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Publication
Environmental policy costs
Book - Report
Subtitle:Concepts and calculation methods
Many people working in the Environment, Nature and Energy policy area regularly come into contact with the costs and benefits associated with environmental policy. In order to communicate this efficiently, it is necessary to have a clearly defined frame of reference.
With this report from the Environmental Economics Unit, we want to reach a broad public, primarily everyone who carries out or uses cost studies in the Environment policy area. That is why we have organised a lecturers' round to check the proposed definitions and methods for their correctness and clarity. In this way, we hope to obtain a document with broad support.
In terms of content, the report is based on the earlier work in MIRA-S 2000 (Van Humbeeck, 2001) and the Achtergronddocument Milieukostenmodel (Meynaerts et al., 2003). In addition, these documents were also supplemented with the results of recent (policy) studies. For example, the concept of regulatory costs was introduced in order to form, together with the environmental costs, the total environmental policy costs. A number of issues, such as the recommended value for the social discount rate, were updated. We
have also sought as much agreement as possible with international recommendations on the calculation of environmental policy costs such as those of the European Commission (2005), the EPA (2000) and the OECD (Pearce et al. 2006) and with existing Flemish manuals on the subject, such as the 'measure to know' guideline (Dienst wetsmatiging, 2006), the BIT report of the EWI department (IALE, 2005) and the recent SCBA standard methodology elaborated for the Flemish seaports (Gauderis et al., 2006). We hope that this report will be a useful working document for all those who wish to work with these concepts and that in this way we will contribute to an increase in the number and quality of economic analyses to underpin environmental policy.
We start this report with a definition of some basic concepts. Chapter 2 then provides a detailed overview of all types of costs. In doing so, we have tried to explain as clearly as possible the relationship between the various cost categories. Chapter 3 briefly discusses the basis of cost calculation. Especially the concept of opportunity costs and the comparison of costs incurred at different times are central to this. In chapter 4, we will take a closer look at the following
in the understanding of marginal cost curves. By way of conclusion, we will put the most important recommendations in a concise list.
With this report from the Environmental Economics Unit, we want to reach a broad public, primarily everyone who carries out or uses cost studies in the Environment policy area. That is why we have organised a lecturers' round to check the proposed definitions and methods for their correctness and clarity. In this way, we hope to obtain a document with broad support.
In terms of content, the report is based on the earlier work in MIRA-S 2000 (Van Humbeeck, 2001) and the Achtergronddocument Milieukostenmodel (Meynaerts et al., 2003). In addition, these documents were also supplemented with the results of recent (policy) studies. For example, the concept of regulatory costs was introduced in order to form, together with the environmental costs, the total environmental policy costs. A number of issues, such as the recommended value for the social discount rate, were updated. We
have also sought as much agreement as possible with international recommendations on the calculation of environmental policy costs such as those of the European Commission (2005), the EPA (2000) and the OECD (Pearce et al. 2006) and with existing Flemish manuals on the subject, such as the 'measure to know' guideline (Dienst wetsmatiging, 2006), the BIT report of the EWI department (IALE, 2005) and the recent SCBA standard methodology elaborated for the Flemish seaports (Gauderis et al., 2006). We hope that this report will be a useful working document for all those who wish to work with these concepts and that in this way we will contribute to an increase in the number and quality of economic analyses to underpin environmental policy.
We start this report with a definition of some basic concepts. Chapter 2 then provides a detailed overview of all types of costs. In doing so, we have tried to explain as clearly as possible the relationship between the various cost categories. Chapter 3 briefly discusses the basis of cost calculation. Especially the concept of opportunity costs and the comparison of costs incurred at different times are central to this. In chapter 4, we will take a closer look at the following
in the understanding of marginal cost curves. By way of conclusion, we will put the most important recommendations in a concise list.
Number of pages: 44
Publication year:2008
Accessibility:Open