Ten years have passed since Professors Bengt Kriström and Runar Brännlund started a Centre bridging Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences to study the economics of environmental and natural resource management. A number of activities are planned to celebrate during the fall and winter.
September 18th, 2019 (2.45-4.00 pm) James Boyd visits CERE and have a sit down with high-school students at Minerva School in Umeå to talk about valuing ecosystem services.
September 19th, 2019 (1.15 pm) James Boyd holds a seminar at the SLU library. Title: The Future of Ecosystem Services Analysis: Barriers, Progress, and Priorities. In cooperation with ECOS
October 15-17, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå
The conference Barents Forest Forum titled: The Barents region in a biobased future, is a cooperation platform for forest sector stakeholders in the Barents region. Over the course of three days, participants from business, policy, research and development, and education will discuss the biobased future of Northern Europe with a particular focus on the Barents region.
The Swedish system for subsidizing renewable energy is a public financial loss. Consumers carry the financial burden through their electric bill and its certificate fee.
CERE Professors Bengt Kriström and Per-Olov Johansson let us in Dagens industri, August 26th 2019 know more about their cost-benefit analysis of the green certificate for renewable energy: “Our analysis show that the system for green certificates for renewable energy introduced in Sweden is not profitable for the public finance. Also, it is the consumers who pay the prize through increased electric bills via the green certificate fee.” (click on headline to read more)
The environmental taxes are criticized in fPLUS August 23, 2019 for damaging Swedish companies and failing to help the environment. One of the interviewees is CERE’s Runar Brännlund.
“The three environmental taxes identified as particularly unfortunate are: bonus-malus system on cars, air tax and chemical tax. Runar Brännlund, Professor of Economics at Umeå University says to fPlus that the environmental taxes completely miss the target. – Most of our environmental taxes are not even environmental taxes. They do not address the actual environmental issues in a good way. They are therefore more fiscal than governing.”
The August issue of Forest Policy and Economics contains not one but two papers by recent CERE grads Jinggang Guo and Brian Danley. Jinggang, specializing in forest sector modelling, defended his thesis on October 12, 2018. Just a few months later on January 25, 2019, Brian Danley defended his thesis on ecosystem services and forest policy. Apart from publishing in the same issue of the same journal, and defending in close proximity, they have also both chosen to spend the next chapter of their research careers in the US.
