Environmental Economics

The NIER's Environmental Economic Research Division conducts economic impact analyses to provide a better basis for decisions on Sweden's environmental policy.

With the environmental quality objectives adopted by the Swedish Parliament, environmental policy decisions must meet high standards of cost-effectiveness and be preceded by economic impact analyses.

We evaluate environmental policy instruments through research, commissions and work on developing models.

Research

The Environmental Economic Research Division conducts economic impact analyses to provide a better basis for decisions on Sweden's environmental policy.

Examples of conducted research projects:

Empirically testing the Porter hypothesis

The Porter hypothesis implies that appropriate environmental policy leads to increased productivity and enhanced competitiveness.

It is thought that an ambitious climate policy will stimulate technological development, which in turn will lead to an increased export of environmental protection technologies.

In climate policy, Sweden has chosen a more ambitious goal than required under the Kyoto protocol. The overall aim of the project has been to empirically test the Porter hypothesis on Swedish data.

A More Sustainably Waste Plan

The aims of this project was to develop and apply tools for the assessment of policy instruments on waste management. Our general equilibrium model EMEC was further developed to generate consistent descriptions of the interaction between the waste management system and the rest of the Swedish economy.

The project was undertaken in collaboration with IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, The Royal Institute of Technology, Göteborg University, Luleå University, and Lund University.

Energy systems modelling and linkages between different modelling perspectives

The research project "Energy system modelling and linkages between different model perspectives" was a one-year project funded by the Swedish Energy Agency.

The aim of the project was to develop a methodology where our general equilibrium model EMEC and the energy systems model TIMES-Sweden in co-operation, through a soft link, can contribute to improve energy policy decisions. This methodology is based on an iterative approach and active research collaboration.

The central research question is not only how the models can be developed further to become even better, but how the interaction between modellers and models can help to both qualitatively and quantitatively improve the basis for decision makers.