Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?

The Baltic Sea suffers from eutrophication, which is due to leaking soil and emissions from industries, sewage plants and the agricultural sector. Helcom, the Convention of Helsinki has stated that the abatement targets for phosphorus and nitrogen have still not been reached. Research has shown that...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Pettersson, Anna
Format: H2
Language:Inglés
Published: SLU/Dept. of Economics 2016
Subjects:
_version_ 1855571532456132608
author Pettersson, Anna
author_browse Pettersson, Anna
author_facet Pettersson, Anna
author_sort Pettersson, Anna
collection Epsilon Archive for Student Projects
description The Baltic Sea suffers from eutrophication, which is due to leaking soil and emissions from industries, sewage plants and the agricultural sector. Helcom, the Convention of Helsinki has stated that the abatement targets for phosphorus and nitrogen have still not been reached. Research has shown that mussel farming could function as an abatement technique at a low cost. The purpose of this paper is to estimate if mussel farming could function as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. Additional, the purpose is also to estimate an uncertainty discount for mussel farming since the mussel has an uncertainty treatment capacity. The theoretical framework is a mathematical optimization model where the cost of the total abatement in the sea is minimized subject to the level of total abatement, which includes other abatement techniques plus the abatement level of mussel farming, should be equal or larger than the abatement requirement that is set for the country. The cost minimization problem is then solved by the Lagrange method. The result shows that Sweden and Germany would benefit when crediting mussels for nitrogen. For phosphorus, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Germany and Lithuania would benefit from introducing mussel farming. When including the uncertainty factor the level of mussel farming decreases in all countries. In a scenario analysis the marginal cost of mussel farming were given weights of 0.5 for nitrogen and phosphorus respectively. The result showed that additional countries would benefit from introducing mussel farming as an offset.
format H2
id RepoSLU9506
institution Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
language Inglés
publishDate 2016
publishDateSort 2016
publisher SLU/Dept. of Economics
publisherStr SLU/Dept. of Economics
record_format eprints
spelling RepoSLU95062016-09-02T12:56:19Z Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea? Pettersson, Anna mussel marginal cost abatement allocation uncertainty discount The Baltic Sea suffers from eutrophication, which is due to leaking soil and emissions from industries, sewage plants and the agricultural sector. Helcom, the Convention of Helsinki has stated that the abatement targets for phosphorus and nitrogen have still not been reached. Research has shown that mussel farming could function as an abatement technique at a low cost. The purpose of this paper is to estimate if mussel farming could function as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea. Additional, the purpose is also to estimate an uncertainty discount for mussel farming since the mussel has an uncertainty treatment capacity. The theoretical framework is a mathematical optimization model where the cost of the total abatement in the sea is minimized subject to the level of total abatement, which includes other abatement techniques plus the abatement level of mussel farming, should be equal or larger than the abatement requirement that is set for the country. The cost minimization problem is then solved by the Lagrange method. The result shows that Sweden and Germany would benefit when crediting mussels for nitrogen. For phosphorus, Sweden, Poland, Denmark, Germany and Lithuania would benefit from introducing mussel farming. When including the uncertainty factor the level of mussel farming decreases in all countries. In a scenario analysis the marginal cost of mussel farming were given weights of 0.5 for nitrogen and phosphorus respectively. The result showed that additional countries would benefit from introducing mussel farming as an offset. SLU/Dept. of Economics 2016 H2 eng https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/9506/
spellingShingle mussel
marginal cost
abatement
allocation
uncertainty discount
Pettersson, Anna
Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title_full Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title_fullStr Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title_full_unstemmed Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title_short Can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the Baltic Sea?
title_sort can mussel farming be used as an offset in mitigating eutrophication in the baltic sea?
topic mussel
marginal cost
abatement
allocation
uncertainty discount