Pollution Emissions (pollution + emission)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


Accounting for Air Pollution Emissions in Measures of State Manufacturing Productivity Growth

JOURNAL OF REGIONAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2001
Rolf Färe
A Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index is employed to account for both marketed output and the output of pollution abatement activities of U.S. state manufacturing sectors for ,1986. The index allows us to decompose the change in productivity into measures of change in efficiency and technical change. By accounting for the change in emissions, average annual productivity growth is 3.6 percent, whereas it is 1.7 percent when emissions are ignored. We also find adjusted productivity growth improved after 1977, and "Frost Belt" states with rapidly growing manufacturing sectors have significantly higher rates of productivity growth than "Sun Belt" states with slow growing manufacturing sectors. [source]


Materials Metabolism Analysis of China's Highway Traffic System (HTS) for Promoting Circular Economy

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 4 2010
Zongguo Wen
Summary With the rapid growth of highway mileage and vehicles, the Chinese highway traffic system (HTS) has become one of the great resource consumers. This article attempts to evaluate the material metabolism of China's HTS during 2001,2005 using the approach of material flow analysis (MFA) and to explore possible measures to promote circular economy throughout HTS. We measured a set of indicators to illustrate the whole material metabolism of China's HTS. The results indicated that the direct material input (DMI) of China's HTS increased from 1181.26 million tonnes (Mt) in 2001 to 1,874.57 Mt in 2005, and about 80% of DMI was accumulated in the system as infrastructure and vehicles. The domestic processed output (DPO) increased by 59.0% from 2001 to 2005. Carbon dioxide and solid waste accounted for 80.5% and 10.4% of DPO, respectively. The increase of resource consumption and pollutant emissions kept pace with the growth of transportation turnover. All these suggest that China's HTS still followed an extensive linear developing pattern with large resource consumption and heavy pollution emissions during the study period, which brought great challenges to the resources and the environment. Therefore, it's high time for China to implement a circular economy throughout the HTS by instituting resource and energy savings, by reducing emissions in the field of infrastructure construction and maintenance, by reducing vehicles' energy and materials consumption, and by recycling waste materials. [source]


Pollution and Cost in the Coke-Making Supply Chain in Shanxi Province, China

JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL ECOLOGY, Issue 3-4 2002
Applying an Integrated System Model to Siting, Transportation Trade-Offs
Summary An integrated system trade-off model has been developed to assess costs and pollution associated with transportation in the coke-making supply chain in Shanxi Province, China. A transportation-flow, cost-minimization solver is combined with models for calculating coke-making plant costs, estimating transportation costs from a geographic information system road and rail database, and aggregating coke-making capacity among plants. Model outputs of economic cost, nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, and transport distributions are visualized using an Internet-based graphic user interface. Data for the model were collected on survey trips to Shanxi Province as well as from secondary references and proxies. The modularity and extensibility of the system trade-off model facilitate introduction of new data sets in order to examine various planning scenarios. Scenarios of coke-making plant aggregation, rail infrastructure improvement, and technology transfer were evaluated using the model. Costs and pollution emissions can be reduced by enlarging coke-making plants near the rail stations and closing down other plants. Preferential minimization of transportation costs gives a lower total cost than simply minimizing plant costs. Therefore, policy makers should consider transportation costs when planning the reallocation of coke-making capacity in Shanxi Province. Increasing rail-transport capacity is less effective than aggregating plant capacity. On the other hand, transfer of low-pollution truck technology results in a large emission reduction, however, reflecting the importance of truck transportation in the Shanxi Province coke-making industry. [source]


Pollution Abatement Investment When Environmental Regulation Is Uncertain

JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMIC THEORY, Issue 2 2000
Y.H. Farzin
In a dynamic model of a risk-neutral competitive firm that can lower its pollution emissions per unit of output by building up abatement capital stock, we examine the effect of a higher pollution tax rate on abatement investment both under full certainty and when the timing or the size of the tax increase is uncertain. We show that a higher pollution tax encourages abatement investment if it does not exceed a certain threshold rate. However, akin to the Diamond-Mirrlees tax anomaly, it is possible that a higher pollution tax rate results in more pollution. The magnitude uncertainty discourages abatement investment, but at the time of the actual tax increase the abatement investment path may shift either upward or downward. On the other hand, when the timing is uncertain, the abatement investment path always jumps upward, thus suggesting that the effect of magnitude uncertainty on the optimal investment path may be more pronounced than that of timing uncertainty. Further, we show that the ad hoc practice of raising the discount rate to account for the uncertainty leads to underinvestment in abatement capital. We show how the size of this underinvestment bias varies with the future tax increase. Finally, we show that a credible threat to accelerate the tax increase can induce more abatement investment. [source]


IS THERE UNIT ROOT IN THE NITROGEN OXIDES EMISSIONS: A MONTE CARLO INVESTIGATION?

NATURAL RESOURCE MODELING, Issue 1 2010
NINA S. JONES
Abstract Use of the time-series econometric techniques to investigate issues about environmental regulation requires knowing whether air pollution emissions are trend stationary or difference stationary. It has been shown that results regarding trend stationarity of the pollution data are sensitive to the methods used. I conduct a Monte Carlo experiment to study the size and power of two unit root tests that allow for a structural change in the trend at a known time using the data-generating process calibrated to the actual pollution series. I find that finite sample properties of the Perron test are better than the Park and Sung Phillips-Perron (PP) type test. Severe size distortions in the Park and Sung PP type test can explain the rejection of a unit root in air pollution emissions reported in some environmental regulation analyses. [source]


Environmental Performance Assessment of China's Manufacturing

ASIAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL, Issue 1 2010
Tao Zhang
O47; P28; R15 This paper applies the data envelopment analysis approach to contribute to the debate on the environmental performance of China's manufacturing sector. Regional and periodic differences in environmental efficiency, environmental quantity and environmental change indexes in China's manufacturing sector are examined for the period between 1998 and 2002. Within the framework of data envelopment analysis and distance functions, environmental quantity and environmental change indexes are measured as variants of the Malmquist quantity index. The overall environmental efficiency of China's manufacturing sector is very low, indicating substantial potential to reduce pollution emissions in China's manufacturing industries. The results and implications of this study can provide helpful information to improve the environmental performance of China's manufacturing sector. [source]


An integrated analysis of prospects for advanced coal-fired power technology in China

ASIA-PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, Issue 3 2010
Aijun Li
Abstract With energy-saving and pollution abatement policy becoming stricter and stronger, advanced coal-fired power technology will undoubtedly play a significant role in China for the new style in industrialization of power industry. In order to forecast coal consumption for power generation from the view of Chinese economic development, firstly this paper simulates total energy consumption and loss during energy transformation in 2030 by computable general equilibrium model. Then power generation by various advanced coal-fired power technologies such as air pollution controlling, green coal-fired power and combined heat and power (CHP) in 2030 is estimated, thus their effects on abatement of air pollution emissions are assessed. Finally, some policy suggestions are given for developing highly efficient and super clean coal-fired power technology in China. Copyright © 2009 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


TECHNOLOGY CHOICE AND ENVIRONMENTAL AWARENESS IN A TRADE AND ENVIRONMENT CONTEXT,

AUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC PAPERS, Issue 3 2009
AKIRA YAKITA
Assuming that an environmentally-friendly technology not only reduces pollution emissions but also strengthens the preference of consumers for goods produced with such a technology, we show that a legally stipulated choice of cleaner technologies, requiring resources and hence reducing output, can improve the welfare of the economy even when other economies do not choose such technologies, and that the driving force can be the terms-of-trade effect. Therefore, even a unilateral regulation on the choice of technology would be approved in the economy when the environmental awareness of consumers is sufficiently raised. [source]