Perpetuation of economic growth and social well-being will continue to require energy to power our economic and technological infrastructures. Continuing to meet these energy demands as we do today is constrained by the existence of a finite resource stock and the ability of the local and global environments to assimilate the emissions of the current energy sources. A transition to renewable energy sources provides a means to sustain economic and social well-being by eliminating the resource and environmental constraints of conventional energy sources. The term sustainability has been broadly adopted to evoke the idea of providing future generations with a society which is at least no worse off than our own. Literature in this field is reviewed and includes contributions from a broad spectrum of disciplines with economic, technical, ethical, and philosophical affirmations. Energy policy in the United States was recently addressed in the National Energy Strategy under the Bush Administration. The policy fails short of confronting resource or environmental sustainability issues and is focused on short term solutions without preparing for long term needs. Alternative models and policy proposals have surfaced as a reaction to the government study. An economic and policy model is developed in this dissertation which addresses specific characteristics of a long term national energy transition to renewable energy sources. The Energy and Environmental Economic Transition (E$\sp3$T) model is built on traditional economic analyses to integrate the conventional and renewable energy supply and demand sectors. The renewable energy sector is characterized by technical parameters and endogenous treatment of technological change and market penetration. Policy variables are employed to evaluate resource stock, tax, subsidy, pollution abatement, market structure, and other policies. The E$\sp3$T model is a simulation tool which produces paths of conventional and renewable energy supply and price levels over a sufficient time frame. Other evaluation output variables are developed to address issues of economic cost and sustainability. Although the input database and model details are insufficient to apply the simulation results directly to policy formulation, results are presented to illustrate the model's capabilities and distinctions relative to other energy policy models.

<p> The emergence of climate change as one of the most pressing challenges of the 21^st century has placed the task of reducing GHG emissions at the forefront of city, state and national government agendas around the world. Strategies for transitioning to a clean energy future almost universally involve increasing the share of electricity generated from renewable sources, reducing emissions from the transportation sector and improving energy efficiency. This dissertation contains three essays that address policy questions within each of these areas (renewables, efficiency and transportation), focusing both on past experiences thus far as well as considerations for future policies. The first chapter examines the Danish wind power industry and the role of government policies in shaping the decisions of wind turbine owners. A structural dynamic model is constructed in which owners decide whether and when to add new turbines to a pre-existing stock, scrap an existing turbine, or replace old turbines with newer versions during a period of rapid technological improvement and several changes to government wind energy policies. Results from the model indicate that the growth and development of the Danish wind industry was primarily driven by government policies as opposed to technological improvements. The second chapter explores the spatial and distributional impacts of climate policies in the transportation sector. California VMT and fuel consumption distributions are not symmetric and can vary significantly within transit planning regions. Results show that analyzing a policy using mean VMT or fuel consumption and assuming a symmetric distribution would generally lead to errors of 20-40% when considering the costs of a climate policy for a &ldquo;typical&rdquo; household. The final chapter addresses the role of publicly-funded energy efficiency programs in electricity markets. In the absence of energy efficiency programs, individual households and businesses may underinvest in energy efficiency because of inefficient retail pricing, pollution and learning externalities, imperfect information and the prevalence of principal-agent problems. California's cap-and-trade program and likely transition to dynamic pricing will correct some of these market failures, but information problems and distributional concerns will remain and warrant programs that encourage additional investments in efficiency.</p>

<p> This dissertation links human and ecological systems research to analyze resource management decisions for elodea, Alaska&rsquo;s first submerged aquatic invasive plant. The plant likely made it to Alaska through the aquarium trade. It was first discovered in urban parts of the state but is being introduced to remote water bodies by floatplanes and other pathways. Once introduced, elodea changes freshwater systems in ways that can threaten salmon and make floatplane destinations inaccessible. The analysis integrates multiple social and ecological data to estimate the potential future economic loss associated with its introduction to salmon fisheries and floatplane pilots. For estimating the effects on commercial sockeye fisheries, multiple methods of expert elicitation are used to quantify and validate expert opinion about elodea&rsquo;s ecological effects on salmon. These effects are believed to most likely be negative, but can in some instances be positive. Combined with market-based economic valuation, the approach accounts for the full range of potential ecological and economic effects. For analyzing the lost trip values to floatplane pilots, the analysis uses contingent valuation to estimate recreation demand for landing spots. A spatially-explicit model consisting of seven regions simulates elodea&rsquo;s spread across Alaska and its erratic population dynamics. This simulation model accounts for the change in region-specific colonization rates as elodea populations are eradicated. The most probable economic loss to commercial fisheries and recreational floatplane pilots is $97 million per year, with a 5% chance that combined losses exceed $456 million annually. The analysis describes how loss varies among stakeholders and regions, with more than half of statewide loss accruing to commercial sockeye salmon fisheries in Bristol Bay. Upfront management of all existing invasions is found to be the optimal management strategy for minimizing long-term loss. Even though the range of future economic loss is large, the certainty of long-term damage favors investments to eradicate current invasions and prevent new arrivals. The study serves as a step toward risk management aimed at protecting productive ecosystems of national and global significance.</p>

<p> Research on carbon emission management is becoming a very important part of the green supply chain landscape as more businesses continue to make it part of their business strategy, amid pressures from customers, competitors and regulatory agencies. To contribute to the body of knowledge in this emerging research stream a series of lot size models that consider both economic and environmental performances are developed for the carbon emission conscious retailer, manufacturer and a combined model of the retailer and manufacturer. As a matter of expediency, the combined retailer-manufacturer model (Banerjee, 1986) is referred to as the system in this dissertation.</p><p> The carbon tax mechanism and carbon cap-and-trade mechanism are the most efficient market-based options used to lower carbon emission in practice. These mechanisms are integrated into the developed lot size models, the results of which could provide the carbon emission conscious retailer, manufacturer and the system with optimal lot size and cost strategies. The findings also shed more light for decision makers and policymakers on the impact of carbon tax and carbon trading regulatory policies on the business strategies of the firm. In addition, this dissertation contributes to the current sparse quantitative literature on carbon emission and green supply chain research.</p>

The first essay, "Federalism in Environmental Policy," explores the question of how Congress should decide on implementation of environmental statutes. This issue arises from the hypothesis that the historical pattern of U.S. federalism has led to ineffective implementation of environmental laws at the state level. We use a case-study approach to focus on the transboundary pollution problem of acid rain. Drawing from the basic philosophy of federalism, we analyze the strengths and weaknesses of four arguments for state policy responses to pollution problems, including: (1) severity, (2) wealth, (3) partisanship, and (4) organizational capacity. These arguments are evaluated using a geographic information system and then incorporated into an econometric model to identify the determinants of state decisions on transboundary air pollution. Based on the econometric results and the basic theory of federalism, we develop economic criteria to explore how congressional decisionmakers may more systematically choose state, regional, or national implementation of environmental laws based on instate and external benefits and costs of the individual statute. In the second essay, "Compliance and Enforcement Issues, A Case Study of Massachusetts' Environmental Results Program," we present a theoretical model of a firm's decision to comply with performance standards. The model is motivated by recent efforts in Massachusetts to adopt a more flexible environmental management strategy, the "Environmental Results Program" (ERP). This program has two main components: (1) development of performance standards, and (2) implementation of a self-certification program for environmental compliance. Because the standard pollution control model fails to capture the importance of monitoring, enforcement, and penalties, we modified it to incorporate a firm's private compliance decisions. The resulting marginal private benefit function represents the avoided costs of punishment based on a probability of being caught in non-compliance. Finally, the third essay, "The Penalty-Compliance Tradeoff in Enforcement by States," presents a game theoretic model of a firm's compliance with performance standards and self-certification. The model builds on standard enforcement theory and the case study of the ERP in an effort to evaluate the strategic interaction between control agencies and regulated facilities.

<p> Waste disposal has always been one of the challenging aspects of human life mostly in populated areas. In every urban region, various factors can impact both amount and composition of the generated waste, and these factors might depend on a series of parameters. Therefore, developing a predictive model for waste generation has always been challenging. We believe that one main problem that city planners and policymakers face is a lack of an accurate yet easy-to-use predictive model for the waste production of a given municipality. It would be vital for them, especially during business downturns, to access a reliable predictive model that can be employed in planning resources and allocating budget. However, most developed models are complicated and extensive. The objective of this research is to study the trend of solid waste generation in Philadelphia with respect to business cycle indicators, population growth, current policies and environmental awareness, and to develop a satisfactory predictive model for waste generation. </p><p> Three predictive models were developed using time series analysis, stationary and nonstationary multiple linear regressions. The nonstationary OLS model was just used for comparison purposes and does not have any modeling value. Among the other two developed predictive models, the multiple linear regression model with stationary variables yielded the most accurate predictions for both total and municipal solid waste generation of Philadelphia. Despite its unsatisfactory statistics (R-square, p-value, and F-value), stationary OLS model could predict Philadelphia&rsquo;s waste generation with a low level of approximately 9% error. Although time series modeling demonstrated a less successful prediction comparing to the stationary OLS model (25% error for total solid waste, and 10.7% error for municipal waste predictions), it would be a more reliable method based on its model statistics. The common variable used in all three developed models which made our modeling different from the Streets Department&rsquo;s estimations was unemployment rate. Including an economic factor such as unemployment rate in modeling the waste generation could be helpful especially during economic downturns, in which economic factors can dominate the effects of population growth on waste generation. </p><p> A prediction of waste generation may not only help waste management sector in landfill and waste-to-energy facilities planning but it also provides the basis for a good estimation of its future environmental impacts. In future, we are hoping to predict related environmental trends such as greenhouse gas emissions using our predictive model.</p>

Over the decades the concept of green consumption has been discussed with sustainable consumption, green behavior, eco-citizenship and sustainable patterns and lifestyles. Various environmental problems like global warming, pollution, shortage of natural resources and climate change threatened the sustainability of the environment and our survival. There is an increasing demand from scholars and society for the change of human behavior to help reduce the environmental impact. This study aims to investigate how supermarket influences the daily consumption in a sustainable way through the concept of green marketing in terms of green product management, green packaging, green promotion, green pricing, green logistics and green labeling. That means, a supermarket is not only a place to provide green products but also influence the culture of green consumption through the efforts of designing environmentally friendly facilities and strategies. In real life practice, there are constraints and challenges to encourage green consumption in the community. Through literature review, interview and surveys, the study investigates the kinds of products and facilities which have been used in Hong Kong supermarkets and consumers’ perception and knowledge of environmentally friendly products and services. Through exploration of overseas case studies, insights on common sustainable practices were identified and how overseas’ best practices can be adopted or modified in Hong Kong were discussed. The surveys with Wellcome/Three Sixty/MarketPlace by Jasons and the general public illustrate how supermarket can promote sustainable and green consumption in Hong Kong and the progress of achievement. The study ends with suggestions on how joint-efforts from the various stakeholders in the society can facilitate green consumption. These include public participation, green initiatives of supermarkets, price incentive, promotion and government’s support to encourage pro-environmental behavior. / published_or_final_version / Environmental Management / Master / Master of Science in Environmental Management

<p> Policy makers face complex situations involving the analysis and weighting of multiple incentives that complicate the design of natural resource and environmental policy. The objective of this dissertation is to characterize policy makers' incentives, and to investigate the consequences of those incentives on environmental and economic outcomes in the context of wildfire management and environmental policy. </p><p> Wildfire management occurs in a dynamic uncertain environment and requires the coordination of multiple management levels throughout the course of a fire season. Over the course of a wildfire, management teams allocate response resources between suppression of fire growth and protection of valuable assets to mitigate damage with minimal regard for cost. I develop a model of wildfire resource allocation to show that 1) wildfire managers face the incentive to protect residential structures at the expense of larger and more costly fires, and 2) response resources are transferred to fires with more threatened structures constraining the set of resources available to manage other fires in the region. I find empirical evidence to support the predictions of this model with theoretically consistent regression models of wildfire duration, size, and cost using data from U.S. wildfires that occurred between 2001 and 2010. These results imply that continued housing development of wildland prone to wildfire will 1) further distort management incentives, 2) lead to larger and more expensive fires, and 3) provide support for fees on rural homeowners. </p><p> Governments facing political opposition to renewable energy subsidies may resort to augmenting the fixed cost of entry in order to induce environmental outcomes. In global markets, one government's entry policy creates either positive or negative pecuniary externalities in other regions. I develop a two-region model to investigate the behavior of rival governments setting strategic entry policy, and the subsequent impacts on welfare. The results indicate that competition between the rival governments prevents the social optimal level of entry and suggests a role for international environmental agreements.</p>

<p> The second chapter examines how both domestic and foreign tobacco regulations affect the flow of tobacco trade. I develop a gravity equation incorporating a comprehensive set of domestic and foreign tobacco regulations into a country's tobacco import demand and estimate their bilateral effects. The results suggest a country's tobacco imports are significantly affected by their trading partner's tobacco regulations. There are two important results: spatial regulations reduce tobacco trade regardless of trade direction and marketing regulations in importing countries may actually increase tobacco imports. These results highlight the importance of understand regulations in an increasingly multilateral economy. </p><p> The third chapter investigates the effects of varying levels of access and excludability on a common pool resource with intrinsic quality characteristics. I analyze the case of deer hunting on leased properties by hunting clubs and estimate the lease size elasticity of both harvest and antler quality. The results suggest lease size has a small but significant effect. For all clubs with smaller than average hunting leases, a simulated increase to the average size results in approximately a 4.5 percent increase in the average antler quality of deer harvested. Although I analyze properties leased by hunting clubs, the results are applicable to various other management scenarios. </p><p> The fourth chapter develops the relationship between excess demand and purchase options. I illustrate a mechanism allowing firms to smooth sales across periods with uncertain quality and increase expected profit over the market clearing strategy. By "underpricing" high quality goods and offering a purchase option guaranteeing a single price regardless of quality, firms create excess demand and increase consumer willingness to pay for their purchase option. The firm maximizes profit by choosing a guaranteed price low enough to create sufficient excess demand and consumer willingness to pay for the purchase option that markets clear when quality is low. Using a numeric example, I demonstrate a case where this behavior increases profit over the market clearing strategy.</p>

<p> The theme that binds together the four papers in this dissertation is the tracking of physical quantities of water used by industries in the economy, and an exploration of whether and how this tracking could be helpful in informing water policies, as applied to the state of Nevada or sub-regions of Nevada. The concept of water footprints has been wildly popular in disciplines outside of economics and has been used to help make policy decisions normally considered to lie within the economist's realm. Yet many economists shun 'footprints' in general and water footprints in particular, seeing them as descriptive methods that have little or nothing to add to policy analysis. This thesis attempts to bridge a gap between economists, engineers and planners and the popular imagination about what economic concepts footprints are related to and how they can best be used in policy analysis.</p>