Environmental and Resource Economics

• 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

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

Good knowledge of quantitative analysis from courses like “02323 Introduction to Statistics” or “02418 Statistical modelling: Theory and practice”

Lectures 1½- 2 hours + 2 hours exercises per week