Coal mining areas: environmental issues and solutions (on the example of Kuzbass)

Rozdział z: Functioning of the Local Production Systems in Central and Eastern European Countries and Siberia. Case Studies and Comparative Studies, ed. Mariusz E. Sokołowicz.Having survived restructuring period during which the volume of production halved, since 1999 the coal industry has seen a significant growth of its production. However, the positive trends are accompanied by negative impacts for the environment. Further growth of coal has its limits both from economic and ecological points of view. This paper focuses on the environmental side of the issue, particularly on problems of emissions and wastes producing by coal mining and withdrawal of lands from land use. For Kuzbass as the first in Russia coal mining area, the impact of the coal industry on the environment is excessive, and consequently those problems are particularly acute. To solve the complex of environmental issues, it is necessary to raise environmental performance to a new qualitative level. That will require more financial, technological legislative and managerial decisions.Monograph financed under a contract of execution of the international scientific project within 7th Framework Programme of the European Union, co-financed by Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education (title: “Functioning of the Local Production Systems in the Conditions of Economic Crisis (Comparative Analysis and Benchmarking for the EU and Beyond”)). Monografia sfinansowana w oparciu o umowę o wykonanie projektu między narodowego w ramach 7. Programu Ramowego UE, współfinansowanego ze środków Ministerstwa Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego (tytuł projektu: „Funkcjonowanie lokalnych systemów produkcyjnych w warunkach kryzysu gospodarczego (analiza porównawcza i benchmarking w wybranych krajach UE oraz krajach trzecich”))

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

Design and implementation of a resource consumption benchmarking system for wastewater treatment plants

Energy and water are inextricably linked, and together they are the two of the most valuable global resources. Internationally, the links between the energy, wastewater and water sectors are attracting increasing attention. In the wastewater sector, pressures including increasingly stringent environmental regulations and greater volumes of wastewater being produced and treated are a major challenge. These challenges mean that, without intervention, wastewater treatment facilities will become more resource intensive and may increasingly exceed environmental requirements, such as discharge limits. These issues are set against the backdrop, in many countries, of an emphasis on cost reduction and increased concerns regarding sustainability of the sector. Thus it is imperative that tools and methodologies are developed that allow the wastewater sector to measure resource efficiency, benchmark its performance in a standardised and efficient manner and identify cost-effective measures that can improve plant performance. This research presents a novel resource benchmarking system for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). This toolkit is designed to be easily implemented and effective in enabling benchmarking of WWTPs with varying capacity, technology, sampling frequency and management practices. The research considers both centralised and decentralised facilities (manned and unmanned) and investigates the challenges of benchmarking plants where routine monitoring is sporadic

Methodological issues concerning the development of sustainable industrial parks

Nowadays, in order to make a sustainable economic growth possible, especially within manufacturing industries, with auspicious effects concerning the standard of living and the employment rates, the governments should develop and implement projects and strategies, aiming the transition towards knowledge-based economy. The entities that need investments the most are the countries which are crossing a development process, usually facing difficulties in developing a high-performance industrial sector. Under these circumstances, industrial parks prove to be important tools in order to ensure the competitiveness of the national industry. However, the more and more frequent relocation of industrial companies within industrial parks, as a consequence of amplifying the urban areas’ environmental regulations, is due to generate uncontrollable pollution centers, placed just nearby towns and cities, with highly destructive impact upon the environment. This article aims to describe and recommend several strategic options for developing sustainable industrial parks, focused on protecting the environment and promoting the “new economy’s” principles. Among the strategic options recommended, some of them are highly innovative, such as environmental benchmarking or environmental leadership.industrial parks, sustainable development, environment protection, environmental economics, environmental leaders, SME’s development, pro-active environment strategies.

Benchmarking Electricity Liberalisation in Europe

In this paper, we discuss the choice and use of benchmarks in each of five areas relevant to an assessment of the progress of EU electricity sector liberalisation. These areas are market design, market power, EU enlargement, regulation, and sustainability. Our aim is to discuss the most important benchmarks for each area, and to do so in the context of that area. Where a benchmark can be used as a signal that things are going well (or badly) we will discuss the values associated with a good (or bad) signal. This paper forms part of the final report of the EU funded Sustainable Energy Specific Support Assessment project (SESSA, see www.sessa.eu.com)

Reference Models and Incentive Regulation of Electricity Distribution Networks: An Evaluation of Sweden’s Network Performance Assessment Model (NPAM)

The world-wide electricity sector reforms have led to a search for alternative and innovative approaches to regulation to promote efficiency improvement in the natural monopoly electricity networks. A number of countries have used incentive regulation models based on efficiency benchmarking of the electricity network utilities. While most regulators have opted adopted parametric and non-parametric frontier-based methods of benchmarking some have used engineering designed ‘reference firm’ or ‘norm’ models for the purpose. This paper examines the incentive properties and other related aspects of the norm model NPAM used in regulation of distribution networks in Sweden and compares these with those of frontier-based benchmarking methods. We identify a number of important differences between the two approaches to regulation benchmarking that are not readily apparent and discuss their ramifications for the regulatory objectives and process

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

Strategic Behaviour under Regulation Benchmarking

Liberalisation of generation and supply activities in the electricity sectors is often followed by regulatory reform of distribution networks. In order to improve the efficiency of distribution utilities, some regulators have adopted incentive regulation schemes that rely on performance benchmarking. Although regulation benchmarking can influence the �regulation game�, the subject has received limited attention. This paper discusses how strategic behaviour can result in inefficient behaviour by firms. We also present a survey of issues encountered by electricity regulators. We then use the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) method with US utility data to examine implications of selected cases of strategic behaviour. The results show that gaming can have significant effects on the measured performance and profitability of firms

EU and OECD benchmarking and peer review compared

Benchmarking and peer review are essential elements of the so-called EU open method of coordination (OMC) which has been contested in the literature for lack of effectiveness. In this paper we compare benchmarking and peer review procedures as used by the EU with those used by the OECD. Different types of benchmarking and peer review are distinguished and pitfalls for (international) benchmarking are discussed. We find that the OECD has a clear single objective for its benchmarking and peer review activities (i.e. horizontal policy transfers) whereas the EU suffers from a mix of objectives (a. horizontal policy learning; b. EU wide vertical policy coordination and c. multilateral monitoring and surveillance under the shadow of hierarchy). Whereas the OECD is able to skirt around most of the benchmarking pitfalls, this is not the case for the EU. It is argued that, rather than continue working with the panacea OMC benchmarking and peer review currently represents, EU benchmarking should take a number of more distinct shapes in order to improve effectiveness. Moreover, in some areas benchmarking and peer review are not sufficient coordination tools, and are at best additional to those means of coordination that include enforceable sanctions