Lecture notes 2, 4910 spring 2005, The RAINS model

1. Lecture notes 2, 4910 spring 2005, The RAINS model • Transboundary pollution • 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.

2. Transboundary pollution, 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.

3. Results of LRTRAP • The first sulphur protocol; the Helsinki Protocol, 1985, of 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

4. EMEP grids of Europe • Source: Country • Assumption: Spatial distribution of emissions constant • Receptor: A map grid of 150x150 (50x50)km • Consequence: many different ecosystems within each receptor • Transfer coefficient • average value for a year

5. 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

6. Ecosystem area in % 100% 8 CL cumulative distribution 7 6 5 Exceedance 4 3 2 Deposition/ hectar 5% 1 do AAE* Accumulated exceedance as environmental target

7. Gap closure principles:Average Accumulated Exceedance

8. Target for accumulated exceedance • Uniform percentage reduction, x, of average accumulated exceedance in all grids • Benchmark value: djo

9. The cost function in RAINS • The emitting unit is a country, i • Purification costs for different sectors are agggregated in merit order • The emissions, eo, for a future year are based on projections of energy use and economics activity • Costs change with projected emissions

10. The environmental block • Deposition of SO2 into a grid cell from all sources (countries) • bj = background deposition

11. The optimisation problem • Minimise total purification costs subject to environmental targets for each grid cell and limits om emissions

12. The Lagrangian

13. The first order conditions • Interior solution: marginal purification costs equal to total shadow-priced evaluation of contribution to accumulated exceedance at binding constraints

14. Marginal costs γ c’* μ Emissions eo e* emin Illustration of optimal solution

15. Economic interpretations • Marginal purification costs differ between countries due to individual transfer coefficients • non-uniform reductions of pollutants • Shadow price for each receptor shows system marginal costs of deposition constraint • May have non-feasible solution due to fixed initial emissions and limited purification possibilities • maximal purification, reducing initial emissions, or changing target loads