Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
of renewable power fed into the grid supply. Different tariffs can be linked to
specific technologies and revised relatively quickly, though such measures can
also be used to provide long-term support to early adopters. Widely used
internationally. Costs are generally passed directly to the end-user in higher
energy bills.
Taxes
: both incentives and penalties can be used to influence consumer purchasing
habits when considering similar alternative products. Can be implemented as
tax forgone (e.g. duty reduction), in which case tax revenues are then impacted
which may have to be recouped through general taxation. In contrast, higher
taxes can be imposed on fossil competitors (e.g. carbon taxes) to levelise total
costs between fossil and low carbon alternatives; the additional costs are
typically passed onto end-users. The downside to this is that it can be difficult
to modify taxation levels quickly if required to temper the market response.
Guaranteed markets and mandates
: the creation of voluntary or mandatory targets
can stimulate market development, either by specifying the volume of biobased
material (alone or as part of a blended material) that suppliers must deliver.
Again, end-users are required to pick up any additional cost. Such measures can
also provide more indirect drivers. For example, where pressure is placed on
certain sectors to reduce the use of or phase out what are seen as undesirable
chemicals (e.g. volatile organic solvents), this can create market opportunities
for alternatives which in some cases can benefit biobased materials. Most 'total
loss' lubricant fluids (e.g. chainsaw oils) are now biobased to reduce environ-
mental pollution risks.
In implementing such policy actions, policymakers rely on evidence and advice to
help identify the most appropriate actions to take to deliver change. Policymakers
also require monitoring of the impacts of any interventions to assess the need for
change and refinement, in order to ensure the policy is delivering as intended.
The specialist advice required in support of policy and strategy development is
also likely to be multi-functional, for example focusing on greenhouse gas
reductions exclusively could fail to recognise the impact of other burdens. As an
example, it was soon questioned what the impact of biofuel development was on
land-use change and food prices and the level of impact that could be tolerated. As
a result, social impacts were also quickly recognised to be important in assessing
the overall impacts of the imposition of policies to support biofuel development.
When developing market interventions, policymakers also need to control the
amount of government intervention to avoid destabilising what would otherwise be
stable and potentially viable markets. All of the above policy measures can have a
very significant impact on the market but at very different level of cost. While feed-
in tariffs, tax incentives and mandatory actions have a very significant impact, they
are bureaucratic and therefore costly to manage and police. Typically, they are also
limited in the products and materials to which they relate, primarily to make the
overarching legislation and management simpler and more efficient to police.
