Cost Benefit Analysis and Risk Assessment Essay

Identifying the costs and benefits of a project is the first step; the next step is to identifying the value of these components. Monetary values such as income and lost income can be assessed with current values. However to place a value on environmental benefits and costs is more difficult. Harris et al (2006) describes four categories of values they are direct use value which can use market price valuation. Indirect use value is the category used to describe how the project can benefit the environment such as carbon sequestration. Option value takes into account the benefits lost due to irreversibility

“The Clean Air Act has worked for America. It has protected the public health without holding our economy back. In fact, since 1970, emissions of the six major air pollutants have dropped by 29% while the population has grown by 28% and the gross domestic product has nearly doubled” (para. 12). In other words, if this has already worked for the United States in the past, why not try updating it and incorporating it into our current lifestyles? With the Clean Air Act, Browning hopes that the Environmental Protection Agency, or the EPA, will stop thinking about the cost it would take to improve public health and increase just do whatever it takes. There is no monetary to human life, no matter how many people think

Safety checks should be carried out to eliminate the risk of putting the safety of people attending a sporting event at risk.

The purpose of this section is to set standards for federal agencies to follow in regards to global issues. Climate change and clean energy efforts are of great importance in regards to environmental assessment law. International treaties to lower greenhouse gases (GHG) are of special importance. Therefore, it has become evident that federal agencies will be forced to play a global role in the decades to come. ‘Public involvement in regards to environmental decision-making increases environmental awareness,

The economic efficiency should be balance in a way that the producer can make profits, the public can benefit with the services, the government collect the taxes from production and the most important is the health of the population and the environment. Unfortunately, we have to keep our economy in good status and continue helping our country to improve in the economic status view. New technology and environmental laws has helped improved the way producers do business and perform their natural product extraction. I will use for example fracking. Oil and gas companies have found a way to produce natural gas by performing fracking practice. This practice is very controversial because it uses a great amount of water and may cause earthquakes.

An added twist on the cap policy allows firms to trade emission allotments between themselves based on the buyer of allotment bargaining with the seller over the proper price to pay for the extra allotment. A two-panel diagram is needed to better understand the logic of trading emission allotments. Figure 4 illustrates the marginal cost of reducing emissions of two firms. One firm is run on older technology with high abatement costs that goes from right to left with zero costs represented at the lower right-hand corner of the diagram. The other firm has newer technology in its plant with lower abatement costs that goes left to right with zero costs represented at the lower left-hand corner of the diagram. The width of the horizontal axis is the reduction in emissions that must be achieved overall to an efficient level.

Carbon taxing coal-based products, in a revenue-neutral way, will help discourage overuse of fossil fuels. The United States needs to reduce carbon emissions in order to avoid the costs that pollution and climate change inflict on the general economy and individuals. Carbon, unlike other commodities exchanged and consumed in the free market, bears unique costs to the general economy that its market price does not encompass. The pollution we create when we consume carbon contaminates our air, raises temperatures, and makes severe weather events more frequent. A carbon tax is an economic mechanism that forces actors in a free market to come face-to-face with the social cost of

Alternatively, strong effectiveness is when regulators do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the true cost of enforcing catalytic converters (as per class discussion, week 2). This can help highlight any intended or unintended consequences. Governments may then be able to subsidize the cost of installing catalytic converters (as per class discussion, week 2).

The world of 2015 is centralized on industrialization, and advancements that improve the manner in which a product can be produced to turn the greatest profit. While many of these improvements in speed and quantity benefits society, we cannot turn a blind eye to some of the heavy costs that are associated with this type of mass production. To address some of the issues, like pollution, governments create laws to regulate the amount of negative externalities to its citizens. In the United States, there are multiple federal agencies charged with creating the specific standards and regulations that states and large companies must adhere to. One agency in particular, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), implements and enforces some of these standards “to protect human health and the environment”(US Environmental, 2015).

The industrial revolution in the 1800s enhanced the lives of the American citizens. No longer were cultivation and farming a chief concern; instead, manufacturing and machinery were the major improvements of that time. Still today, big corporations are looking for the next big thing that could aid citizens in their everyday lives. What is often ignored, however, are the environmental factors that are being affected by the decisions made by these industries. Harmful acid rain, smog, and buried nuclear wastes diseased the Northern continent where some places were deemed uninhabitable to the public because of the threatening health risks. Environmental laws and agencies were then created in the 1970s to shift the impact that corporations have on the environment. The unchecked power that big corporations have exhausted has enhanced the decline of environmental stability and initiated many territorial restrictions due to the careless actions of the company.

A cap-and-trade program sets a maximum level of pollution, and distributes emission permits among firms that produce emissions (Carbon Tax, 2013). The purpose of which is regulation of specific emissions by stationary and mobile sources, and setting a specific level which all emitters are re-quired to meet. Cap-and-trade possibly has less of a direct economic component to it than the other alternatives to reducing emissions described due to the ability to trade permits versus the expendi-ture of resources improving technology, with some arguing it is to the detriment of the environment. As stated in the article found in Reclaiming the Environmental Agenda, by Ashford, N. et al., 2008, “being a market-based instrument, ‘the cap-and-trade option suggests that at least this form of MBI may be more environmentally effective than the usual command-and-control alternatives, in addition to being more economically efficient.” (Ashford, N. and Caldart, C., 2008, p. 908).

This paper explores the economic impact the Clean Power Plan, as proposed by President Obama, would have on the coal industry and on society as a whole. The plan, also known as the CPP, has a goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2030. Many proponents of the coal industry claim that the CPP would harm the United States economy with little positive impact on the environment. The White House, other government agencies, scholarly organizations, and organizations regarding the protection of human health and the environment dispute these claims, stating that the CPP would actually lead to a net increase in employment, increased air quality, and an overall healthier society, all while promoting the renewable energy sector. After analyzing the data from both sides, it was determined in this paper that the overall benefits of the Clean Power Plan outweigh the costs, therefore the plan should go forward as planned.

By the year 2020, the Amendments to the Clean Air Act passed in 1990 will have prevented 230,000 early deaths, and saved the country around 2 trillion dollars. This is compared to the costs of the amendments, which the EPA calculated to be approximately 65 billion dollars. The study does not just stop at the monetary benefits and costs, but it also even dives into the number of prevented emergency room visits, and lost work and school days. With all of this information, the EPA makes it very clear the countless benefits to the United States that the Clean Air Act Amendments are having and will have in the

It is becoming increasingly certain that climate change will have severe adverse effects on the environment in years to come. Addressing this issue poses a serious challenge for policy makers. How we choose to respond to the threat of global warming is not simply a political issue. It is also an economic issue and an ethical one. Responsible, effective climate change policy requires consideration of a number of complex factors, including weighing the costs of implementing climate change policies against the benefits of more environmentally sustainable practices. Furthermore, this analysis must take place amidst serious gaps in the existing research and technology concerning the developing climatic condition.

Risk management is the term applied to a logical and systematic method of establishing the context, identifying, analyzing, evaluating, treating, monitoring and communicating risks associated with any activity, function or process in a way that will enable organizations to minimize losses and maximize opportunities. (Lecture notes)Risk Management is also described as 'all the things you need to do to make the future sufficiently certain'. (The NZ Society for Risk Management, 2001)