Timothy J. Considine

Economies of Scale and Asset Values in Power Production

Abstract A spark-spread options analysis suggests that full competition in the steam electricity market may induce a substantial consolidation, but not to just a handful of industry titans, as in the telecommunications industry.

The Environmental Performance and Cost of Innovative Technologies for Ductile Iron Foundry Production

The authors and collaborators have devised innovative technologies that decrease foundry costs, pollution, materials use, and energy. These include: (a) applying advanced oxidation to green sand and baghouse dust to diminish clay, coal, sand, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and costs; (b) replacing phenolic urethane core binders with collagen-alkali silicate binders to diminish VOCs; (c) replacing coke with anthracite fines held together with biomaterial to reduce energy and costs. It is proposed by the authors that if a foundry were to concurrently employ all these innovative technologies (with 50% anthracite bricks), it could potentially diminish overall costs by 6.6%, life cycle energy costs by 15%, VOC pollution by 57%, sand by 85%, clay and coal by 50%, and iron scrap by 9%. These computations are per full-scale operations for advanced oxidation; and R&D results for replacing binders and coke. This paper also notes that when electricity comes primarily from coal fired power plants, electric induction furnaces consumes more life cycle energy than do cupolas for melting iron.

Economic and Environmental Impacts of Fracking: A Case Study of the Marcellus Shale

While many studies examine the individual costs and benefits from fracking, there are no studies that provide a unified comparison of costs and benefits. This study attempts to fill this void by conducting a cost–benefit analysis of developing natural gas from the Marcellus shale formation in Pennsylvania. Using more than seven thousand well records, this study estimates production decline curves for vintages of Marcellus wells and their productivity growth over time. The value added created from constructing and operating a recent average Marcellus well is estimated. Environmental impacts are estimated based upon several thousand records of environmental violations impacting air, land, and water resources. Air emissions are estimated during the life cycle of the well from drilling, hydraulic fracturing, production, transportation, and consumption. Using estimates of environmental damage costs, the economic value of these environmental impacts is estimated. The economic benefits, including the environmental benefits from displacing coal, range from

An Economic Perspective on Industrial Ecology

14 to over

Adapting to changing input prices in response to the crisis: The case of US commercial banks

30 million with an expected value of

Adapting to Changing Prices before and after the Crisis: The Case of US Commercial Banks

23 million per well. These estimates are likely a lower bound because they do not include the benefits that arise from lower natural gas due to shale energy development. Environmental impact costs range from

The link between environmental attitudes and energy consumption behavior

162 to

Environmental regulation and compliance of Marcellus Shale gas drilling

755 thousand per well with the largest impacts arising from diesel use by water pumps and trucks, forest disruption from pipeline construction, and methane lost during flow back and downstream methane leakage. These environmental costs were estimated using relatively high estimates for environmental impacts and damage costs. Unknown impacts may remain, however, from unreported environmental violations and from possible long-term health impacts. Nevertheless, this study finds that the economic benefits from fracking substantially exceed the costs of known environmental impacts.

The role of energy conservation and natural gas prices in the costs of achieving California's renewable energy goals

Industrial ecology aims to identify how the environmental performance of industrial systems can be improved. Key analytical tools of industrial ecology include material flow analysis, which tracks flows of materials from source to sink, and life cycle assessment, which quantifies the environmental impacts of a product across all stages of its life cycle. Although industrial ecology is considered to be a multidisciplinary field that includes the social sciences, economic analysis has not been fully incorporated into the industrial ecology literature and vice versa. Thus both industrial ecology and economics would likely benefit from closer collaboration. The main objectives of this article are to introduce key concepts and techniques of analysis in industrial ecology, identify important developments at the intersection of industrial ecology and economics, and to suggest areas for future collaboration and integration of the two disciplines. We argue that economists can play an important role in expanding and deepening industrial ecology and addressing the current gaps in the literature, thus improving the ability of industrial ecology to reach its full potential as a policy-supporting tool.

Potential Impacts on Wyoming Coal Production of EPA's Greenhouse Gas Proposals

Substitution elasticities quantify the extent to which the demand for inputs responds to changes in input prices. They are considered particularly relevant from the perspective of cost management. Because the crisis has drastically altered the economic environment in which banks operate, we expect to find changes in banks substitution patterns over time. This study uses a dynamic demand system to analyze U.S. commercial banks substitution elasticities and adjustment time to input price changes during the 2000 - 2013 period. After the onset of the crisis, banks response to input price changes became more sluggish and the substitutability of most input factors decreased significantly. Yet the substitutability of labor for physical capital rose remarkably, which we attribute to the continuing adoption of online banking technologies. Our results confirm that, with only few exceptions, the crisis has significantly reduced the substitutability of banks input factors and thereby the possibilities for cost management. Nevertheless, we find that even after the onset of the crisis banks continued to control their costs by substituting labor for purchased funds and - to a lesser extent - labor for physical capital and core deposits for purchased funds. The results are consistent across banks of different sizes.