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Natural environment and climate change .
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The value in environmental valuation Mallika Ishwaran, Jonathan Portes and Richard Price The Guardian, August 2011 The UK has been at the forefront in using new techniques to shape policy decisions which affect the environment. On the publication of the UK's Natural Ecosystem Assessment, this article makes the case for valuing the environment as part of a better approach to informing policy decisions for environmental protection, reflecting the pervasive role the environment has to play in economic and social activity. Link: Click here for the full article. |
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Resource efficiency: cutting waste raises
competitiveness and helps preserve productive capacity Richard Price, Europe's World special edition, June 2011 Businesses can take low-cost practical steps to reduce resource use, promoting economic growth and environmental performance. By cutting costs, businesses get a significant pay-back in the short term, with innovation able to cut their costs further over time. Research by Defra finds that British businesses could save up to £23 billion a year by adopting energy, waste and water efficiency measures which pay back within a year. Link: Europe's World special edition on resource efficiency (PDF, 358 KB) Link: Defra research on rapid pay-back resource efficiency measures |
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Green Growth: Selecting policy instruments Richard Price, OECD Workshop on Green Growth, Paris, 8 February 2011 As part of its work for the G20 on Green Growth, the OECD held a workshop to discuss its Green Growth Strategy in February 2011, involving all OECD member states and a number of NGOs. The Strategy seeks to provide tools for a shift towards a more sustainable development path, while identifying economic opportunities and benefits of going in that direction. Defra’s Chief Economist, Richard Price, was invited to lead the workshop session on policy instruments for green growth, and this paper set the context. Link: Click here to download this paper from the Defra website (PDF, 800 KB)Link: OECD website: www.oecd.org
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The environment, wellbeing and policy in the UK Richard Price, Prime Minister's Wellbeing Conference, HM Treasury, London, November 2010
In a speech to
the Prime Minister's Wellbeing Conference in November 2010, Richard
Price explains the links between the environment and wellbeing, and
how taking a consistent approach to understanding environmental
costs and benefits across all policy areas can best safeguard the
environment for this and future generations. Assessing environmental
and social impacts on wellbeing is at the heart of policy design in
the UK, is based on evidence and innovation, and makes a real
difference to policy.
Download: Click here to download this paper from the Defra website (PDF, 220 KB)
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Government Economic Service Review of the Economics of Sustainable Development Richard Price, Chris Durham and JY Chan; Defra/GES, London, July 2010
The Final Report of the Review of the Economics of Sustainable
Development is now available. The Review proposes a working definition
of sustainable development, identifies considerations that policymakers
need to understand when assessing whether an individual project or
policy is consistent with sustainable development overall and sets out
the steps taken in the past year to implement these across government. |
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Growth and the environment: opportunities and a warning Richard Price, speech to the Annual Conference of the UK Network of Environmental Economists, The Royal Society, London, March 2010 In this speech Richard Price identifies opportinities for environmental economics to help raise economic and environmental performance, squaring aspirations for prosperity and growth with the importance of environmental assets; and warns against sloppy thinking on the challenges of growth. Download: Click here to download this paper (PDF, 245 KB) Link: UK Network of Environmental Economists (UKNEE webpages) |
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Economic Growth and the Environment Tim Everett, Mallika Ishwaran, Gian Paolo Ansaloni and Alex Rubin, Defra, March 2010 This paper explores the complex relationship between the natural environment and economic growth, including the importance of the environment in supporting and enabling economic activity and the different drivers that affect environmental quality as the economy grows. It makes the case for sustainable economic growth, managing the use and provision of natural assets in a way that ensures their availability for future generations. Finally, it identifies the range of policy responses the government can use to enable this shift to a sustainable economy, and the potential opportunities and economic impacts in the near- and long-term. Download: Click here to download this paper (PDF, 400 KB) |
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Adapting to
Climate Change Federica Cimato and Michael Mullan, Defra, February 2010 This paper sets out how a number of barriers to adaptation (market failures, behavioural barriers, adaptive capacity, natural capacity) may affect adaptation decisions, and provides a framework for considering the Government’s role and identifies implications for policy design. It also identifies the priority areas for future research on the economics of adaptation Download: Click here to download this paper (PDF, 646 KB) Link: Defra Economics and Analysis Series (Defra webpages) |
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GES Review of the Economics of
Sustainable Development: Interim Report Richard Price and Chris Durham, Defra/Government Economic Service, October 2009
Download:
Click
here to download this paper (PDF, 498 KB) Read the interim report (PDF, 498 KB) Most of the Interim Report’s recommendations focus on giving policymakers better tools to assess the impacts on their policies/projects, and what they can do about them. These tools supplement the approach to cost-benefit analysis used across UK government (as set out in the Treasury’s ‘Green Book’). Our emerging recommendations focus on:
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Sustainable development: what does it mean, how can it affect decision-making, and can economics help?Richard Price, speech to Government Economic Service seminar, HM Treasury. April 2009
Download:
Click
here to download this paper
(PDF, 480 KB)
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Making the right choices for our future: An economicframework for designing
policies to reduce
carbon emissions
Mallika Ishwaran and Federica
Cimato, Department for the
Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs, and Department for Energy and Climate Change, March 2009Download: "Making the right choices for our future: An economic framework for designing policies to reduce carbon emissions" (PDF, 1600KB)
Link:
Defra
Economics and Analysis Series (Defra webpages)
“Making
the right choices
for our future” consolidates government thinking to date. It builds on
the
UK Treasury’s 2002 paper which set out the Government’s principles for
environmental policy more generally, in the new context of the carbon
budgets
introduced by the UK's
Climate
Change Act. The paper
discusses principles for choosing the range of instruments available to
tackle
climate change and how they might best be used together to achieve our
goals. Designing climate change interventions to be as cost
effective and
efficient as possible is always essential – as the Stern Review
demonstrated –
and never more so than at a time of global macroeconomic
challenges.
Delivering mitigation potential at least cost to the economy requires a
credible, effective, and well considered policy framework to deliver
the
required emissions reductions.
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Cutting
carbon and sustaining growth: the importance of valuing and trading carbon Richard Price, March 2008 Download: Click here to download the full text of this speech This speech - to the |
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The
social
cost of carbon and
the shadow price of carbon:
what they are, and how to use them in economic appraisal in the UK Richard Price, Simeon Thornton and Stephen Nelson, UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, December 2007 Download: Click here to download this paper (PDF, 745kb) Link Click here to see the UK Government's new guidance on using the shadow price of carbon This paper significantly increased the value attached to carbon emissions and savings from all new policies and projects across government in the UK. It brings the value of carbon used in government decision-making into line with the Stern Review – increasing it by 17 per cent for emissions in 2020, 32 per cent in 2030; and 67 per cent in 2050, compared with previous guidance. The level of the shadow price is set at £25.50 per tonne of CO2 in 2007, and is on a rising profile. Equivalent values apply to other greenhouse gases. The higher level of the shadow price means that, wherever new policies or projects have a significant impact on emissions, advice to Ministers will take greater account of the carbon impact. That includes not just environmental measures, but applies across government – including for example transport, construction and infrastructure projects. It will make sure that lower-carbon options are recommended wherever they are economically and socially justified.
The paper
received good press coverage in the UK, including the main front-page
story in The Guardian on Saturday 22 December 2007:
Link:
Ministers
ordered to assess climate cost of all decisions
An article in the ENDS Report in January 2008 interviewed Richard Price, explaining the significance of the shadow price of carbon: Download: Nicholas Schoon: Daylight falls on the shadow price of carbon, ENDS Report 396, January 2008.
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Climate Change
Instruments: Areas of overlap and options for simplification Mallika Ishwaran and Federica Cimato, UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, December 2007 Download: Click here to download this paper from the Defra website This paper reviews the three major policy instruments operating in the UK to tackle carbon emissions – EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), Climate Change Agreements (CCAs), and the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), and aims to identify ways of eliminating avoidable overlap, simplifying existing regulations, and ensuring that the regulatory burden on the economy is kept to a minimum. |
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An introductory
guide to valuing ecosystem services Helen Dunn, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, December 2007 Download: Click here to download the Guide from the Defra website (PDF, 463 KB) Download: Click here to read Richard Price's comments at the launch of the UK Government's Ecosystems Approach Action Plan. Major policies have
both positive
and negative effects on different aspects of the environment, and
policy makers need to make difficult trade-offs between economic,
social and environmental priorities. That means we need analysis which
takes into account:
• how our existing use of
environmental assets degrades their condition; and how far consistent
over-consumption might jeopardise our ability to benefit from the
services they provide into the future - such as clean air and water,
temperature regulation, water management and biodiversity;
• the cumulative, complex
and
interacting pressures we put on the natural environment – recognising
the interdependencies between different parts of ecosystems; and
• allows us to take
account of the
full value of the benefits ecosystems provide when assessing the costs
and
benefits of policies. The Guide is intended to engage policymakers, economists and scientists across government and agencies to help them to take better account of the value of ecosystem services in policy appraisal. It sets out steps that can be applied in any policy context; a checklist of ecosystem services, and advice on which techniques can be used to value them.
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Quantifying
and valuing
ecosystem services
Prashant Vaze, Helen Dunn and Richard Price, UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, September 2006 This paper sets out the rationale for assessing the impact of improvements and degradation of environmental assets on our ability to consume the services they provide - affecting for example health, flood risk, and broader economic activity. It is the basis for Defra's underlying approach to ecosystems services. Download: Click here to download this paper (PDF, 626 KB) Link: Defra Economics and Analysis Series (Defra webpages)
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The economics of
the water environment and
river basin management: implementing the EU Water Framework Directive Richard Price The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive rests much more heavilly than previous EU regulation on the assessment of costs and benefits of different options for raising the quality of inland waters. The Directive comes at a time when both the UK and across the EU greater emphasis is being placed on minimising the administrative burden of regulation, and also making sure that compliance costs are justified in terms of the benefits we get in return. It is therefore critical to us that we understand fully how we maximise the benefits and minimise the costs. Economic evidence is critical to the This paper was the basis for a keynote address at the Defra-Environment Agency (UK) collaborative research programme workshop on river basin management economics. |
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| Evaluating
the costs
of implementing the European Commission’s proposed solvents directive
and the
scope for using economic instruments Bill Baker, Richard Price, Rebecca Reehal, Katy Anderson, NERA/Aspinwall, London, 1996. Commissioned by the UK Department of Environment, this study examined the costs of compliance with the European Commission's proposed Solvent Emissions Directive. It looked in particular at the potential for economic instruments to reduce the cost of compliance compared with a more traditional command and control regulatory approach. Weighing the likely cost savings against the practical drawbacks, the study concluded that a tradeable permit system was promising. Though an upstream tax was found to offer large resource cost savings, it was recognised that a tax would impose substantial new financial burdens on some firms. Moreover likely difficulties in preventing tax evasion and with designing a workable system of exemptions and refunds made it problematic in practice as a sole instrument for Directive compliance. However, a lower-level tax in combination with regulatory controls might offer some benefits. The process of designing economic instruments, which included analysis of the drivers of compliance costs, also suggested that large savings could be achieved by reconsidering the focus of regulatory control; ie: by making IPC-type regulation more cost-effective. The large potential for resource savings suggested that compliance cost analysis within an economic instruments framework would be usefully extended to other areas of pollution control. The full paper is not available online, but can be obtained from NERA Economic Consulting in London - details at: www.nera.com |
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