Brent M. Haddad

Ecology, Conservation, and Public Policy

▪ Abstract A new sense of urgency about environmental problems has changed the relationship between ecology, other disciplines, and public policy. Issues of uncertainty and scientific inference now influence public debate and public policy. Considerations that formerly may have appeared to be mere technicalities now may have decisive influence. It is time to re-examine our methods to ensure that they are adequate for these new requirements. When science is used in support of policy-making, it cannot be separated from issues of values and equity. In such a context, the role of specialists diminishes, because nobody can be an expert in all the aspects of complicated environmental, social, ethical, and economic issues. The disciplinary boundaries that have served science so well in the past are not very helpful in coping with the complex problems that face us today, and ecology now finds itself in intense interaction with a host of other disciplines. The next generation of ecologists must be prepared to inte...

The economics of energy efficiency: insights from voluntary participation programs

Abstract This paper reviews experience with two programs sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency — the Green Lights and Energy Star Office Products programs — that promote the adoption of energy-efficient technologies through voluntary agreements with private sector firms. The evidence suggests that Green Lights has induced firms to make investments in cost-saving lighting systems that firms failed to exploit prior to the programs implementation. Energy Star Office Products, in contrast, has led suppliers of computers and electronic equipment to substantially improve the energy efficiency of their products in ways that confer net cost savings on equipment users. The paper argues that the success of these programs is based on their ability to reduce market failures related to problems of imperfect information and bounded rationality that impair the effectiveness of both intra-firm organization and the coordination between equipment suppliers and their customers. Given the nature of the technologies in question, these programs should have little effect on the demand for energy services so that energy efficiency improvements should lead to one-to-one reductions in the level of energy use.

Property rights, ecosystem management, and John Locke's labor theory of ownership

Abstract This paper examines John Lockes labor theory of ownership from an ecological perspective, and explores its role in western US property rights disputes. The labor theory of ownership describes how an individual, through application of labor, can justifiably acquire a private property right to the yield of commonly-held natural resources. The presence of ecosystem processes and services beneficial to humans, coupled with equity and no-harm principles, places limits on the extent to which strong labor-based rights can be justified. Property claims to areas that have not undergone physical transformation due to human labor are less-strongly justified. Rather than continue in its inappropriate role in support of strong private property rights in the western US, the labor theory can play a new role in justifying and limiting ecosystem management regulation of private and government-owned lands and who should pay. If ecosystem management regulations prevent, reduce, or eliminate harms to ecosystem services and processes, the costs of such management can justifiably fall on private landowners and private users of public lands. If such programs augment existing ecosystem services and processes, costs should fall on the government.

Forging Consensus on National Renewables Policy: The Renewables Portfolio Standard and the National Public Benefits Trust Fund

Abstract Despite the advent of consumer choice in electricity, public policy support for sustainable energy is very much needed. Far from being incompatible, the two leading proposals, RPS and a trust fund, can play complementary roles in directing such support.

Optimising Reliability: Portfolio Modeling of Contract Types for Retail Water Providers

This paper considers the retail water provider’s purchasing decision of a portfolio of permanent contracts from wholesalers with multiple volatile water sources. We consider the reliability of two contract types: (1) fixed annual quantities, and (2) an inflow harvest function with storage. Our four-reservoir case in Sydney (Australia) has cross-correlated inflow data. To accommodate multi-reservoir cross-correlation we adapt Portfolio Theory from finance to lognormal reservoir inflows, re-framing traditional storage theory from the wholesaler’s optimal operating policy to the retailer’s optimal purchasing policy. We find that Reliability improves with access to a source pool (cf. fixed quantities from separate sources), demonstrating the ‘insurance effect’, and the portfolio that minimises lognormal variance also minimises harvest (and thus environmental impact). Reform direction in Australian (and other international) water markets is towards multi-provider vertical disintegration, which may reduce pool opportunities and negate the insurance effect. We consider diminishing reliability returns as reservoir harvesting increases, and conclude a retail portfolio of permanent contracts from reservoirs, plus short-term contracts from alternative sources (either independently or negatively cross-correlated) efficiently secures high reliability. The challenge in incomplete water markets remains in encouraging and sustaining supply diversification that may only be needed aperiodically during extreme droughts.

Decentralised and centralised energy: a property rights analysis

Interconnection between centralised and decentralised electrical power sources remains a contentious issue on technical, economic, and policy grounds. This paper considers the problem of interconnection as a property rights problem – one that involves allocation conflicts and pressures for institutional change. We argue that the current policy approach to interconnection problems between distributed-generation power sources and the distribution grid in California should take more careful account of changing property rights characteristics of the distribution grid. We review two emerging property rights frameworks – community choice aggregation and public power cooperatives/municipalities, which may help overcome such interconnection barriers.

Social Issues and Public Acceptance of Seawater Desalination Plants

Abstract Seawater desalination has the potential to be a major 21st century source of urban potable water. In addition to advancements in the technology of desalination, public attitudes toward desalination will help shape its ultimate role in urban water supply. A growing literature on public perception of emerging water supplies has examined responses to seawater desalination in general, as well as attitudes toward new facility installation at the planning/proposal stages, and during facility operational stages. Studies from different countries topically overlap but have reached varying conclusions on public attitudes and their drivers. Demographic variables appear to be minimally helpful in predicting support for desalination, while an individual’s active use of marine resources and strong ocean attachment are consistent predictors of lack of support. Coastal residents seem aware of subsurface ocean processes and are opposed to subsurface infrastructure development that impacts these processes. Positive or negative attitudes toward the public agencies and private companies regulating or proposing/operating desalination facilities influence whether the public supports the projects themselves. While residents of affluent coastal communities demonstrate not-in-my-backyard (NIMBY) attitudes, there are mixed results when the desalination facility is colocated with a coastal power plant in an industrial coastal area. Efforts to mitigate CO2 emissions from California desalination facilities did not meet with public support. Numerous areas for future research will help clarify public attitudes toward seawater desalination and could influence public policy processes for approving and setting operating conditions for new facilities.