[en] The current unbundling of operations in accounts has proved inadequate. No formula or model that could be made binding by provisions have been defined for unbundled accounts. In addition, unbundling can draw a distinct line between commercial activities and network operations, which have assumed various authoritative functions. Against this background, the need for clearer unbundling has become more marked. The working group suggests that the current provisions on unbundling of trade operations should be tightened and that the unbundling should be made clearer especially in terms of allocation of joint costs. For this, the necessary preparations by the authorities should be initiated urgently. At the same time, the working group proposes that network operations should be unbundled from other operations by incorporation or by unbundling them into a separate public utility. The smallest electric utilities should be exempted from the obligation of incorporating network operations. According to the working group, the lower limit could be fixed e.g. at 70 GWh a year. The working group also suggests that the licensees must own the electricity networks they operate. The licensees could not rent their networks from the mother company nor lease them from a financing company. The model proposed by the working group would redress the major problems connected with the supervision of the electricity market. The monopoly, i.e. the electricity network operations, under the supervision of the Electricity Market Authority could thus be unbundled. This would improve the functioning of the market and facilitate the supervision. However, the model would not abolish the tax concession of municipal public utilities in competitive trade operations, production and sale of electricity. The tax concession may affect the competitive situation on the electricity market. (orig.)

[en] The objective of this study is to examine procedures the enterprises follow when they have to make provisions for future costs in the clean up of contaminated land. It is not especially easy for an enterprise to make a provision for clean up of contaminated land in its financial statement. Because of research and planning activities and authority procedures the purification measures may be implemented after a long time. In the Study, an up-to-date subject has been dealt with: how to recognize liabilities to clean up contaminated land and how to evaluate and deal with them in the annual accounts. Environmental provisions has been examined by enterprise interviews and with other material. It is probable that the future clean up costs of contaminated land will rise up to several bit/ions of Finnish marks. The enterprises have not vet, however, included these expenditures into their annual accounts. One of the reasons for this is that the guidelines concerning recognition, measurement and disclosure of environmental liabilities in the financial statements are under development. Thus, it would be very important to promote the enterprises' and authorities' awareness of their environmental response. This can be done by research and training, and by publishing written guidelines. (orig.)

[en] Two important transformations of the past century are described: industrialisation and urbanisation. These transformations will continue in the new century and create policy challenges because the use of land, materials and energy will increasingly meet natural limits or be constrained by intergenerational equity arguments. New local and international institutional arrangements will be required to meet these challenges. Increased public participation and involvement of private companies will be needed in order to balance the different perspectives on sustainable development. The UN can show leadership because of the global character of many environmental problems and the growing need for environmental and social minimum requirements in the global liberalised market. 17 refs

[en] Transparency and certainty are essential qualities for an acceptable and trusted valuation method. Based on the evaluation of the expert judgement method developed in the Delphi I study both of these criteria may be only partially accomplished by such a method. As for the technical procedure the method is well documented and transparency is good. Argumentation of the judgements, however, should be increased. The quality of the valuation indexes is explicitly available, but their certainty is very low for most interventions. The opinions of the experts differ much from each other. How much this depends on different values and how much on differences in knowledge etc. is impossible to assess. Also, how much the technique used and the statistical handling of the expert answers may have impacted the eventual scores of different interventions is difficult to assess. However, application of the expert judgement by means of the Delphi-technique to LCA valuation is a new idea, and, consequently, the method is still very much under development, far from maturity. This should be taken into account when considering the results out of the evaluation of the case study, which was the third of the kind in Europe

[en] Energy, environmental, and economic consequences of different management systems for municipal solid waste have been studied in a systems analysis. In the systems analysis, different combinations of incineration, materials recycling of separated plastic and cardboard containers, and biological treatment (anaerobic digestion and composting) of easily degradable organic waste, were studied and also compared to landfilling. In the study a computer model (ORWARE) based on LCA methodology was used. The following parameters were used for evaluating the different waste management options: consumption of energy resources, global warming potential, acidification, eutrophication, photo oxidant formation, heavy metal flows, financial economy and welfare economy, where welfare economy is the sum of financial economy and environmental economy. The study shows that reduced landfilling to the benefit of an increased use of energy and material from waste is positive from an environmental and energy as well as economic aspect. This is mainly due to the fact that the choice of waste management method affects processes outside the waste management system, such as production of district heating, vehicle fuel, plastic, cardboard, and fertiliser. This means that landfilling of energy-rich waste should be avoided as far as possible, both because of the the environmental impact, and because of the low recovery of resources. Incineration should constitute a basis in the waste management system of Aelvdalen, even if the waste has to be transported to a regional facility. Once the waste is collected, longer regional transports are of little significance, as long as the transports are carried out in an efficient manner. Comparing materials recycling and incineration, and biological treatment and incineration, no unambiguous conclusions can be drawn. There are benefits and drawbacks associated with all these waste management options. Materials recycling of plastic containers is comparable to incineration from a welfare economic aspect, but gives less environmental impact and lower energy use - on condition that the recycled plastic replaces virgin plastic. Materials recycling of cardboard containers is comparable to incineration concerning welfare economy and energy, but has both environmental advantages and disadvantages. Anaerobic digestion of easily degradable waste gives a higher welfare economic cost than incineration, and has both environmental advantages and disadvantages. Composting of easily degradable waste is comparable to anaerobic digestion from a welfare economic aspect, but gives higher energy use and environmental impact

[en] The aim of this overview of energy and the environment is to put natural gas utilization into perspective by presenting data on the global and the Danish energy consumption and by placing natural gas in the energy supply. The environmental consequences of the gas consumption are described generally, and the key figures of emissions from different natural gas uses are presented. Finally the contribution of the natural gas sector to the reduction of the Danish CO₂, NO_x and SO₂ emissions are described. Since the beginning in the 80's the use of natural gas in Denmark has grown - in 1998 natural gas covered about 22% of the Danish gross energy consumption. Globally natural gas covers 23.8% of the energy consumption, and the share of natural gas is expected to grow both globally and nationally. One of the biggest advantages of natural gas is that by combustion of natural gas lesser CO₂ is formed than by combustion of coal or oil. The reductions of the Danish emissions due to natural gas use are calculated to about 5.3 million tonnes each year. Thus natural gas delivers a big contribution to the reduction of the emission CO₂, which has been obtained since the end of the 80's. (EHS)

[en] This report provides a comprehensive and up-to-date status on the current use of economic instruments in Danish environmental protection. The report focuses on the implementation and enforcement aspects of the Danish experience. Thereby, the report is intended to provide a contribution to the international efforts to collate and disseminate such experience, and to provide a means of experience sharing and example sharing. It is envisaged that the report may be of use also to countries in Central and Eastern Europe and in the Newly Independent States where the emerging market economies offer an opportunity for an enhanced use of economic instruments. Lastly, the report's emphasis on actual implementation and enforcement aspects renders it highly applicable also to undergraduate and postgraduate students in environmental and/or economic disciplines. (au)

[en] Because of concern over global climate change, new systems are needed that produce electricity from fossil fuels and emit less CO(sub 2). The fundamental problem with current systems which recover and concentrate CO(sub 2) from flue gases is the need to separate dilute CO(sub 2) and pressurize it to roughly 35 atm for storage or sequestration. This is an energy intensive process that can reduce plant efficiency by 9-37% and double the cost of electricity. There are two fundamental reasons for the current high costs of power consumption, CO(sub 2) removal, and concentration systems: (1) most disposal, storage and sequestering systems require high pressure CO(sub 2) (at roughly 35 atm). Thus, assuming 90% removal of the CO(sub 2) from a typical atmospheric pressure flue gas that contains 10% CO(sub 2), the CO(sub 2) is essentially being compressed from 0.01 atm to 35 atm (a pressure ratio of 3,500). This is a very energy intensive process. (2) The absorption-based (amine) separation processes that are used to remove the CO(sub 2) from the flue gas and compress it to 1 atm consume approximately 10 times as much energy as the theoretical work of compression because they are heat driven cycles working over a very low temperature difference. Thus, to avoid the problems of current systems, we need a power cycle in which the CO(sub 2) produced by the oxidation of the fuel is not diluted with a large excess of nitrogen, a power cycle which would allow us to eliminate the very inefficient thermally driven absorption/desorption step. In addition, we would want the CO(sub 2) to be naturally available at high pressure (approximately 3 to 6 atmospheres), which would allow us to greatly reduce the compression ratio between generation and storage (from roughly 3,500 to approximately 8)

[en] In the Netherlands, an Environmental Balance is annually published by RIVM (National Institute of Public Health and the Environment) in co-operation with other institutes. ECN Policy Studies was requested to consider the import of renewable electricity. The production of renewable electricity is stimulated with 0.02 /kWh and small consumers are also encouraged to buy with an incentive of 0.0601 /kWh. This is done by means of special rules in the energy tax, which allows giving electricity from renewable sources a tax deduction. Due to this stimulation and due to the liberalisation of the electricity market, a green electricity market emerged of about 1 TWh in 2001 and 3 TWh in 2002. The green electricity market works with green electricity certificates, which can also be given for foreign electricity production from solar PV, wind or biomass. By January 2001, six other EU countries liberalised their renewable electricity market in order to become eligible for the Dutch certificates. The production of renewable electricity in the Netherlands amounts to 1.6 TWh (2000), excluding 0.9 TWh from waste combustion. The total electricity consumption in the Netherlands is over 100 TWh. In 2000 and 2001, the electricity import was 20 TWh, which is mainly due to cheaper electricity in Germany. It appears that the import of renewable electricity increased from 1.4 TWh in 2000 to 7.5 TWh in 2001. The production subsidy has no relation with the green electricity market and the surplus is sold as 'grey' electricity. Based on information from the market participants (although limited) and information on the policy and the renewable electricity production in six other European countries, ECN concluded that the import consists mainly of electricity from existing biomass en hydropower plants (<15 MW) from Scandinavian countries. The 150 million of Dutch support to the imported electricity in 2001 hardly had any effect on the EU production of renewable electricity or on CO2 emissions. Because there is no level playing field for green electricity and there are almost no short-term renewable energy targets, the Dutch incentive came too early. The Dutch subsidy does have a positive effect on renewable electricity production in the Netherlands. At this moment, the Dutch government is studying other instruments (e.g. those of neighbouring countries) that stimulate Dutch production, but do not have such a large influence on import

[en] The Home Energy Rating System (HERS) Building Energy Simulation Test (BESTEST) is a method for evaluating the credibility of software used by HERS to model energy use in buildings. The method provides the technical foundation for''certification of the technical accuracy of building energy analysis tools used to determine energy efficiency ratings,'' as called for in the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (Title I, Subtitle A, Section 102, Title II, Part 6, Section 271). Certification is accomplished with a uniform set of test cases that Facilitate the comparison of a software tool with several of the best public-domain, state-of-the-art building energy simulation programs available in the United States. The HERS BESTEST work is divided into two volumes. Volume 1 contains the test case specifications and is a user's manual for anyone wishing to test a computer program. Volume 2 contains the reference results and suggestions for accrediting agencies on how to use and interpret the results