This important book sheds light on the ways in which modern tools of welfare economics can be used to assess the benefits and costs of resource conflicts involving hydropower. The chapters highlight key methodological issues in this area; ranging from the intersection between cost-benefit analysis and behavioral economics, to the value of load balancing services provided by hydropower. The inclusion of insights from expert contributors from both sides of the Atlantic brings a unique and interesting range of viewpoints to the work.Several factors suggest that resource conflicts involving moving water are likely to be even more difficult to resolve today than they have been in the past. The contributors, top scholars in resource economics, consider a variety of issues through the lens of cost-benefit analysis. In the first part ofthe book, they address specific cases and issues from North America and Europe. The book closes with a more general look at the topic.

Should more water be diverted to or from electricity generation? This timely question is addressed in this short volume. Two different approaches are introduced and compared: The first is a cost-benefit analysis, examining the case of re-regulating a Swedish hydropower plant in which water is diverted from electricity generation to the downstream dryway. The proposed scenario generates environmental and other benefits, but comes at a cost in terms of lost electricity. The second study introduces an approach very different from the one used in conventional cost-benefit analysis, and provides a set of measures designed so that most, if not all, affected parties will be better off. Thus, in contrast to a conventional cost-benefit analysis, which draws on hypothetical compensation measures, the new approach envisages actual compensation. Comparing two different theoretical frameworks on the basis of a real-world case, this study can be seen as a manual that can be used to evaluate reasonably small re-regulation of rivers.

This book presents research on a kind of water use conflicts that is becoming more and more common and important: How to best manage moving water in times of increasing demand for electricity as well as environmental services. How should decisions be made between water use for electricity generation or for environmental and recreational benefits? The authors develop a simple general equilibrium model of a small open economy which is used to derive a cost-benefit rule that can be used to assess projects that divert water from electricity generation to recreational and other uses (or vice versa). The cost-benefit rule is then applied to the specific case of a proposed change at a Swedish hydropower plant. The book provides a manual for the evaluation of river regulations which can easily be replicated in other studies.

This book describes the entire process of environmental impact assessment for hydropower and dam projects, not from a legal or regulatory point of view, but from a very applied one, based mainly on the personal experience of the author, who is involved in this field of work since over 40 years, by describing the different steps of such an assessment, covering all major aspects to be dealt with. The focus is on environmental issues, while the other main subject—social impacts—is mentioned here only briefly. It will be of interest not only for ESIA (Environmental and Social Impact Assessment) practitioners, be they consultants involved in the preparation of such studies or staff members of environmental protection agencies having to come to decisions based on them, but also for engineers and planners involved in such projects, developers, and people interested in questions related to energy, environment, and climate change. Overall, this book aims at contributing to put the discussion about hydropower and dam projects on a more objective level.

This book uses modern economic tools to obtain general equilibrium cost-benefit rules. It not only presents evaluation rules for small projects but also shows how to evaluate large projects as well as mega projects (such as high speed rails and channel tunnels). This is an excellent toolkit for graduate students and policymakers.

This paper offers a non-technical overview of the issues involved when applying cost-benefit analysis (CBA) to hydropower, both in terms of new installations and changing existing regulatory structures. Our focus is on the conceptual and empirical problems of applying CBA to provide decision support in such cases. A large body of literature now exists on the social net values of generating electricity from moving water. The studies focusing values related to the ecological system include, but are not limited to, effects on climate, aesthetics, landscape, recreation and wildlife. Taken together, they confirm the view that the public invariably seems to place significant values on the integrity of the ecological system. It does, however, not seem possible to draw general conclusions from the literature on whether or not a given (dis)investment will pass a cost-benefit test; the end-result depends entirely on the specifics.

Every decision about energy involves its price and cost. The price of gasoline and the cost of buying from foreign producers; the price of nuclear and hydroelectricity and the costs to our ecosystems; the price of electricity from coal-fired plants and the cost to the atmosphere. Giving life to inventions, lifestyle changes, geopolitical shifts, and things in-between, energy economics is of high interest to Academia, Corporations and Governments. For economists, energy economics is one of three subdisciplines which, taken together, compose an economic approach to the exploitation and preservation of natural resources: energy economics, which focuses on energy-related subjects such as renewable energy, hydropower, nuclear power, and the political economy of energy resource economics, which covers subjects in land and water use, such as mining, fisheries, agriculture, and forests environmental economics, which takes a broader view of natural resources through economic concepts such as risk, valuation, regulation, and distribution Although the three are closely related, they are not often presented as an integrated whole. This Encyclopedia has done just that by unifying these fields into a high-quality and unique overview. The only reference work that codifies the relationships among the three subdisciplines: energy economics, resource economics and environmental economics. Understanding these relationships just became simpler! Nobel Prize Winning Editor-in-Chief (joint recipient 2007 Peace Prize), Jason Shogren, has demonstrated excellent team work again, by coordinating and steering his Editorial Board to produce a cohesive work that guides the user seamlessly through the diverse topics This work contains in equal parts information from and about business, academic, and government perspectives and is intended to serve as a tool for unifying and systematizing research and analysis in business, universities, and government