Author: Richard Tol

Dublin to Cork in less than 10 hours

A trained cyclist can probably do it in that time. An all-electric vehicle would manage in three and a half with a bit of luck. The drive is about 3 hours, but the car would need to be recharged half-way through. If there is no queue at the “fast” charging point, you need at most half an hour. But as batteries wear or your driving style does not get you the nominal range, you would need to re-charge twice. And maybe you’re out of luck and need to recharge at the kerbside rate (60-90 mins) or from a standard socket (6-8 hours).

The government announced its support for electric vehicles yesterday: No VRT and a €5000 grant. In addition, the ESB gives away electricity and is investing in infrastructure, all courtesy of the shareholders (aka taxpayers).

All-electric vehicles are not yet ready for prime-time. They are fine for city driving and the perfect choice for those who can afford a second car and want to polish up their green image.

The current investment will not result in any intellectual property for Irish companies. Given the dire state of the public purse, it would be better to let others pay for the demonstration of all-electric vehicles and roll them out in Ireland when (if?) the technology is ready.

Brendan Keane on Municipal Waste Management

Brendan Keane of the Irish Waste Management Association takes issue with Scott Whitney’s piece of last week.

You can see for yourself who has the better arguments.

A lot of people in this debate (incl. IWMA and DCC) seem to believe in the virtues of vertical integration of waste collection and waste disposal. I do not understand that at all. A collector should deliver waste to the disposer with the lowest cost, regardless of ownership. There are no economies of scope or issues with information or contracts that would favour vertical integration.

(There is a coordination problem between waste separation at source and final disposal. For example, mechanical-biological treatment (MBT) is more valuable for aggregated waste streams than for disaggregated ones.)

Clifford on incineration

Michael Clifford is not impressed by the Minister of the Environment, arguing that a minister should follow or change government policy (rather than oppose it) and that a minister of the environment should seek what is best for the environment (which, in this case, is implementing government policy).

He might have added the damage to Ireland’s reputation as a place where contracts are upheld, but I agree otherwise. See here, here, here and here.

UPDATE: Scott Whitney (of Covanta) too agrees and adds some more information.

Progressive taxation of incineration

The Minister for the Environment has made another announcement on municipal waste policy.

There are two components. One is not new: There is to be a cap on incineration. There is no rationale for creating an artificial scarcity, as explained by Gorecki and Lyons. Using both price and quantity instruments is double regulation. Tinbergen (1952) shows that this is unnecessarily costly.

The new element in the latest announcement is that the incineration levy is not constant, but increases with the size of the incinerator. Both the ESRI and the Eunomia report recommend an incinerator levy, albeit at different levels. However, they recommend the same levy, per tonne, regardless of the size of the incinerator — although one could argue that larger incinerators burn cleaner and therefore should have a lower levy.

There is no economic or environmental rational for putting a higher levy on larger incinerators.

UPDATE: Story in the Irish Times

UPDATE2: PJ Rudden says the proposed levies may be illegal. I’ve heard say that it would be anti-competitive to put one levy on a small incinerator in Cork and another levy of a big incinerator in Dublin, but as inter-county trade in waste will be verboten too, I’m not convinced that that argument holds.

UPDATE3: RTE looked at the letters between the City Manager of Dublin and the Minister for the Environment; they are not particularly friendly to one another.

Municipal waste management (ctd)

In today’s Examiner, PJ Rudden estimates the costs of changing government waste policy (as opposed by the ESRI) at around 2.5 billion euro and warns that environmental quality may deteriorate too. As Rudden points out in Friday’s Times, his cost estimate omits the damage to Ireland’s reputation should the government decide not to honour the contract with Covanta, and indeed the cost of breaking the contract.