An evaluation of the ecology and riparian management of the south branch of the Whareroa Stream, Paekakariki : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Applied Science in Natural Resource Management at Massey University

Whareroa Farm, Mackays Crossing, Paekakariki, was bought by the Department of Conservation in 2005. The goal was to effect the restoration of a corridor for flora and fauna from the Akatarawa Forest in the east to Queen Elizabeth Park and the sea in the west. The south branch of the Whareroa Stream, which arises as a series of tributaries from a ridge 272m above sea level, traverses Whareroa Farm and the adjacent Queen Elizabeth Park. It was thought likely that the stream had been severely affected ecologically during a century of cattle and sheep farming, though the degree to which the ecological degradation had occurred was unknown. Obvious deforestation and land use changes suggested that, in concert with many other New Zealand hill country farms, the ecological changes would be significant. To establish and quantify the degree of degradation, the Auckland Regional Council (ARC) Stream Environment Valuation (SEV) protocol was applied to the Whareroa Stream and its tributaries. Five sites were selected for valuation, varying from open pasture to bush covered and open parkland. The resulting SEV scores showed losses of ecological value ranging from 32% to 46% across the sites. The Macroinvertebrate Community Index (MCI) and the fish Index of Biological Integrity (IBI) were measured at each site. Results indicated that aquatic habitats were unable to sustain adequate assemblages at four of the five sites. The valuations of the riparian zones at each site used the River Environment Classification (REC) and Riparian Management Classification (RMC) protocols. The results indicated that current riparian characteristics showed poor to absent effective riparian zones from the headwaters to the sea at all sites. Riparian zones are pivotal to the provision of stream ecological integrity and are responsible for maintaining the longitudinal, lateral and vertical connectivity between a stream, its network and its surrounding land. The loss of in-stream organic matter from lack of riparian vegetation together with the loss of effective temperature control from lack of shade, impacts negatively on the habitats for macroinvertebrates and fish. This was highlighted in the Whareroa Stream network. While the SEV and RMC evaluations showed that, with best practice management plans, there was great potential for improvement of the Whareroa Stream ecology, any riparian restoration would require sympathetic and improved fencing, withdrawal of stock from stream access and the retirement of headwater land from pastoral use. The loss of ecological integrity that occurs as a result of prolonged land use changes from forest to agriculture is well illustrated by the situation in the south branch of the Whareroa Stream and its tributaries

Getting on the Map: The Political Economy of State-Level Electricity Restructuring

Retail competition in electricity markets is expected to lead to more efficient electricity supply, lower electricity prices, more innovation by suppliers and a greater variety of electric power service packages. However, only a handful of states have currently gone so far as to pass legislation and/or make regulatory decisions to establish retail wheeling. This paper analyzes a variety of factors that may influence the rate at which legislators and regulators move towards establishing retail competition. In general, we find that where one interest group dominates others in the struggle for influence over the decision makers, the net effect seems to push a state forward more quickly when retail wheeling is expected to yield large efficiency gains.

Upstream Pollution, Downstream Waste Disposal, and the Design of Comprehensive Environmental Policies

Many environmentalists and policymakers are shifting their focus from media-specific pollution problems to product-specific, life-cycle environmental problems. In this paper, we develop a model of production and consumption that incorporates life-cycle environmental externalities—specifically, an upstream manufacturing byproduct, air or water pollution from manufacturing, and downstream solid waste disposal. We then use the model to derive optimal government policies to address all three externalities. We assume throughout that a Pigovian tax on waste disposal is precluded because of the potential for illegal dumping. We then examine four cases: one in which Pigovian taxes on the upstream externalities are feasible, one in which such taxes are infeasible, and two final cases in which the upstream pollutant is subject to one of two different types of regulatory standards. In general, we find that no single instrument can solve multiple problems, contrary to what some observers have suggested. However, we find that there are alternative ways of reaching the social optimum. We also discover that a so-called "integrated" approach to policy appears to be important, no matter what policy options are adopted. And finally, we find that there is only a limited role for product "life-cycle assessments"—enumerations of all of the resources used and pollutants emitted throughout an entire product life-cycle.

Cost-Effectiveness of Renewable Electricity Policies

We analyze policies to promote renewable sources of electricity. A renewable portfolio standard raises electricity prices and primarily reduces gas-fired generation. A “knee” of the cost curve exists between 15% and 20% goals for 2020 in our central case, and higher natural gas prices lower the cost of greater reliance on renewables. A renewable energy production tax credit lowers electricity price at the expense of taxpayers and thus limits its effectiveness in reducing carbon emissions; it also is less costeffective at increasing renewables than a portfolio standard. Neither policy is as cost-effective as a capand-trade policy for achieving carbon emissions reductions.renewable energy, electricity, renewable portfolio standard, carbon dioxide

Electricity Restructuring and Regional Air Pollution

This paper investigates the regional air pollution effects that could result from new opportunities for inter-regional power transmission in the wake of more competitive electricity markets. The regional focus is important because of great regional variation in the vintage, efficiency and plant utilization rates of existing generating capacity, as well as differences in emission rates, cost of generation and electricity price. Increased competition in generation could open the door to changes in the regional profile of generation and emissions. We characterize the key determinant of changes in electricity generation and transmission as the relative cost of electricity among neighboring regions. In general, low cost regions are expected to export power generated by existing coal-fired facilities to higher cost regions. The key determinant of how much additional power would be traded is the uncommitted electricity transfer capability between regions, including its possible future expansion. The changes in emissions of NOx and CO2 that result are modeled as a function of the average emission rate for each pollutant in each region, coupled with assumptions about the extent of displacement of nuclear or coal-fired generation in the importing regions. Finally, we employ an atmospheric transport model to predict the changes in atmospheric concentrations of in each region as a consequence of changes in generation for inter-regional transmission. In the year 2000, we estimate national emission changes for NOx could increase by 213,000 to 478,900 tons under the scenarios we think most likely, compared to the baseline. Under our benchmark scenario, we find national emissions of NOx would increase by 349,900 tons. The changes in NOx emissions should be considered in the context of an expected decrease in annual emissions nationally of over 2 million tons that will result from full implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments over the next few years. The increase in emissions that we estimate serve to undo a small portion of the expected improvement in air quality that would occur otherwise. Nonetheless, these changes would yield relative increases in atmospheric concentrations of particulates with measurable adverse health effects. We estimate the consequences for increased national CO2 emissions will range from 75 to 133.9 million tons. Our benchmark suggests an increase of 113.50 million tons, equal in magnitude to about 40% of the reductions needed by the year 2000 under the Climate Change Action Plan. Our estimate of NOx emission changes is less than other studies, with the exception of the FERC EIS, primarily because we explicitly take into account capacity constraints on inter-regional transmission and use different emission rates. Our estimate is greater than the FERC EIS because we allow for a portion of the power generated for inter-regional transmission to meet new demand stimulated by an anticipated decline in price. Second, we allow a portion of imported power to back out higher cost nuclear rather than fossil baseload. These are important economic changes that we believe will characterize a more competitive industry, and which point toward potentially more significant environmental consequences than recognized in the FERC EIS. Because we focus on increased generation from coal facilities, we characterize our findings as a worst case interim outcome under restructuring. However, we also think it is the most likely result of increased competition resulting from industry restructuring over the next few years. Our estimated emission changes are compared with those of previous studies in Table 13. The features of these various studies are summarized in Table 1. Our analysis of alternative scenarios yields considerable variation in the predicted levels of emissions and where they occur. This leads us to offer our results with caution, and to have less confidence in the outcomes of previous studies because of the sensitivity of results to the variety of factors that we think important. One of the central questions in the restructuring debate concerns what would happen to air quality in regions neighboring those where generation may increase, with special concern focused on potential changes in the Northeast. We find the changes in pollutant concentrations resulting from changes in NOx emissions (excluding secondary ozone changes) would be substantially greater in regions where generation is increasing than in neighboring regions. The region likely to experience the largest adverse changes in air quality resulting from changes in generation is the Ohio Valley (the ECAR power pool region). For instance, in our benchmark scenario, the population weighted changes in atmospheric concentration of nitrates is 2-3 times as great in the Ohio Valley and the Southeast (SERC) as in the Mid-Atlantic region (MAAC) and 3-4 times as great as in the Northeast (NPCC). These results are reported in Tables 11a and 11b, and illustrated graphically in Figure 2 of the conclusion. The likelihood of adverse impacts on NOx and nitrate concentrations in some regions as a result of restructuring suggests the need for a policy response to ensure that electricity restructuring does not lead to significant environmental degradation in any one area. If these changes merit a regulatory response, the regional variation in effects, and various sources of uncertainty about effects that may result, suggest the need for a flexible policy. One flexible approach that would ensure that changes do not lead to significant environmental degradation in any one area, while also avoiding unnecessary investments where emission changes do not occur, would be an intra- regional cap and trade program for NOx emissions from electric utilities. However, such an industry-specific program should be eclipsed if a more comprehensive program can be implemented by EPA permitting cost savings from inter-industry trades.

Extended Product Responsibility: An Economic Assessment of Alternative Policies

Extended Product Responsibility embodies the notion that agents along a product chain should share responsibility for the life-cycle environmental impacts of the product, including those associated with ultimate disposal. Extended Producer Responsibility is a narrower concept which places responsibility on producers and focuses primarily on post-consumer waste disposal. Manufacturer "take-back" requirements are the policy lever most often associated with Extended Producer Responsibility. In this paper, the authors discuss alternative incentive-based policies that are consistent with the objectives of Extended Product and Producer Responsibility. They argue that an upstream combined product tax and recycling subsidy (UCTS) is generally more cost-effective and imposes fewer transactions costs than the take-back approach. They also consider the strengths and weaknesses of a policy not targeted at producers: unit-based pricing of residential waste collection and disposal. The authors find that this option shows potential for achieving non-trivial reductions in solid waste. Widespread application in the U.S. of a $1.00 charge per 32-gallon bag could reduce total municipal solid waste disposed by approximately 13 percent per year.

Energy-Efficiency Program Evaluations: Opportunities for Learning and Inputs to Incentive Mechanisms

We analyze the evaluations of California energy-efficiency programs to assess the effectiveness of these evaluations in: 1) improving our understanding of their performance and 2) providing a check on utility incentives to overstate energy savings. We find that third-party evaluations are useful tools to achieve both ends because the programs largely did not meet their energy-savings projections, and the utility-reported savings estimates are systematically higher than the evaluated savings estimates. We also find evidence that the choice of the third-party evaluator was influential in determining the estimate of evaluated savings.energy efficiency, third-party evaluation, energy-savings measurement

Energy Efficiency Resource Standards: Economics and Policy

Twenty states in the United States have adopted energy efficiency resource standards (EERS) that specify absolute or per¬centage reductions in energy use relative to business as usual. We examine how an EERS compares to policies oriented to meeting objectives, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, cor¬recting for consumer error in energy efficiency investment, or reducing peak de¬mand absent real-time prices. If reducing energy use is a policy goal, one could use energy taxes or cap-and-trade systems rather than an EERS. An EERS can be optimal under special conditions, but to achieve optimal goals following energy efficiency investments, the marginal external harm must fall with greater energy use. This could happen if inframarginal energy has greater negative externalities, particularly regarding emissions, than energy employed at the margin.energy efficiency resource standards, energy efficiency, electricity, conservation

Modeling a Clean Energy Standard for Electricity: Policy Design Implications for Emissions, Supply, Prices, and Regions

The electricity sector is responsible for roughly 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and a shift away from conventional coal-fired generation is an important component of the U.S. strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Toward that goal, several proposals for a clean energy standard (CES) have been put forth, including one espoused by the Obama administration that calls for 80 percent clean electricty by 2035 phased in from current levels of roughly 40 percent. This paper looks at the effects of such a policy on CO2 emissions from the electricity sector, the mix of technologies used to supply electricity, electricity prices, and regional flows of clean energy credits. The CES leads to a 30 percent reduction in cumulative CO2 emissions between 2013 and 2035 and results in dramatic reductions in generation from conventional coal. The policy also results in fairly modest increases on national electricity prices, but this masks a wide variety of effects across regions.renewables, climate, clean energy standard

Allocation of CO2 Emissions Allowances in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Cap-and-Trade Program

Cap-and-trade programs for air emissions have become the widely accepted, preferred approach to cost-effective pollution reduction. One of the important design questions in a trading program is how to initially distribute the emissions allowances. Under the Acid Rain program created by Title IV of the Clean Air Act, most emissions allowances were distributed to current emitters on the basis of a historic measure of electricity generation in an approach known as grandfathering. Recent proposals have suggested two alternative approaches: allocation according to a formula that is updated over time according to some performance metric in a recent year (the share of electricity generation or something else) and auctioning allowances to the highest bidders. Prior research has shown that the manner in which allowances for carbon dioxide (CO2) are initially distributed can have substantial effects on the social cost of the policy as well as on who wins and who loses as a result of the policy. Another concern with a regional cap-and-trade program like the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the effect that different approaches to allocating emissions allowances will have on the level of CO2 emissions outside the region, commonly called emissions leakage. In this research we model historic, auction, and updating approaches to allowance allocation that we call bookends, then model various variations on these approaches. We consider changes in measures such as electricity price, the mix of generation technologies, and the emissions of conventional pollutants inside and outside the RGGI region. We examine the social cost of the program, measured as the change in economic surplus, which is the type of measure used in benefit–cost analysis. We also examine the effects of different approaches to distributing allowances on the net present value of generation assets inside and outside the RGGI region. We find that how allowances are allocated has an effect on electricity price, consumption, and the mix of technologies used to generate electricity. Electricity price increases the most with a historic or auction approach. Coal-fired generation in the RGGI region decreases under all approaches but decreases the most under updating. Gas-fired generation decreases under historic and auction approaches but increases substantially under updating. Renewable generation increases under historic and auction approaches but decreases slightly under updating as a consequence of the expanded generation from gas. Consistent with the changes in the composition of generation, the decline in emissions of conventional pollutants including sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and mercury that was expected as a result of the Clean Air Interstate Rule is accelerated substantially as a result of the RGGI policy, particularly under updating. The cost of complying with SO2, NOx, and mercury rules declines similarly. We find that the social costs of the bookend auction and historic approaches are comparable and that the social cost of updating is roughly three times that of the other approaches. At the same time, updating yields greater emissions reductions on a national basis (because it produces less emissions leakage) and greater cumulative reductions in emissions at the national level than historic allocation. Varying the design of the updating approach can reduce its social costs but generally would increase leakage at the same time. An updating approach with allocation to all generators, including all nuclear and renewables has the lowest social cost within the RGGI region of any policy analyzed, although this result comes at the expense of costs imposed outside the region. When the approaches to allocation are mixed, we find the changes in electricity price, generation, and emissions are roughly a combination of the performance of each individual approach. In particular, social costs typically are lower under the scenarios that combine an auction with updating than when updating is the exclusive approach to distributing allowances. Who wins and who loses from the policy varies with the approach to allocation. Under a historic approach, producers in the RGGI region gain substantially and generally are better off than without the program; such is not true under an auction or updating. Producers also gain overall from the policy when a historic allocation is combined with an auction, but the gains are substantially less than in the 100% historic case. Producers outside the region tend to benefit considerably from the higher electricity price in the RGGI region but benefit the least under updating because the effect on electricity price is lowest. Consumers both inside and outside the RGGI region are adversely affected under all allocation approaches but much less so under updating because the change in electricity price is lowest. One exception is when eligibility for allowances under an updating allocation is limited to nonemitters only, in which case the electricity price increases substantially. Different types of generators fare differently under the various allocation approaches. Asset values for all types of generators are highest under a historic approach, although the difference between historic and auction approaches is small for nuclear generators. Compared with the baseline, both nuclear and existing gas-fired generators in the RGGI region gain under an auction. Only gas-fired generators gain under the bookend approach to updating, although nuclear generators benefit as well under updating designs that include them among those eligible for allowances. Coal-fired generators lose the most under updating. Moving from 100% updating to auctioning an increasingly larger share of allowances generally has a positive effect on asset values for all fuel types including coal. The one exception is that moving from 50% auction and 50% updating to 100% auction has a negative effect on the asset values for coal. Finally, we conduct sensitivity analyses with higher natural gas prices and constraints on electricity transmission capability. The social cost of the RGGI program does not appear to be sensitive to these constraints. Higher gas prices or transmission constraints alone impose significant costs that are larger than the effect of adding the RGGI policy. For example, their substantial effect on electricity price is greater than the added effect imposed by the RGGI program. The constraints that are modeled do not appear to have a strong impact on RGGI implementation. We also conduct a sensitivity analysis with renewables portfolio standard policies in place throughout the region. The resulting prices of electricity and CO2 emissions allowances are slightly lower than without the renewables policy.emissions trading, allowance allocations, electricity, air pollution, auction, grandfathering, generation performance standard, output-based allocation, cost-effectiveness, greenhouse gases, climate change, global warming, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury