements about the advantages of water reuse. Using the concept of shadow prices for undesirable outputs of water reclamation, the current study developed a theoretical methodology to assess internal and external economic impacts. The proposed methodological approach is applied to 13 wastewater treatment plants in the Valencia region of Spain that reuse ef…
Economic valuation of environmental benefits from wastewater treatment processes: An empirical approach for Spain
2009
Economic research into the design and implementation of policies for the efficient management of water resources has been emphasized by the European Water Framework Directive (Directive 2000/60/EC). The efficient implementation of policies to prevent the degradation and depletion of water resources requires determining their value in social and economic terms and incorporating this information into the decision-making process. A process of wastewater treatment has many associated environmental benefits. However, these benefits are often not calculated because they are not set by the market, due to inadequate property rights, the presence of externalities, and the lack of perfect information…
Environmental Benefit of Improving Wastewater Quality: A Shadow Prices Approach for Sensitive Areas
2018
The use of effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) as a non-conventional source of water for wetlands in arid and semi-arid regions is becoming the most-often sought solution for maintaining water flow in sensitive wetlands there. However, the managing effluent quality should be a requirement because excess nutrients (mainly nitrogen and phosphorus) can generate eutrophication problems in wetlands. In the Mediterranean area in general, wetlands are strongly vulnerable to eutrophication, which is why they are classified as sensitive areas. Our study uses a data set from 24 WWTPs, effluents of which are discharged to wetlands in the coast of Community of Valencia. We use the shado…
Second-best taxation for a polluting monopoly with abatement investment
2018
This paper characterizes the optimal tax rule to regulate a polluting monopoly when the firm has the possibility of investing in an abatement technology and the environmental damages are caused by a stock pollutant. The optimal policy is given by the stagewise feedback Stackelberg equilibrium of a dynamic policy game between a regulator and a monopolist. The regulator playing as the leader chooses an emission tax to maximize net social welfare, and the monopolist acting as the follower selects the output and the investment in abatement technology to maximize profits. We find that the optimal tax has two components. The first component is negative and equal to the gap between the marginal re…
Efficiency assessment of wastewater treatment plants: A data envelopment analysis approach integrating technical, economic, and environmental issues
2015
The assessment of the efficiency of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is essential to compare their performance and consequently to identify the best operational practices that can contribute to the reduction of operational costs. Previous studies have evaluated the efficiency of WWTPs using conventional data envelopment analysis (DEA) models. Most of these studies have considered the operational costs of the WWTPs as inputs, while the pollutants removed from wastewater are treated as outputs. However, they have ignored the fact that each pollutant removed by a WWTP involves a different environmental impact. To overcome this limitation, this paper evaluates for the first time the efficien…
Economic feasibility study for wastewater treatment: a cost-benefit analysis.
2010
Water resource management should be made from a multidisciplinary perspective. In this sense, economic research into the design and implementation of policies for the efficient management of water resources has been emphasized by the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is one of the more widely accepted economic instruments since it is a rational and systematic decision-making support tool. Moreover, the wastewater treatment process has significant associated environmental benefits. However, these benefits are often left uncalculated because they have no market value. In this paper, using the concept of shadow price, a quantification of the environmental be…
Economic feasibility study for new technological alternatives in wastewater treatment processes: a review
2012
The concept of sustainability involves the integration of economic, environmental, and social aspects and this also applies in the field of wastewater treatment. Economic feasibility studies are a key tool for selecting the most appropriate option from a set of technological proposals. Moreover, these studies are needed to assess the viability of transferring new technologies from pilot-scale to full-scale. In traditional economic feasibility studies, the benefits that have no market price, such as environmental benefits, are not considered and are therefore underestimated. To overcome this limitation, we propose a new methodology to assess the economic viability of wastewater treatment tec…
Economic valuation of environmental benefits of removing pharmaceutical and personal care products from WWTP effluents by ozonation.
2013
Continuous release of pharmaceutical and personal care products (PPCPs) present in effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is nowadays leading to the adoption of specific measures within the framework of the Directive 2000/60/EC (Water Framework Directive). The ozonation process, normally employed for drinking water production, has also proven its potential to eliminate PPCPs from secondary effluents in spite of their low concentrations. However, there is a significant drawback related with the costs associated with its implementation. This lack of studies is especially pronounced regarding the economic valuation of the environmental benefits associated to avoid the discharge of …
Monetary valuation of salicylic acid, methylparaben and THCOOH in a Mediterranean coastal wetland through the shadow prices methodology
2018
The presence of pharmaceutical and personal care products and drugs of abuse (PPCPs) in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) indicates discharge of the effluent may not be suitable for the ecological balance of water ecosystems, such as wetlands. These PPCPs degrade water quality, considered as an ecosystem service (ES), provoking serious environmental impacts. Assessing the monetary value of PPCPs can be used as a proxy for environmental status of the ES of water quality (ESWQ). Considering PPCPs as non-desirable outputs of WWTPs, the shadow prices methodology has been implemented using directional distance function to measure the environmental avoided cost of removing salicylic acid (SA), …