2.

Eficiencia economica y Proteccion Ambiental

Imagínese que usted está planeando un viaje de vacaciones de primavera a
las Bahamas, y usted está eligiendo entre cuatro paquetes de vacaciones
que ha encontrado en la web. El "Bahamas con un presupuesto" viaje, una
historia de 3 días de estancia en cabañas de campaña, cuesta 200 $.
Supongamos que usted estaría dispuesto a pagar hasta $ 550 para que
viaje, pero no más. En otras palabras, no le importaría si usted pagó $
550 para el viaje o gastado el dinero en otra cosa. El siguiente paso es
un viaje que cuesta $ 500. Este viaje incluye alojamiento 4 días en
cabañas frente al mar, y el entorno es tan hermosa que yenes estaría
dispuesto a pagar hasta $ 900 para ella. Un viaje de 5 días, incluso más
caro, con algunos extras tirado, le costaría $ 850 y un valor de $ 1.100
a ti. Por último, un paquete de lujo de una semana está disponible por $
1,250, que en su estudiante
Ante estas posibilidades, que viaje debe elegir? A primera vista, se
podría pensar que el viaje de lujo es el mejor para tomar; después de
todo, lo valoras más y están dispuestos a pagar el costo (aunque sólo a
duras penas). Pero en ese escenario, se termina con beneficios netos
cero. De hecho, debido a que hemos definido su “disposición a pagar" como
el importe por el que sería indiferente entre pagar el viaje y quedarse
en casa, pasando (y pagar por) el viaje de una semana le haría ninguna
mejor que si que no toma unas vacaciones en absoluto. la elección del
viaje de lujo con el argumento de que estaría dispuesto a pagar más por
ello equivale a ignorar los costos de las vacaciones por completo.
En lugar de elegir el viaje con el valor bruto más alto para usted,
independientemente de que ser la elección de un mejor viaje que le da el
mayor beneficio neto, es decir, la diferencia entre el beneficio de tomar
viaje (medida por su disposición a pagar) y el costo (medido por su
precio). Por estos motivos, la mejor opción resulta ser la de 4 días de
viaje de $ 500, que se valora en $ 900, para un beneficio neto de $ 400.
Esto es mayor que el beneficio neto del viaje más caro $ 850: el coste
añadido (+ $ 350) es mayor que el aumento en el valor (+ $ 200), por lo
que los beneficios netos disminuyen a $ 250. El viaje de $ 500 es también
mejor (desde una perspectiva de beneficio neto) que el “presupuesto”
viaje. A pesar de que el viaje es más barato, es también un valor
inferior a ti, y la caída en el valor es mayor que el ahorro de costes.
Entonces, ¿cómo esto se parece a un problema ambiental? Bueno, imagina
que, en lugar de tomar un viaje a las Bahamas, que está evaluando las
posibilidades de reducción de la contaminación en su comunidad, y hay una
serie de diferentes opciones y etiquetas de precio. Al igual que en el
caso de las vacaciones, un criterio razonable para la toma de decisiones
es maximizar los beneficios netos. Los beneficios netos de control de la
contaminación del aire, por ejemplo, son la diferencia entre los
beneficios totales de un aire más limpio y los costos totales de la
reducción de las emisiones. Maximizar los beneficios netos de una
política corresponde a la noción de eficiencia económica. Y como veremos
en el capítulo 3, la disposición a pagar es de hecho en el corazón de
cómo los economistas conciben y medir el valor de la protección del medio
ambiente y los recursos naturales.
You may be surprised to learn that if we accept economic efficiency as a
reasonable goal for society, then the optimal level of pollution will in
general be greater than zero. The reason for this will become clear as we
procced, but it can be summed up as follows: Although there would
certainly be benefits from eliminating pollution completely, the costs
would (in most cases) be much higher. We could get nearly the same
benefit, at much lower cost, by tolerating some pollution.

ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY
To an economist, answering the question “How much environmental
protection should society choose?” is much like answering the question
“Which vacation package is best?” in the simple example above (albeit on
a much larger scale): It depends on comparing benefits and costs and
finding where their difference is greatest.
This comparison between benefits and costs leads to a central concept in
economics: that of economic efficiency. To an economist, an efficient
policy or outcome is one that achieves the greatest possible net
benefits. You should note that efficiency has a precise meaning here,
which differs somewhat from common usage. In other contexts, efficiency
connotes a minimum of wasted effort or energy. For example, the energy
efficiency of a home appliance is the amount of electricity the appliance
uses per unit of output—for example, the amount of electricity used by an
air conditioner to cool a room of a certain size. The less energy an
appliance uses to produce a given outcome, the more energy-efficient it
is. Similarly, the efficiency of a generator in An electric power plant
measures how much useful energy a turbine generates, relative to the
energy content of the fuel burned to drive the turbine. In both of these
examples, efficiency is a function only of inputs and processes. The goal
(cooling a room of a given size or generating a certain amount of
electricity) is taken as given, and efficiency measures how little energy
is used to achieve it. In other words, energy efficiency does not relate
benefits and costs—the comparison at the heart of the concept of economic
efficiency.
To illustrate this contrast, suppose you are choosing between a top-of-
the-line air conditioner that costs $500 and a model that uses more
electricity but costs only $150.The more expensive air conditioner is
certainly more energy efficient. However, whether it is more efficient
from an economic point of view—that is, whether the net benefits are
greater—depends on how often you will use the air conditioner, how much
more electricity the lower-end model uses, and the price of electricity.
To understand what economic efficiency 'means for environmental policy,
let's start by considering a real-world environmental issue: sulfur
dioxide (SO2) emissions front fossil-fueled electric power plants.
Burning oil or coal to generate electricity creates SO2 as a byproduct,
because those fuels contain sulfur. In downwind areas, SO2 emissions
contribute to urban smog, particulate matter, and acid rain. For these
reasons, the control of SO2 emissions front power plants has been a focus
of air pollution legislation in the United States and many other
countries.
From an economic perspective, we can frame this issue in terms of the
efficient level of SO2 emissions abatement. (It is often easier to think
in terms of abatement, or pollution control, which is a "good," rather
than pollution, which is a "bad.") Suppose we observe the amount a firm
or industry would pollute in the absence of any regulatory controls.
Abatement is measured relative to that benchmark. If a firm would emit a
thousand tons of pollution in the absence of regulation but cuts that to
six hundred tons of pollution (for example, by installing pollution
control equipment), it has achieved four hundred tons of abatement.
What level of sulfur dioxide abatement will maximize net benefits to
society? To answer this question, of course, requires thinking
systematically about the costs and benefits of pollution control.
THE COSTS OF SULFUR DIOXIDE ABATEMENT
Typically, a minor amount of abatement can be achieved at very little
cost simply by improving how well a power plant burns coal, because a
cleaner-burning plant will emit less pollution for any given amount of
electricity generated. (One reason the resulting abatement is cheap is
that a cleaner-burning plant will also use less fuel to produce the same
amount of electricity, saving money for its managers.) At a somewhat
higher cost, power plants can increase their abatement by burning coal
with slightly less sulfur than they would otherwise use. The abatement
cost increases further as the power plant burns coal containing less and
less sulfur that is more and more expensive. For example, a power plant
in Illinois can burn cheap high-sulfur coal from mines in the southern
part of the state. To reduce SO2 pollution, such a plant might switch to
coal from eastern Kentucky with half the sulfur content but a slightly
higher transportation cost. Still greater reductions could be achieved,
at still greater cost, by switching to very low-sulfur coal from Wyoming.
Finally, achieving reductions of 90 percent or more from baseline levels
typically requires investment in large end-of-pipe pollution control
equipment, such as flue gas desulfurization devices (better known as
scrubbers) that remove SO2 from the flue gases. Such equipment is often
very expensive, making high levels of abatement much more costly than low
levels. Moreover, the cost is typically driven by the percentage
reduction achieved, so that removing the first 90 percent of pollution
costs about the same as going from 90 to 99 percent removal.
The costs we just described trace out a particular pattern. Costs rise
slowly at first, as abatement increases from zero. As abatement continues
to increase, however, costs rise more and more rapidly. This pattern is
reinforced when we consider the (To an economist, being efficient means
maximizing net benefits.) costs of abatement at the level of the industry
rather than the individual power plant. Some power plants (those located
close to low-sulfur coal deposits, for example) can abate large amounts
of pollution at low cost, whereas others may find even small reductions
very expensive. As we increase pollution control at the industry level,
we must call on plants where abatement is more and more expensive.
Figure 2.1 depicts a stylized abatement cost function that corresponds to
this pattern of rising cost. By abatement cost function we mean the total
cost of pollution control as a function of the amount of control
achieved. In
THE ENERGY EFFICIENCY GAP
The difference between what economists mean by efficiency and what
engineers and others often mean is illuminated if we think about the
concept of energy efficiency. Many studies have estimated significant
private net benefits to technical energy efficiency investments by
households and firms, including things such as switching from
incandescent lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs),
installing more effective insulation, and buying more efficient
appliances. Outside economics, analysts often wonder why these
investments don't happen on a larger scale, identifying an energy
efficiency "gap" between what would appear to be cost-minimizing and
actual energy efficiency investments. The solution, according to these
analyses, is a broad effort by the public sector to reduce barriers to
the adoption of energy efficient technologies, through education or
information provision, subsidies, and other polices.
In response, economists point to several problems with this
perspective. We'll discuss a few here.' First, analyses that identify
this gap usually rely on engineering estimates of the potential energy
cost savings associated with efficiency investments, and real-world
savings often differ from potential savings. As we will explore in
greater detail in Chapter 3, economic costs are opportunity costs,
which would include perceived risks from new technologies (for
example, if your usual plumber Is not willing or able to install a
tankless hot water heater), changes in the quality of the produced
service (as with the change from incandescents to CFLs), and other
costs—not simply the dollars spent on your energy bill. These costs,
though hard to quantify, are real economic costs not accounted for in
technical efficiency studies. Second, energy use behavior changes when
households and firms purchase more efficient technologies; a rebound
effect of increased usage due to lower operating cost has been
observed for many energy technologies. Thus, both energy savings and
cost savings in the real world will differ from engineering estimates
of potential savings. Third, the rate at which energy consumers are
willing and able to trade the future benefits of reduced energy costs
for current investment costs is poorly understood; in particular, low-
income households may face significant credit constraints and steeper
consequences for this tradeoff than, others. In addition, to the
extent that energy and cost savings from efficient technologies have
been estimated from households and firms that have adopted these
technologies, the results of these studies may not be generalized to
nonadopters. The Inherent bias could go either way: Those who adopt
energy efficient technologies may be "conservation-oriented," or they
may be energy "hogs" who purchase efficient technologies to support
increased use (at lower cost).
The point Is not that households and firms in the real world always
make economically efficient decisions about energy technology
investments. Consumers may lack the information necessary to
understand how energy efficiency varies between different appliances
or how that translates into potential savings; other characteristics
of those appliances may seem more salient at the time of purchase.
Incentives may not be properly aligned: For example, renters will lack
sufficient incentive to install energy-efficient technologies, knowing
that some of the benefits will accrue to landlords and future
occupants. But it is difficult to tell from data. on the technical
efficiency of these investments—both how much energy they would save
if operating according to engineering specifications and how much
these savings would reduce the total cost of energy consumption—how
large the economic energy efficiency gap might be.
the figure we have used X to represent the amount of pollution 'control
and C(X) to denote the total cost (in dollars) as a function of X. A
function with this bowed-in shape is called a convex function.

THE BENEFITS OF SULFUR DIOXIDE ABATEMENT

Recall that in Chapter 1 we described the benefits from reducing green-
house gas emissions as corresponding to the avoided damages from global
climate change. In the same way, the benefits of SO2 abatement are simply
the avoided damages from pollution.
How do these damages vary with pollution? As the air gets dirtier,
pollution damages tend to increase more and more rapidly. At low
concentrations, SO2 corrodes buildings and monuments. Higher
concentrations lead to acid rain, with the attendant damages to forest
ecosystems from the acidification of lakes and soils. In urban areas, the
adverse effects of SO2 increase from eye and throat irritation, to
difficulty breathing and ultimately to heart and respiratory ailments.
These effects are felt first by the most vulnerable members of society:
infants, older adults, and asthmatics. But as concentrations rise, the
affected population grows.
Este patrón de daños corresponde a beneficios totales de control de la
contaminación que aumentan rápidamente cuando la reducción es baja (y la
contaminación es una y aumentar más lentamente cuando la reducción es
alta (y la contaminación es baja) .Este se ilustra por la curva en la
figura 2.2, en la que han utilizado B (X) para representar la función de
beneficio de reducción. una función con la forma de salida inclinada de B
(X) se llama una función cóncava.

Figura 2.1 Costos Totales de Reducción de la Contaminación, en Función

del Nivel de Reducción.
Figura 2.2 Beneficios Totales de Reducción de la Contaminación, en
Función del Nivel de Reducción.