| 摘要 |
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1. Background and Purpose
This research is in its third year of study of the Three-Year Research Plan on FTA's responding strategy to the cultivation of bioenergy industry. However, there have been various important changes, following the conclusion of the Korea-US FTA (2007). The Korea-EU FTA concluded in 2009 will soon come into effect. Green growth settled in a new policy paradigm since 2008. As a result, Framework Act on Low Carbon, Green Growth has come into effect (2010). Climate change negotiations increasingly ask developing countries for more specific action on reducing emissions. In addition, ocean dumping of domestic wastes, such as livestock excreta and sewage, wastewater, will be prohibited from 2012 and 2013 respectively, following the London convention and 1996 Protocol, which Korea joined in 2009. On the other hand, the 2009-2010 National Roadmap for Smart Grid was established; this will make it possible for renewable energy to enter into the power market.
Following such trends, we face a wide range of policy challenges including promotion of rural income and competitiveness, enhancement of environmental friendliness of agricultural and livestock sector, reduction of greenhouse gas emission, development of renewable energy and fossil fuel switch, organic wastewater treatment, reduction in ocean dumping of Livestock excreta, policy instruments for economic growth with eco-efficiency, promotion of relevant technology and market, and so forth. In this context, biogas production from livestock wastes and waste materials may be an important resolution not only for the FTA responding strategy, but also for energy security, climate change, ecological and environmental protection, and green growth policies. The demand for studies - on feasibility or policy support associated with biogas production in various field of policy-making - is bound to increase. However, studies on the economic feasibility of biogas production may be limited when the environmental value of biogas production is unknown and relevant studies do not exist. This also constrains securing objective evidence for the government to evaluate policy options.
The purpose of this study is to search for a methodology to estimate and quantify the environmental value of biogas production, and contribute to securing objective evidence to evaluate policy options.
2. Outline
A. Scope
This study uses the benefit transfer method to estimate the social value of biogas. The social value refers to the value of external effects, including environmental benefits accrued by biogas production from livestock wastewater and food wastewater.
Although biogas production has considerable external benefits, there has never been any study on their valuation. Therefore in this study procedures for examining the benefit properties of biogas production, selection of benefits for analysis, exploration of methodologies, et cetera, need to be explored. Based on the results of these procedures, the social value of benefits obtained from the biogas production could be estimated and analyzed.
The objective benefits were chosen considering the characteristics of biogas production and the possibility of quantification. As a result, the benefits of imported energy substitution, liquified fertilizer production, emissions reduction, water quality improvement, odor reduction, and ocean dumping reduction are examined in this study.
B. Methodology
A typical method in economics to estimate environmental value is to measure the willingness to pay (WTP) of consumers to obtain the environmental benefits. There are commonly used methods such as the revealed preference method and the stated preference method. The revealed preference method is estimating nonmarket values of biogas after observing individual preferences in the biogas-related market. The stated preference method is estimating environmental value by conducting a survey in a virtual situation or market.
The revealed preference method and the stated preference method could not be applied, because the conditions for consumers' perception were inadequate and the use of virtual market did not hold. Instead, the benefit transfer method was applied. In the benefit transfer method there are the value transfer method, the function transfer method, the meta transfer method, and et cetera. However, due to the absence of existing studies and difficulty in specifying biogas production methodology, this study applied the value transfer method to measure biogas production's environmental value.
C. Limitations
This research presented biogas production's environmental value by quantifying the environmental value of biogas production. Still, the following limitations remain. First, biogas production's social value wasn't able to reflect various types of the value of indirect benefit because it has mostly been measured by the value of direct benefit. Second, the benefit transfer method must use existing studies and pass through a process of converting the benefits; thus, it could incur errors if consumers' perception improves as bioenergy becomes popular, application of stated preference method or revealed preference method becomes possible and makes a more accurate measurement likely. Third, the coverage of a analysis in this study is confined to assessing the social value of biogas production. In order to be directly utilized in an actual policy-making decision, external benefits of biogas production need to be considered in combination with costs. Also, detailed economic analysis from a national economic perspective needs to be carried out. The limitations of this study are mostly due to a given condition for analysis or characteristics of objective benefits, but these eventually need to be overcome, as well as regarded in interpreting the results of the analysis.
D. Sections
This research study is organized as follows. Part 1 consists of introduction, followed by examination of the benefits of biogas production, to determine the objective benefits in part 2. In addition, to choose the estimation method, investigation was carried out according to the applicable condition of methodology. In part 3, biogas's production capacity is measured for environmental value computation under appropriate assumptions. In part 4, the benefit transfer method is implemented to measure biogas production's social and environmental value. In part 5, the contents of this research are summarized and implications are presented.
3. Findings and Recommendations
The value of benefits obtained from biogas production are summarized as follows by sectors. The greatest estimated value of benefits lies in water quality improvement, estimated to be worth as 47.7~477.5 billion Won.
The reason for this is that the marginal WTP was applied to entire households. That is, because livestock households are scattered nationwide and river contaminations tend to be non-point source pollution, the benefits of water quality improvement from decreases in livestock wastes could be distributed to everyone in the country. The results of such study greatly multiplied the benefits of water quality improvement. However, in the case of odor reduction, the impact of livestock household's odor has been limited and its occurrence has been bounded by the number of rural households and animals. The benefits from a decrease in ocean dumping are the lowest because their effect is trivial to the lives of people and the trend of ocean dumping is decreasing. On the other hand, the benefits of imported energy substitution reach the relatively high level of 48.7~182.6 billion Won.
The estimated value of net environmental benefits (excluding imported energy substitution and liquified fertilizer production) is 53.3~517.0 billion Won. This result can be compared to the result of studies on the value of bioenergy, as follows.
Benefits of Biodiesel production were once estimated to be 50.5~528.3 billion Won (J.H. Bae, 2006), which includes those of agricultural subsidy savings, by-products income, and biodiesel sales. In another study which used questionnaires, the environmental benefits of biodiesel as transportation fuel was estimated to be 224.2~334.3 billion Won (D.H. Won, 2008). In this study, the environmental value of biogas production when using biodiesel as transportation fuel was measured using the survey-research method. The results of the environmental value of biogas production falls in the middle of biodiesel's estimated range. Actual value of biogas production may be greater, considering possible external effects.
Below is a summary of the policy implications obtained from this study. First, the purpose of biogas production and utilization should be scrutinized and determined. Biogas can substitute for heating fuel, electricity-generating fuel and LNG for city gas, and the effects of subsidy may be different depending on the fuel substituted. For example, the estimated value of environmental benefits in this study is 118~305 Won/, which is 16~42% of LNG price for residential and 17~43% for CHP. This implies that in the process of biogas production, if biogas is subsidized as much as environmental value (118~305 Won/), for the purpose of city-gas LNG replacement, biogas' production costs may be competitive even though it is 43 percent higher than city-gas supply costs. Thus, the finding shows that the scale of assisted financial support differs according to compensability of benefit. It also shows that depending on the size of supply cost of comparability, biogas' competitiveness may be variable.
Second, the biogas support policy needs to consider its ripple effect on the energy market and other fields of policy. For example, subsidies for biogas production may impact the choice and combination of facilities, and energy efficiency, in the case of the heating market (refer to Appendix 5).
Third, effects of biogas related policy on New Growth Engine should be considered. For example, technology and equipment for pre-treatment and transport are required in terms of production technology. On the side of utilization technology, fuels for generator, boiler, and city-gas, as well as various methods to process them may be necessitated (refer to Appendix 1). Thus, regulation and support for biogas affect the costs, economic feasibility, domestic market formation, equipment suppliers' focus, and finally the promotion of New Growth Engine industries.
Fourth, the existence and the utilization of the Feed-in Tariff need to be thoroughly examined. The government has a plan to introduce the Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) from 2012 instead of maintaining the Feed-in Tariff. Under the RPS, the renewable sources for electricity generation may possibly be chosen on the basis of profit maximization or cost minimization by the regulated firms. This decision includes the risk of ignoring social costs and benefits which could be vital from the policy point of view.
Fifth, there should be coherence and interconnection between policies. Risks of inconsistency and disconnection exist, because biogas production is within the intersection of many policies like agricultural policy, waste treatment policy and energy policy. The absence of coherent and interconnected policies for the biogas sector can serve as a bureaucratic trap and therefore limit the sector's development (refer to Appendix 1).
Sixth, there is a need to expand the research foundation of social value estimation. If biogas production's environmental or social value is quantitively evaluated with precision, the risk of excessive subsidies may be reduced.
113 pages, 50 refs., 19 tabs., 4 Figs., Language: Korean |
