Environmental and Resource Economics
Overall Course Objectives
General objective: To give students a general understanding of:
a) How economic analysis can be used in addressing sustainability and environmental problems
b) How economic tools can be used in a sustainable optimum resource management
c) How the three pillars of sustainability (economy, environment, society) are related
See course description in Danish
Learning Objectives
- Discuss how we can conceptualize an optimal use of environmental goods and services
- Understand and apply environmental policy instruments
- Conduct economic analysis to find optimum non-renewable resource allocation over generations
- Explain and debate how environmental valuation methods work
- Appraise and qualify the role of discount rate in conducting cost-benefit analysis of environmental policies
- Analyse the economics of pollution
- Understand and assess economics of climate change
- Understand and discuss the differences in private and social costs of renewable energy
- Analyse and discuss the links between population growth, food production and the environment
- Use economic analysis and estimate optimum renewable resource management
- Analyse and apply key economic figures related to CO2 capture and storage
Course Content
1: Introduction: Overview of economics, sources of market failures, externalities
2: Tragedy of the commons, public goods, property rights
3: Environmental policy instruments, payments for environmental services, precautionary principle
4: Economics of pollution
5: Cost-benefit analysis, discounting, total economic value, valuing non-market goods
6: Green national accounts, green GDP, genuine progress indicator, human development index, why different measures give different outcomes
7: Causes and consequences of climate change, economics of climate change, adaptation and mitigation policy options, environment and equity
8: Green economy, economy and environment, industrial ecology, global food supply, agriculture and environment
9: The market for carbon capture and storage (CCS) from a consumer perspective
10: Non-renewable resources, scarcity and abundance: Economics, supply and consumption of non-renewable resources, mining and environment
11: Economics of renewable resources: Environment, economy and renewable resources, ecological and economic analysis of fisheries
12: Renewable energy economics, citizen preferences and acceptance
Teaching Method
Lectures 1½- 2 hours + 2 hours exercises per week