Jingjing Yan

Comprehensive Evaluation of the Regional Environmental and Economic Impacts of Adopting Advanced Technologies for the Treatment of Sewage Sludge in Beijing

In recent years, more than one million tons of sewage sludge has been discharged annually in Beijing. The rate of sewage sludge treatment was less than 50% in 2010. Untreated sewage sludge has critically polluted the waterways. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of sewage sludge treatment on the development of the regional economy and on the environment. In this report, we use Lingo software to simulate an economic model and an environmental model with an input-output table and perform a linear optimization of these models. The economic model describes the relationship between economic activities and the emission of water pollutants. The environmental model describes the change in the amount of water pollutants that are generated in the model. Beijing is divided into 11 sub-regions. A comprehensive environmental policy is coupled with the introduction of advanced technology to reduce water pollutants. Based upon the results of the simulation, we can provide detailed information about economic growth, water pollutant reduction, policy subsidies and the number of new sewage and sewage sludge plants needed in each sub-region.

Introduction of an Emission Trading System in China —— From the Viewpoint of Initial Allocation of a Water Pollution Permit ——

In this study, we examined how to smoothly process and implement the initial emission permit allocation when an emission trading system is introduced into China. The optimal allocation for emission trading was investigated based on the social background of water pollution, social demand and complicated trans-regional problems. According to the principles for initial emission permit allocation (fairness doctrine and efficiency doctrine), we selected 31 provinces in China as the targets and assumed a constraint as total quantity of COD in China to carry out the simulation. First, the Gini coefficient method was adopted and the indexes of population, GDP, water resources, usage of water resources, area of land, employed population and tax were selected as the evaluation system to assess the fairness doctrine allocation. Second, the environmental simulation analysis method was adopted to evaluate the efficiency doctrine allocation. The simulation model consisted of one objective function to minimize the reduction costs of COD water pollutants and restriction functions to achieve optimal emission allocation for different regions in China. The following conclusions can be made based on the analysis of initial water pollution permit allocation with the introduction of a emission trading system. First, the indexes of population, GDP, usage of water resources and employed population should be selected to allocate initial water pollution permits and satisfy the requirements of the fairness doctrine. Furthermore, when the allocation of emission permit satisfies the requirements of the fairness and efficiency doctrines, water pollutant reduction can be achieved with constraints on the minimum reduction in cost.