Health damage cost of automotive air pollution: Cost benefit analysis of fuel quality upgradation for Indian cities.

The paper has analysed the economic implication of judicial activism of the apex court of India in the regulation of automotive air pollution. It estimates the health damage cost of urban air pollution for 35 major urban agglomerations of India arising from automotive emissions and the savings that can be achieved by the regulation of fuel quality so as to conform to the Euro norms. It has used the results of some US based study and has applied the transfer of benefit method from the US to the Indian situation for the purpose. The paper finally makes a benefit cost analysis of refinery upgradation for such improvement of fuel quality.Urban air pollution ; Health damage cost ; Benefit-cost comparison

High Economic Growth, Equity and Sustainable Energy Development of India

India has been experiencing sustained high economic growth in the recentyears. However, there exists substantial amount of unacceptable poverty among the people in the country. The expressions of symptoms of such poverty include among others inadequate educational and health attainment of the people and lack of access to basic amenities like modern clean energy, safe water and sanitation which are crucial determinants of capability development. There exists in fact significant amount of energy poverty among the people, particularly in the rural India which has more than 70% share of its population, in the form of use of traditional inefficient biomass as the primary fuel with injurious health effect and the lack of connectivity of the households with electricity. The eleventh five year plan of India which has recently been initiated has taken the approach of inclusive faster growth for the development of the Indian economy. This paper analyses the implications of this high inclusive growth in respect of the twin challenges of environmental sustainability of the energy use required by such growth and the removal of energy poverty, which have to be addressed in India's energy planning. The paper defines the concept of sustainable development and points out its resource accounting implications in respect of energy related resource use. It focuses in this context on the instrumental role of the efficiency of energy use and energy supply, fuel composition and technology in determining the strength of the linkage between the GDP growth and the growth of energy use and that between the energy use and the pollution intensity of energy. The paper also defines, on the other hand, the notion of energy poverty and discusses the problem of equity and energy development in a dual society like that of India. It then reviews the past trend and pattern of energy use and the future projections of energy requirement and supply with special reference to the twin issues of equity and environmental sustainability. In this context it makes a decomposition analysis of the past energy use and CO2 emissions in India for examining its environmental sustainability and if economic reforms of India could make any impact on it. It makes further a brief review of the methodologies of projections and policy planning for the future energy sector development in India as existing in the recent literature. Finally, the paper discusses certain selected issues of energy security and macroeconomic viability of such energy development in the background of the sustained steep rise of oil prices and high cost of carbon free new technologies. It concludes by highlighting certain policy issues relating to pricing, technology and institution for the attainability of inclusive growth and particularly for meeting the gaps in such attainment that would possibly remain as per the existing alternative projections for the future. However, this paper does not pay any special attention to the climate change related global policy issues that would affect India and gives priority to the national level issues relating to energy equity and energy related environmental sustainability of Indian development.

Economic Development and Co2 - Emission: Economy - Environment Relation and Policy Approach to Choice of Emission Standard for Climate Control

The integrated assessment of Climate Change at global level due to anthropogenic emissions has its gaps and problems of uncertainties. The conventional approach of such assessment begins with the postulate that the growth of population and GDP of nations are destabilising factors for the equilibrium of the climate system. Some development economists consider this to be an overstatement. We have examined in this paper whether the process of economic growth brings with it such technical changes which would stabilise or cause decline in the total industrial CO2-emissions at a certain level of per capita income and beyond. The econometric analysis of the macro-economic and the CO2-emission data shows that the total CO2-emission (or that from the solid or liquid fuel sources) initially increases with the rise in per capita income and reaches a peak which is followed by a decline. This CO2-emission peaking per capita income is estimated to be $8740 (in PPP$ 1985) approximately for the total CO2-emission. However, such stabilisation of CO2-emission does not permit complacence regarding climate stabilisation in view of the likely trend of the CO2-emission of the fast growing populous developing countries like China and India. It would , in fact, be too late for the global climate to be controlled for stabilisation if the developing countries are allowed to grow and their CO2 emissions to stabilise or decline in their own due course as induced by the dynamics of industrial capitalism. This points to the necessity of addressing the problem of setting the CO2 emission standard both at the global and the national level so that the stage of CO2-emission peaking is preponed in terms of income and real time and the level of the peaking CO2-emission is also lowered. For-the scientific and equitable setting of such standard, the climate research needs to remove certain gaps and ambiguities and the country level economic modeling needs to be carried out to provide better information regarding the relative costs of abatement of emissions across the countries. The problem has to be finally solved as one of political economy for global cost sharing for the CO2-emission abatement which would call for international cooperation and understanding

Health Damage Cost of Automotive Air Pollution: Cost Benefit Analysis of Fuel Quality Upgradation for Indian Cities

An analysis of the economic implication of judicial activism of the apex court of India in the regulation of automotive air pollution is analysed. It estimates the health damage cost of urban air pollution for 35 major urban agglomerations of India arising from automotive emissions and the savings that can be achieved by the regulation of fuel quality so as to conform to the Euro norms. It has used the results of some US based study and has applied the transfer of benefit method from the US to the Indian situation for the purpose. The paper finally makes a benefit cost analysis of refinery upgradation for such improvement of fuel quality.fuel quality, health, urban pollution, air, cost benefit analysis, US, Indian, ecoomic implication, automotive, Euro, ,

A Note on the Possibility of Decentralization in a Model of Allocation of Resources

The decomposition algorithm for the solution of large-scale linear programmes has been interpreted by Baumol and Fabian (Management Science, September, 1964) as a procedure for decentralized decision by the multi-division company or the multi-sector economy. While commenting on the possibility of decentralization in this context, they maintain that an economy's optimum point will not in general yield a sectoral optimum. The present note demonstrates that this contention is not valid.