Mikael Skou Andersen

Ecological modernization — origins, dilemmas and future directions

Several of the preceding contributions to this special issue have raised critical comments and questions on the concept and research agenda of ecological modernization. It is our impression that these comments not only reflect academic ingenuity, but also a broader and growing hesitation about the concept and its usefulness, as similar scepticism was also expressed by participants at the international workshop on ecological modernization in Helsinki. As the term ecological modernization has grown popular among leading politicians and policy-makers, so has the dilution of it. In this paper, we make an attempt to move away from the purely heuristic use of ecological modernization, by clarifying both its origins and meanings. For connoisseurs of the concept, our paper may be seen as a recapitulation, rather than as an innovation; our mission is not to reinvent a concept, but to clarify its origins and connected dilemmas. In essence, ecological modernization refers to a specific type of foresighted and preven...

Long-term human exposure to lead from different media and intake pathways.

Lead (Pb) is well known as an environmental pollutant: it can accumulate in various media, so actual lead exposure reflects both historical and present contaminations. Two main challenges then emerge: obtaining updated information to gain an overall picture of the sources of exposure, and predicting the resulting internal body exposure levels and effects that occur under long-term exposure conditions. In this paper, a modeling approach is used to meet these challenges with reference to Danish exposure conditions. Levels of lead content in various media have been coupled with data for lead intake and absorption in the human body, for both children and adults. An age-dependent biokinetic model allows then for determination of the blood lead levels resulting from chronic exposure. The study shows that the actual intake of lead is up to 27% of the Provisional Tolerable Daily Intake (PTDI) for children and around 8% for adults. It is confirmed that the critical route of exposure is via ingestion, accounting for 99% of total lead intake, while inhalation contributes only to 1% of total lead intake. The resulting lead levels in the blood after 2 years of exposure to actual contamination conditions have been estimated as up to 2.2μg/dl in children and almost 1μg/dl in adults. Impacts from lead can occur even at such levels. The role of historical and present sources to lead in the environment is discussed, and, for specific child and adult exposure scenarios, external-internal concentration relationships for the direct linkage between lead in environmental media and resulting concentrations of lead in blood are then presented.

External costs of atmospheric Pb emissions: valuation of neurotoxic impacts due to inhalation

BackgroundThe Impact Pathway Approach (IPA) is an innovative methodology to establish links between emissions, related impacts and monetary estimates. Only few attempts have so far been presented regarding emissions of metals; in this study the external costs of airborne lead (Pb) emissions are assessed using the IPA. Exposure to Pb is known to provoke impacts especially on childrens cognition. As cognitive abilities (measured as IQ, intelligence quotient) are known to have implications for lifetime income, a pathway can be established leading from figures for Pb emissions to the implied loss in earnings, and on this basis damage costs per unit of Pb emission can be assessed.MethodsDifferent types of models are here linked. It is relatively straightforward to establish the relationship between Pb emissions and consequent increase in air-Pb concentration, by means of a Gaussian plume dispersion model (OML). The exposed population can then be modelled by linking the OML-output to population data nested in geo-referenced grid cells. Less straightforward is to establish the relationship between exposure to air-Pb concentrations and the resulting blood-Pb concentration. Here an Age-Dependent Biokinetic Model (ADBM) for Pb is applied. On basis of previous research which established links between increases in blood-Pb concentrations during childhood and resulting IQ-loss we arrive at our results.ResultsExternal costs of Pb airborne emissions, even at low doses, in our site are in the range of 41-83 €/kg emitted Pb, depending on the considered meteorological year. This estimate applies only to the initial effects of air-Pb, as our study does not address the effects due to the Pb environmental-accumulation and to the subsequent Pb re-exposure. These are likely to be between one and two orders of magnitude higher.ConclusionsBiokinetic modelling is a novel tool not previously included when applying the IPA to explore impacts of Pb emissions and related external costs; it allows for more fine-tuned, age-dependent figures for the external costs from low-dose exposure. Valuation of additional health effects and impacts e.g. due to exposure via ingestion appear to be feasible when extending the insights from the present pilot study.

The Use of Economic Instruments in Nordic and Baltic Environmental Policy 2001-2005

This new report commissioned by the Environment and Finance Group of the Nordic Council of Ministers continues the tradition of reviewing the use of economic instruments in environmental policy in the Nordic countries by providing a comprehensive overview. At the same time, this report extends the country coverage and content of the report. The application of economic instruments is not only discussed for the five Nordic countries, but also for the three Baltic countries. In addition, a discussion on the opportunities and shortcomings associated with the use of economic instruments in the field of environmental policy has been undertaken. The report is a follow-up of the previous five reviews – the last was published in 2002 (TemaNord 2002:581) – and discusses the latest development of the application of economic instruments covering the time period 2001-2005.

Governance by green taxes: implementing clean water policies in Europe 1970–1990

This article analyzes the use of economic instruments for environmental policy in four European countries. The study employs data from national and international sources for an ex post evaluation of the effects of economic policy instruments in the clean water programs of Denmark, France, Germany, and The Netherlands from 1970 to 1990. It is shown that among the four countries The Netherlands were the most successful in environmental terms, regarding social costs and with respect to technological innovation. On the one hand the study confirms that economic instruments can work as rather powerful stimuli for the implementation of public policies; on the other hand it provides some unexpected findings regarding the significance of the institutional context for the design and operation of market-based instruments. It is argued that institutionalized practices of public policy making influenced the specific design of the four water pollution control programs, including the design and role of economic instruments, and that the regulatory design in turn affected the degree to which the incentives provided by the economic instruments were able to influence the behavior of the polluters. The study hence points to the significance of taking into account the institutional setting of the design and operation of market-based instruments, an observation with both theoretical and practical implications.

Assessment and economic valuation of air pollution impacts on human health over Europe and the United States as calculated by a multi-model ensemble in the framework of AQMEII3

The impact of air pollution on human health and the associated external costs in Europe and the United States (US) for the year 2010 are modeled by a multi-model ensemble of regional models in the frame of the third phase of the Air Quality Modelling Evaluation International Initiative (AQMEII3). The modeled surface concentrations of O3, CO, SO2 and PM2.5 are used as input to the Economic Valuation of Air Pollution (EVA) system to calculate the resulting health impacts and the associated external costs from each individual model. Along with a base case simulation, additional runs were performed introducing 20 % anthropogenic emission reductions both globally and regionally in Europe, North America and east Asia, as defined by the second phase of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF-HTAP2). Health impacts estimated by using concentration inputs from different chemistry–transport models (CTMs) to the EVA system can vary up to a factor of 3 in Europe (12 models) and the United States (3 models). In Europe, the multi-model mean total number of premature deaths (acute and chronic) is calculated to be 414 000, while in the US, it is estimated to be 160 000, in agreement with previous global and regional studies. The economic valuation of these health impacts is calculated to be EUR 300 billion and 145 billion in Europe and the US, respectively. A subset of models that produce the smallest error compared to the surface observations at each time step against an all-model mean ensemble results in increase of health impacts by up to 30 % in Europe, while in the US, the optimal ensemble mean led to a decrease in the calculated health impacts by ~ 11 %. A total of 54 000 and 27 500 premature deaths can be avoided by a 20 % reduction of global anthropogenic emissions in Europe and the US, respectively. A 20 % reduction of North American anthropogenic emissions avoids a total of ~ 1000 premature deaths in Europe and 25 000 total premature deaths in the US. A 20 % decrease of anthropogenic emissions within the European source region avoids a total of 47 000 premature deaths in Europe. Reducing the east Asian anthropogenic emissions by 20 % avoids ~ 2000 total premature deaths in the US. These results show that the domestic anthropogenic emissions make the largest impacts on premature deaths on a continental scale, while foreign sources make a minor contribution to adverse impacts of air pollution.

The Danish Pesticide Tax

This chapter analyses the Danish pesticide tax (1996–2013) on agriculture which was introduced as an ad valorem tax in 1996, doubled in 1998, and redesigned in 2013 as a tax based on the toxicity of the pesticides. The Danish pesticide taxes probably represent the world’s highest pesticide taxes on agriculture, which makes it interesting to analyse how effective they have been. The analysis demonstrates the challenges of choosing an optimal tax design in a complex political setting where, additionally, individuals in the target group have different rationales when making decisions on pesticide use. It also demonstrates that a small first, green tax step over time might develop into a better tax design.

Special issue introduction: ecological modernization

Nowadays, there are more and more critics who ask what ‘ecological modernization’ offers that distinguishes it from the ‘business as usual’ of contemporary capitalism. Is ecological modernization merely a cornucopian concept, which promises with hollow ringing optimism that more efficiency and new technology will save us from the environmental crisis? Like the concept of sustainable development, ecological modernization has risen to political prominence. But has efficiency in resource and energy use, as well as technological innovation, not always been a standard operating mechanism of a freemarket economy? Former European Commission President, Jacques Delors, and his think-tank Cellule de Prospective were soon to integrate ecological modernization ideas into the 1993 White Paper on growth, competitiveness and employment (CEC, 1993). Furthermore, international financial institutions, including the World Bank, have eloquently expanded their vocabulary to include new green buzzwords. With little doubt, the present crisis for concepts such as sustainable development and ecological modernization is a result of their heuristic and sometimes flagrant uses, which have caused a steady erosion of the specificity that was once linked to them. The pragmatic use of these concepts—not only among actors with mixed political motives, but also by many environmental agencies and institutions—have blunted our senses for their potential analytical sharpness and significance, and they threaten to turn them into empty phrases, a contemporary form of ‘greenspeak’. It is against this background that we should judge the possible value of the academic debate that has developed in recent years and that recently has evidenced an upsurge of interest in ecological modernization ideas (Hajer, 1995; Mol, 1995; Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000; Murphy, 2000). Although Buttel (2000) may be right in pointing out that it is daring to speak of an ecological modernization theory per se, it is hard to deny that there has been a marked discursive orientation towards researching the implications of ecological modernization, internationally as well as within the sectors of advanced industrial economies. As Anthony Giddens states in his The Third Way, ‘there is no doubt that ecological modernisation links social, democratic and ecological concerns more closely than once seemed possible’ (Giddens, 1998, pp. 57–58). The contributions to this special issue of the Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning stem from an international conference on ecological modernization that took place at the Department of Social Policy of the University of Helsinki, Finland, in late 1998. They have been selected, among other reasons, for their possible contribution to conceptual understanding and clarification. While recent publications have explored the implications of ecological modernization in different settings (Mol & Sonnenfeld, 2000), here we try to put the concept under the microscope again, in the hope of clarifying and restoring its meaning and justification for the environmental debate. In the first contribution, Joseph Huber, one of the originators of the ecological modernization idea, explores the different perceptions of sustainable development that have developed in the course of the Brundtland report. He argues that the ecology movement sticks to a tradi* Correspondence to: Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Universitetsparken bygn. 331, DK-8000 Århus C, Denmark. Tel: +45 8942 1133; fax: +45 8613 9839; e-mail: andersen@ps.au.dk

Solving the multifunctionality dilemma in biorefineries with a novel hybrid mass–energy allocation method

Processing biomass into multifunctional products can contribute to food, feed, and energy security while also mitigating climate change. However, biorefinery products nevertheless impact the environment, and this influence needs to be properly assessed to minimize the burden. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is often used to calculate environmental footprints of products, but distributing the burdens among the different biorefinery products is a challenge. A particular complexity arises when the outputs are a combination of energy carrying no mass, and mass carrying no energy, where neither an allocation based on mass nor on energy would be appropriate. A novel hybrid mass–energy (HMEN) allocation scheme for dealing with multifunctionality problems in biorefineries was developed and applied to five biorefinery concepts. The results were compared to results of other allocation methods in LCA. The reductions in energy use and GHG emissions from using the biorefinerys biofuels were also quantified. HMEN fairly distributed impacts among biorefinery products and did not change the order of the products in terms of the level of the pollution caused. The allocation factors for HMEN fell between mass and economic allocation factors and were comparable to energy allocation factors. Where the mass or the energy allocation failed to attribute burdens, HMEN addressed this shortcoming by assigning impacts to nonmass or to nonenergy products. Under the partitioning methods and regardless of the feedstock used, bioethanol reduced GHG by 72–98% relative to gasoline. The GHG savings were 196% under the substitution method, but no GHG savings occurred for sugar beet bioethanol under the surplus method. Bioethanol from cellulosic crops had lower energy use and GHG emissions than from sugar beet, regardless of the allocation method used. HMEN solves multifunctional problems in biorefineries and can be applied to other complex refinery systems. LCA practitioners are encouraged to further test this method in other case studies.

High-Resolution Modelling of Health Impacts and Related External Cost from Air Pollution Using the Integrated Model System EVA

EVA (Economic Valuation of Air pollution), a multi-scale and high-resolution integrated model system for assessing health impacts and related external costs from air pollution), has been further developed by implementing the air quality model, UBM, with a 1 km × 1 km resolution covering the whole of Denmark. The high-resolution model is coupled to the long-range chemistry-transport model DEHM (Danish Eulerian Hemispheric Model) in a configuration with four nested domains. By using this system, a high-resolution assessment of health impacts from air pollution and related external cost has been conducted for Denmark for the year 2012.