ECON 4910 Spring 2007 Environmental Economics Lecture 7, The RAINS model Memorandum No 37/99

1. ECON 4910 Spring 2007 Environmental Economics Lecture 7,The RAINS modelMemorandum No 37/99 Lecturer: Finn R. Førsund RAINS

2. Background • Transboundary pollution • First UN 1972 conference on the human environment: States have ...the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction. RAINS

3. Background, cont. • OECD: The Polluter Pays Principle, PPP. • OECD /UNECE: Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, LRTRAP • EMEP : Co-operative programme for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long-Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe. RAINS

4. Results of LRTRAP • The first sulphur protocol; the Helsinki Protocol, 1985, uniform reductions of 30% • The RAINS model 1983 - : Regional Acidification INformation and Simulation • The second sulphur protocol; the Oslo Protocol, 1994: non-uniform reductions up to 80% • The 1999 Gothenburg Protocol to abate acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone, up to 88% reductions in 2010 compared with 1990 RAINS

5. The RAINS model • Cost-efficient reductions of emissions of substances generating acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone for a future year • The RAINS model consists of • Transport coefficients from source to environmental receptor • Target loads for each receptor • Purification cost functions for a set of pollutants emitted by a source (country, region) RAINS

6. Environmental receptors:EMEP grids of Europe • Source: Country • Assumption: Spatial distribution of emissions constant • Receptor: A map grid of 50x50 km • Consequence: many different ecosystems within each receptor • Transfer coefficient • average value for a year over a number of years Source 50 km . i 50 km aij Trajectory Transport coefficient . Receptor j RAINS

7. Critical loads • Repeated deposition that will not create significant damage of the ecosystem in the long run • Interpretation of significant damage: • Ecosystem functions ok, reproduction ok • Priority problems within a grid • Cannot aggregate ecosystems • Critical classification survival-no survival RAINS

8. Deriving environmental targets based on critical loads • Too expensive to apply critical loads as environmental objectives • Deposition gap closure for a receptor • Closing the gap between a benchmark deposition do and a critical load CL5% corresponding to killing 5% of the ecosystem area • Target deposition d* RAINS

9. Deposition gap closure illustrated Ecosystem area in % 100% 8 CL cumulative distribution 7 6 5 4 3 2 Deposition/ hectar 5% 1 d* do CL1 CL5% Gap closure RAINS

10. Deriving targets based on area gap closure • Reducing unprotected area Aij with a certain percentage • Unprotected area: share of ecosystem area with depositions above critical loads • Protected area: share of ecosystem area with depositions below critical loads • Finding max dj* satisfying RAINS

11. Area gap closure illustrated Ecosystem area in % 100% 8 CL cumulative distribution 7 6 5 4 3 2 Deposition/ hectar 1 d* do RAINS

12. Accumulated Average Exceedance (AAE) gap closure • AAE focuses on the exceedance in each ecosystem of a grid-cell • The target for AAE as a x % gap closure RAINS

13. AAE principle illustrated Ecosystem area in % 100% 8 CL cumulative distribution 7 6 5 Exceedance 4 3 2 Deposition/ hectar 1 AAE* do RAINS