Monetary Policy Roundtable

On 8 June, the Bank of England and the Centre for Economic Policy Research jointly hosted a Monetary Policy Roundtable.

Interpreting recent movements in sterling

The sterling effective exchange rate has depreciated significantly since the start of the financial market crisis in August 2007. Movements in sterling affect UK monetary policy via their potential impacts on CPI inflation prospects, where it is important to consider the reasons behind the change in the exchange rate. Sterling’s movements potentially reflect a wide range of factors in the United Kingdom and overseas, in both the real economy and in financial markets. Indicative evidence suggests that sterling’s depreciation reflected a combination of perceived changes to UK relative cyclical prospects, the perceived riskiness of UK assets and the apparent need for the UK economy to rebalance, the effects of which may have been amplified by financial market factors. But there is substantial uncertainty about the precise role of each factor.

Global imbalances and the financial crisis

The recent financial crisis has put the spotlight on the rapid rise in credit which preceded it and the macroeconomic context in which it developed. This article examines the contribution of international savings and investment imbalances to the crisis and how these imbalances have evolved since its onset, focusing on the UK experience as a deficit country over the past decade. It also briefly discusses some implications of the crisis for global imbalances over the medium term.

PopFor : A new model for estimating poplar yields

Yield and soil data for this project has been supplied by Rainer Schlepphorst, Holger Hartmann and Dieter Murach from HNEE, Germany, from the BIODEM project. Soil water and groundwater data were supplied by Markus Schmidt, HNEE, Germany. We would like to thank Shell and the University of Aberdeen CLSM for funding this work with a studentship. The MiscanFor modelling was supported by UK NERC ADVENT (NE/1806209) and FAB-GGR (NE/P019951/1) project funding.Peer reviewedPostprin

Mapping the global potential exposure of soaring birds to terrestrial wind energy expansion

The wind energy sector is steadily growing, and the number of wind turbines is expected to expand across large areas of the globe in the near future. While the development of wind energy can contribute to mitigating climate change, it also poses challenges to wildlife, particularly birds, due to increased collision risk with wind turbines. Here we quantify and map potential conflicts between the potential for wind energy development and the distribution of terrestrial soaring birds. We explore the relationship between species traits (including body mass, migration ecology and extinction risk) and exposure to potential wind energy development, and identified areas of potential conflict between wind power production and soaring bird conservation. We considered the full range of each species, as well as separately analyzing the breeding, non-breeding and passage ranges for migratory species. We show that exposure to potential wind energy development is similar for soaring and non-soaring bird species. Within different parts of the range of soaring bird species, passage distributions have significantly higher potential for wind energy development than the full, breeding or non-breeding ranges. Moreover, exposure to potential wind energy development was higher within the ranges of heavier soaring bird species and those that are migratory. We show that areas of conflict between soaring bird conservation and potential wind energy development could be very large, particularly when the passage ranges of soaring bird species are considered. Such areas of potential conflict are largely unprotected. This highlights a risk for soaring birds from potential wind energy development wherever it is not carefully sited in order to minimise environmental impacts.Peer reviewe

Open infrastructure planning for emergency and urgent care

This paper stems from the development of research currently undertaken at the Bartlett, University College London and Loughborough University School of Civil and Building Engineering, Open Scenario Planning for Healthcare Infrastructure (OPHI). The study has investigated the concepts, tools and techniques that enable innovation and support the financial planning of built infrastructure. The aim is to improve decisionmaking for healthcare pathways across locations and settings through development of a framework for the rationalisation of existing property and buildings. Evidence and analysis is drawn from case studies of Accident & Emergency/Trauma, Urgent Care and service re-organisation within six English Foundation Trust Hospitals, examining their strategic estates planning approach. The study sets out a process to determine scenarios of a shifting pattern of patientcentered requirements and clinical priorities by testing strategic options for clinical effectiveness rather than functional arrangements. The ideas and direction of the research were also supported by case studies from elsewhere in Europe. Most notably, at the Inselspital (Island Hospital) in Switzerland, the Canton of Bern has set out a 2025 to 2060 strategy for an 'Open Development Framework'. Organised through principles of Open Building this directs the future development of the hospital as a set of high-level objectives driven by clinical priorities incorporating planning and design innovation through the mapping of two divergent operational scenarios. The paper sets out the findings of the study with the Trusts in England that respond to these emerging radical solutions and the appropriateness of their introduction within the context of UK service reorganisation for patient-centred, integrated care overcoming organisational commissioning boundaries. Findings suggest the emergence of new, clinically-led business units, supported by mobile multi-disciplinary teams on and off-site, for the planning of admission avoidance, referral patterns and long term care of chronic conditions. This work is informing an outcome for a Strategic Scenario Planning Framework to enable decisions based on explicit values of stakeholders, together with the specific competencie

The household economic burden for acute coronary syndrome survivors in Australia

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.Background: Studies of chronic diseases are associated with a financial burden on households. We aimed to determine if survivors of acute coronary syndrome (ACS) experience household economic burden and to quantify any potential burden by examining level of economic hardship and factors associated with hardship. Methods: Australian patients admitted to hospital with ACS during 2-week period in May 2012, enrolled in SNAPSHOT ACS audit and who were alive at 18 months after index admission were followed-up via telephone/paper survey. Regression models were used to explore factors related to out-of-pocket expenses and economic hardship. Results: Of 1833 eligible patients at baseline, 180 died within 18 months, and 702 patients completed the survey. Mean out-of-pocket expenditure (n = 614) in Australian dollars was A$258.06 (median: A$126.50) per month. The average spending for medical services was A$120.18 (SD: A$310.35) and medications was A$66.25 (SD: A$80.78). In total, 350 (51 %) of patients reported experiencing economic hardship, 78 (12 %) were unable to pay for medical services and 81 (12 %) could not pay for medication. Younger age (18–59 vs ≥80 years (OR): 1.89), no private health insurance (OR: 2.04), pensioner concession card (OR: 1.80), residing in more disadvantaged area (group 1 vs 5 (OR): 1.77), history of CVD (OR: 1.47) and higher out-of-pocket expenses (group 4 vs 1 (OR): 4.57) were more likely to experience hardship. Conclusion: Subgroups of ACS patients are experiencing considerable economic burden in Australia. These findings provide important considerations for future policy development in terms of the cost of recommended management for patients

Mitigation potential and environmental impact of centralized versus distributed BECCS with domestic biomass production in Great Britain

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This work was carried out under the UK Energy Research Council (UKERC)‐funded project ‘Assessing potential, feasibility and impacts of Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) in the UK (Access‐BECCS)’. We thank Dr Ajay Gambhir for valuable comments and discussion.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Global change synergies and trade-offs between renewable energy and biodiversity

Reliance on fossil fuels is causing unprecedented climate change and is accelerating environmental degradation and global biodiversity loss. Together, climate change and biodiversity loss, if not averted urgently, may inflict severe damage on ecosystem processes, functions and services that support the welfare of modern societies. Increasing renewable energy deployment and expanding the current protected area network represent key solutions to these challenges, but conflicts may arise over the use of limited land for energy production as opposed to biodiversity conservation. Here, we compare recently identified core areas for the expansion of the global protected area network with the renewable energy potential available from land-based solar photovoltaic, wind energy and bioenergy (in the form of Miscanthusxgiganteus). We show that these energy sources have very different biodiversity impacts and net energy contributions. The extent of risks and opportunities deriving from renewable energy development is highly dependent on the type of renewable source harvested, the restrictions imposed on energy harvest and the region considered, with Central America appearing at particularly high potential risk from renewable energy expansion. Without restrictions on power generation due to factors such as production and transport costs, we show that bioenergy production is a major potential threat to biodiversity, while the potential impact of wind and solar appears smaller than that of bioenergy. However, these differences become reduced when energy potential is restricted by external factors including local energy demand. Overall, we found that areas of opportunity for developing solar and wind energy with little harm to biodiversity could exist in several regions of the world, with the magnitude of potential impact being particularly dependent on restrictions imposed by local energy demand. The evidence provided here helps guide sustainable development of renewable energy and contributes to the targeting of global efforts in climate mitigation and biodiversity conservation.Peer reviewe

High resolution spatial modelling of greenhouse gas emissions from land use change to energy crops in the UK

We implemented a spatial application of a previously evaluated model of soil GHG emissions, ECOSSE, in the United Kingdom to examine the impacts to 2050 of land-use transitions from existing land use, rotational cropland, permanent grassland or woodland, to six bioenergy crops; three ‘first-generation’ energy crops: oilseed rape, wheat and sugar beet, and three ‘second-generation’ energy crops: Miscanthus, short rotation coppice willow (SRC) and short rotation forestry poplar (SRF). Conversion of rotational crops to Miscanthus, SRC and SRF and conversion of permanent grass to SRF show beneficial changes in soil GHG balance over a significant area. Conversion of permanent grass to Miscanthus, permanent grass to SRF and forest to SRF shows detrimental changes in soil GHG balance over a significant area. Conversion of permanent grass to wheat, oilseed rape, sugar beet and SRC and all conversions from forest show large detrimental changes in soil GHG balance over most of the United Kingdom, largely due to moving from uncultivated soil to regular cultivation. Differences in net GHG emissions between climate scenarios to 2050 were not significant. Overall, SRF offers the greatest beneficial impact on soil GHG balance. These results provide one criterion for selection of bioenergy crops and do not consider GHG emission increases/decreases resulting from displaced food production, bio-physical factors (e.g. the energy density of the crop) and socio-economic factors (e.g. expenditure on harvesting equipment). Given that the soil GHG balance is dominated by change in soil organic carbon (SOC) with the difference among Miscanthus, SRC and SRF largely determined by yield, a target for management of perennial energy crops is to achieve the best possible yield using the most appropriate energy crop and cultivar for the local situation