Benchmarking and Regulation of Electricity Transmission and Distribution Utilities: Lessons from International Experience

Since the early 1980's, many countries have implemented electricity sector reform, many of which have bundled generation, transmission, distribution and supply activities, and have introduced competition in generation and supply. An increasing number of countries are also adopting incentive regulation to promote efficiency improvement in the natural monopoly activities - transmission and distribution. Incentive regulation almost invariably involves benchmarking or comparison of actual vs. some reference performance. This paper reviews the main approaches to incentive regulation and discusses various benchmarking methods. We also present the finding of a survey of the use of benchmarking methods in the OECD and few other countries. Our survey finds a variety of methods used by the electricity regulators although with a notable preference for the non-parametric methods. We then draw conclusions based on the finding of the survey highlighting the main outstanding issues and lessons for best practice implementation of benchmarking in electricity regulation

Integrated Environmental Process Planning for the Design & Manufacture of Automotive Components

Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) logic is widely used by manufacturers for the design and manufacture of automotive components. Manufacturers are increasingly finding difficulties to incorporate environmental considerations in the broad range of products that they manufacture. Therefore, there is a need for a systematic method for environmental process planning to evaluate product configurations and their associated environmental impact. The framework and models discussed in this paper can deal with a variety of product characteristics and environmental impacts through a selection of Environmental Performance Indicators (EPIs) for a final product configuration. The framework and models have been applied in a real-life application and have proven that changes in product design or process selection can reduce the product's environmental impact and increase process efficiency. Hence, manufacturers can use the framework and models during the Advanced Product Quality Planning (APQP) process to benchmark each product variation that they manufacture in a standardised manner and realise cost saving opportunities

Environmental assessment tools for the evaluation and improvement of European livestock production systems

Different types of assessment tools have been developed in Europe with the purpose of determining the environmental impact of various livestock production systems at farm level. The assessment tools differ in terms of which environmental objectives are included and how indicators are constructed and interpreted. The paper compares typical tools for environmental assessment of livestock production systems, and recommends selected indicators suitable for benchmarking. The assessment tools used very different types of indicators ranging from descriptions of farm management and quantification of input to estimates of emissions of, e.g., nitrate and ammonia. The indicators should be useful in a benchmarking process where farmers may improve their practices through learning from farms with better agri-environmental performance. An example of this is given using data on P-surplus on pig farms. Some indicators used the area of the farm as the basis of the indicator — e.g. nitrogen surplus per hectare — while others were expressed per unit produced, e.g. emission of greenhouse gasses per kilogram milk. The paper demonstrates that a comparison of organic vs. conventional milk production and comparison of three pig production systems give different results, depending on the basis of the indicators (i.e. per hectare or per kilogram product). Indicators linked to environmental objectives with a local or regional geographical target should be area-based — while indicators with a global focus should be product-based. It is argued that the choice of indicators should be linked with the definition of the system boundaries, in the sense that area-based indicators should include emissions on the farm only, whereas product-based indicators should preferably include emissions from production of farm inputs, as well as the inputs on the actual farm. The paper ends with recommendations for choice of agri-environmental indicators taking into account the geographical scale, system boundary and method of interpretation

Assessing and benchmarking the performance of advanced building facades

This chapter describes the energy demand reshaping and supply technologies that may be encapsulated within an advanced building façade - for example, transparent and breathable insulation, advanced glazing, daylight capture, photovoltaic components and ducted wind turbines. Laboratory testing techniques for the characterisation of the fundamental parameters underlying each technology are elaborated as the essential prerequisite of integrated performance appraisals of specific technology combinations within an advanced façade design context. Based on the results from simulations undertaken in the UK climate context, performance benchmarks are suggested for some principal façade configurations