RAINS1 ECON 4910 Spring 2007 Environmental Economics Lecture 7, The RAINS model Memorandum No 37/99 Lecturer: Finn R. Førsund

RAINS 2 Background Transboundary pollution  First UN 1972 conference on the human environment: States have...the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.

RAINS 3 Background, cont. OECD: The Polluter Pays Principle, PPP. OECD /UNECE: Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution, LRTRAP  EMEP : Co-operative programme for the Monitoring and Evaluation of the Long- Range Transmission of Air Pollutants in Europe.

RAINS 4 Results of LRTRAP The first sulphur protocol; the Helsinki Protocol, 1985, uniform reductions of 30% The RAINS model : Regional Acidification INformation and Simulation The second sulphur protocol; the Oslo Protocol, 1994: non-uniform reductions up to 80% The 1999 Gothenburg Protocol to abate acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone, up to 88% reductions in 2010 compared with 1990

RAINS 5 The RAINS model Cost-efficient reductions of emissions of substances generating acidification, eutrophication and ground-level ozone for a future year The RAINS model consists of  Transport coefficients from source to environmental receptor  Target loads for each receptor  Purification cost functions for a set of pollutants emitted by a source (country, region)

RAINS 6 Environmental receptors: EMEP grids of Europe Source: Country  Assumption: Spatial distribution of emissions constant Receptor: A map grid of 50x50 km  Consequence: many different ecosystems within each receptor Transfer coefficient  average value for a year over a number of years. i j 50 km a ij Source Receptor. Trajectory Transport coefficient

RAINS 7 Critical loads Repeated deposition that will not create significant damage of the ecosystem in the long run Interpretation of significant damage:  Ecosystem functions ok, reproduction ok Priority problems within a grid  Cannot aggregate ecosystems  Critical classification survival-no survival

RAINS 8 Deriving environmental targets based on critical loads Too expensive to apply critical loads as environmental objectives Deposition gap closure for a receptor  Closing the gap between a benchmark deposition d o and a critical load CL 5% corresponding to killing 5% of the ecosystem area  Target deposition d*

RAINS 9 CL 1 dodo Deposition gap closure illustrated CL cumulative distribution Deposition/ hectar 100% % Ecosystem area in % CL 5% d* Gap closure

RAINS 10 Deriving targets based on area gap closure Reducing unprotected area A ij with a certain percentage  Unprotected area: share of ecosystem area with depositions above critical loads  Protected area: share of ecosystem area with depositions below critical loads  Finding max dj* satisfying

RAINS 11 8 Area gap closure illustrated CL cumulative distribution Deposition/ hectar 100% Ecosystem area in % d* dodo

RAINS 12 Accumulated Average Exceedance (AAE) gap closure AAE focuses on the exceedance in each ecosystem of a grid-cell The target for AAE as a x % gap closure

RAINS 13 8 AAE principle illustrated CL cumulative distribution Deposition/ hectar 100% Ecosystem area in % AAE* dodo Exceedance