Sweden has a goal to come out of the pandemic a bit more sustainable and will therefore keep the new tax on plastic carrier bags. A tax CERE’s Runar Brännlund is very sceptic to, something he voiced on Swedish Radio on September 22nd, 2020.
Runar claims that it is uncertain which environmental issue the tax is supposed to be addressing and consequently what effect it has on this unknown issue. He questions the presence of a proper cost-benefit analysis since the tax only cover carrier plastic bags and no other plastic packaging. Which means that the market can increase their pre-packaging without consequence and the amount of plastic could remain the same.
Mattias Vesterberg takes a closer look at demand flexibility in a SNS report and on Dagens industry. Trusting in the households willingness to adapt are often unrealistic, says Mattias Vesterberg.
Over the summer, southern Sweden have suffered from electricity shortages, which, according to Mattias, points to the challenges the Swedish electricity market is facing. One of the discussed solutions is that households should actively face the challenges by adjusting their electricity use hours when more electricity is available. This, however, is quite the task considering that household use electricity for heating when it’s cold, light when its dark, and cooking when they are hungry and at home. That the household would be flexible here is often unrealistic according to Mattias Vesterberg.
Parisa Pakrooh is a PhD student within the field of Energy Economics (Fossil Fuels) and Climate Change at the University of Tabriz, Iran. She has come to CERE for a longer stay of at least six months to further develop her knowledge within the field at a center known for its experience on energy and environmental economics.(Read more by clicking the headline)
Pakrooh is on the last leg of her PhD studies and will be an asset to CERE with her knowledge on agricultural economics, agricultural policies, natural resources and environmental economics. Her thesis titled “Investigating Economic Policies Effect on Fossil Energy Resources Consumption in the Agricultural Sector of Iran” is finished and awaiting graduation and her focus lately has been solely on energy and environmental economics.
CERE researchers Göran Bostedt and Tommy Lundgren have been appointed guest professors at the Luleå Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Technology and Social Sciences. Lundgren will spend September and October this fall in Luleå to help out with a course and work on common projects (Bio4energy) and Bostedt will also teach and assist in mentoring.
Widely accepted guidelines for standard Total Factor Productivity (TFP) measurement allow for cross-country agricultural productivity comparisons. However, current practices to incorporate environmental effects of economic activity still vary by country, making any similar comparison along environmental dimensions problematic. To address this need for standard environmental accounting guidelines, the OECD Network on Agricultural TFP and the Environment formed in 2017 to advance the development of cross-country environmentally-adjusted TFP indicators.
The Network brings together experts in productivity and measurement from academia (among others, Moriah Bostian and Tommy Lundgren of CERE), leading national statistics agencies, and international organizations, to better connect theory to practice. This paper provides an overview of the relevant index theory and current agency guidelines, originally to be presented at the annual Network meeting scheduled for May 2020 in Paris, but canceled due to the COVID-19 crisis.
