OK, it’s not a scene from Ghostbusters. Delta Watermaster Michael George makes some statements that have been percolating about but not publicly discussed. He points out that agricultural water efficiency, contrary to water savings calculations by groups such as Pacific Institute, has lead to increased productivity with the same amount of water. He also appears to support the Twin Tunnels approach.
Bob Sussman at Brookings writes favorably about the resurrection of cap and trade for GHG regulation as a viable policy option with the Chinese planning to implement a program and the US EPA Clean Power Plan encouraging market trading mechanisms in two forms of compliance. Yet as I read this (and also think about proposals to increase water trading to solve California’s ongoing drought), I can see an important missing element in these discussions–how can these markets be designed to gain success?
In 1996, I wrote “Environmental Commodities Markets: ‘Messy’ Versus ‘Ideal’ Worlds” that explored the issues of market design and political realities. As I’ve written recently, we are not always good at fully compensating the losers in environmental policy making, and these groups tend to oppose policies that are beneficial for society as a result. And market incentive proponents seem to always propose some variation on one of two market designs: 1) everyone for themselves in searching for and settling transactions or 2) a giant periodic auction.
In reality, carefully designing market institutions that work for participants is key to the success of those markets. Daniel Bromley wrote about how just “declaring markets” in Russia and Eastern Europe did not instantly transform those economies, much to our chagrin. The RECLAIM emissions market has woefully underperformed because SCAQMD didn’t think through how transactions could be facilitated (and that failure prompted my article.) Frank Wolak and Jonathan Kolstad confirmed my own FERC testimony that the disfunction of the RECLAIM market led to higher electricity prices in the California crisis of 2000-01.
For a presentation a few years ago, I prepared this typology of market structure that looks at the search and match mechanisms and the price revelation and settlement mechanisms. This presentation focused on water transfer markets in California, but it’s also applicable to emission markets. Markets range from brokered/negotiated real estate to dealer/posted-price groceries. Even the New York Stock Exchange, which is a dealer/auction probably works differently than how most people think. There are differences in efficiency and ease of use, often trading off. As we move forward, we need more discussion about these nuts and bolts issues if we want truly successful outcomes.
The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article how Australia changed its water infrastructure and usage in the face of the 12-year “Big Dry.” Earlier the Chronicle ran “5 fixes for California’s age-old water rights system” that drew on Australia’s experience. M.Cubed’s analysis of the state’s urban drought regulations included a synopsis of Australia’s experience. An interesting question is whether anyone has assessed the political-economic process that facilitated Australia’s transformation. What were the trade-offs made? How were key interest groups satisfied?
Metropolitan Water District is looking at spending up to $1 billion on recycled water supplies. MWD is considering a $15 million pilot in Carson to start. When I talked to the California Association of Sanitation Districts last month on the impacts of the drought, I highlighted that recycled water now may be a cost-effective supply source as the water market changes. In 2008, M.Cubed prepared with AECOM/EDAW and RMC East Bay Municipal Utility District’s Water Supply Management Program 2040. At that time, other resources such as water transfers were more attractive, but the economics are changing for a variety of reasons. I’ll blog in the near future about how agriculture may no longer be an attractive source for urban supplies.
The CitiGPS study makes a unique contribution to the climate change risk literature: reducing GHG emissions will lead to stranded investment assets. These assets include both fossil fuel holdings and the equipment that uses those fuels. Protecting those investments is at the heart of much of the resistance to addressing climate change risk. Removing political barriers is probably the single greatest difficultly in moving to implement policies to mitigate this risk; many policy proposals are at the ready so there’s no lack there. Given the apparent urgency of acting, perhaps it’s time to ask the question whether these asset owners should be compensated by those who will benefit directly, i.e., the rest of us?
What’s behind the reluctance of political actors to propose this type of solution is the belief in the underlying premise of benefit-cost analysis. Economists have unfortunately perpetuated a misconception on the public that so long as total societal benefits exceed costs, a policy is justified even if those suffering those costs are not compensated for their losses. The basis of this is the Kaldor-Hicks efficiency criterion. In contrast, market transactions are presumed to only occur if both parties gain through Pareto efficiency--one party fully compensates the other one for the transaction. Public policy now casts aside this compensation requirement. Unfortunately this leads to significant redistribution impacts that are too often left unexamined. And of course, the losers resist these policies, with a ferocity that is accentuated by both loss aversion (where potential losses are felt more strongly than gains) and that these losses are usually concentrated among a smaller group of individuals than the spread of the benefits.
Too often public agencies are running over these interests to push for societal benefits without compensating the losers. A recent example that I was involved with was the adoption by the California Air Resources Board of the in-use off-road diesel engine regulations. CARB mandated the premature scrappage of construction equipment that had been purchased to comply with previous regulatory mandates from CARB and the US EPA. CARB claimed societal air quality benefits of $13 billion at the cost of $3 billion to the construction industry. Yet CARB never proposed to pay the owners of the equipment for their lost investments. GHG regulation is proceeding down the same path.
If the benefits truly justify adopting a policy, and GHG reductions certainly appear to meet that criterion, then society should be willing to compensate those who made investments under the previous policy environment that endorsed those investments. Certainly there’s questions about whether those investors truly had property rights in the resources they used, but that issue should be addressed directly, not as an implicit assumption that no such property rights ever existed. (This question about property rights has been raised in regulating California’s water use.) Too often policy proponents conflate a goal of an improved environment with goals to redistribute wealth. By jumping over the property rights question, wealth also can be redistributed implicitly. Societal equity issues are important, but they shouldn’t be achieved through backdoor measures that make all of us worse off. Requiring politicians and bureaucrats to consider the actual cost of their policy proposals will make us all better off, and maybe even remove obstacles to a better environment.
I talked to the California Association of Sanitation Agencies in San Diego on the drought situation, its economic impacts and available resources including recycled or “recovered” water. My presentation is here.
M.Cubed was asked by the State Water Resources Control Board to prepare an economic assessment of the emergency regulations ordered by the Governor to reduce municipal water use by 25%. We gathered a team that included Roger Mann of RMann Economics, Tom Wegge of TCW Economics, Richard Howitt and Duncan MacEwan of ERA Economics, and prepared the report in about two weeks. The SWRCB included a summary of those findings in its regulatory digest.
The innovative aspect of our study is to steer away from a single point probabilistic estimate of the benefits of the regulations and instead to focus on the potential vulnerability and consequences of the risk of continued drought in the future.
The EO is intended to address potentially significant economic vulnerabilities – risks – rather than statistical or probabilistic expectations. If the drought and high temperatures continue in California, water saved as a result of the order will become increasingly valuable. Under these circumstances, costs estimated to be associated with the EO this year could be more than exceeded by greater adverse impacts next year if the EO had not been issued.
Australia had an extended drought that lasted 10 years before ending in 2012 that cut 1.6% off its GDP. For California that would be $35 billion in a single year which is multiples of the range of costs we estimated for the regulations. In other words, the probability of continued drought would have to be less than 4% to make this option uneconomic.
We also pointed out that while the water utilities will lose revenues this year, as mostly public agencies, they will have to make up those losses in the future. For this reason, those revenue losses should be treated as eventual economic costs.
In a rather earthshaking ruling, California’s Fourth District Court of Appeals ruled that the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) must comply with the Governor Schwarzenegger’s Executive Order S-3-05 to “by 2050, reduce GHG emissions to 80 percent below 1990 levels.” SANDAG had completed its 2050 Regional Transportation Plan using AB 32 as its primary compliance hurdle. AB 32 “requires California to reduce its GHG emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.” SB 375 required that metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs) such as SANDAG develop sustainable community strategies (SCS) that reduce GHG emissions by an amount allocated by the California Air Resources Board to each MPO. SANDAG’s RTP is its SCS.
This is the first time that an EO has been held at legally binding on local agency actions. Governors have issued plenty of EOs before but they’ve been taken as providing policymaking and rulemaking guidance to the Governor’s appointees in various agencies. This decision raises the question whether those other EOs will now carry much more weight? And if governors issue conflicting EOs, which one is currently in force? What if an EO conflicts with state law passed by the Legislature?
On climate change, governors have issued seven such EOs. The Governor recently issued an EO calling for substantial water use reductions in the drought. Is the EO from 2008 still in force? The Energy Action Plan EO from 2004 calls for several specific actions by state agencies, many of them undertaken but necessarily on the timeline specified. Should the 33% renewable portfolio standard (RPS) be implemented along the lines of state law or the EO? A bit of research could show many more of these types of examples.
SANDAG is appealing the decision the State Supreme Court. How various interests align will be interesting.
My partner David Mitchell has coauthored an article in the Hastings Law Review:
Paying for Water in California: The Legal Framework
Brian Gray, Dean Misczynski, Ellen Hanak, Andrew Fahlund, Jay Lund, David Mitchell, and James Nachbaur
Over the past four decades, California voters passed a series of initiatives that
amended the California Constitution to limit the power of the state legislature and
local governments to enact taxes and restrict their authority to adopt fees and other
charges to fund government programs. Three of these initiatives—Proposition 13
(enacted in 1978), Proposition 218 (passed in 1996), and Proposition 26 (approved in
2010)—have placed significant constraints on the funding of water resources projects.
Although each of these laws has enhanced the transparency and accountability of the
decision-making process, the funding constraints now jeopardize an array of vital
water supply, management, and regulatory functions. These include funding for the
development of new water supplies, integrated water management, protection of
groundwater resources, development of alternative water sources (including recycled
and conserved water programs), control of stormwater discharges, and regulation of
water extraction and water use to protect water rights, water quality, aquatic species,
and other beneficial uses of the state’s water systems.
This Article is a companion to the report Paying for Water in California and focuses
on the legal aspects of water financing. The Paying for Water study demonstrated the critical importance of local funding to support California’s water system: local
utilities and governments raise eighty-five percent of the more than thirty billion
dollars spent annually on water supply, quality, flood, and ecosystem management
through local fees and taxes. The study identified a two to three billion dollar annual
funding gap, with critical gaps already evident for provision of safe drinking water in
small, rural communities, prevention of stormwater pollution, protection of people,
property, and infrastructure from flooding, recovery efforts for aquatic ecosystems,
and integrated water management. In most cases, these gaps reflect legal obstacles to
raising more funds locally. In addition, urban water and wastewater systems—now in
relatively good fiscal health—face looming challenges related to rising costs and legal
constraints on the ability to raise fees to support modern, integrated water
management.
This Article begins with an overview of the traditional sources of funding for water
development, management, and regulation, and proceeds to a detailed analysis of the
effects of the constitutional constraints (especially of Propositions 218 and 26) on
these essential governmental programs. Topics include: (i) analysis of the effects of
Proposition 218 on water rates and fees charged by public retail water agencies for
water service and integrated, portfolio-based water management; (ii) consideration of
the special problems of Proposition 218 for groundwater regulation and stormwater
discharge programs; (iii) predictions about the effects of Proposition 26 on wholesale
water rates, water stewardship charges, and regulatory fees; and (iv) suggestions for
harmonizing the fiscal strictures of Propositions 218 and 26 with the reasonable use
mandates of Article X, Section 2, of the California Constitution, which form the
foundation of the state’s water law and policy.
Our key conclusions are that: (1) Propositions 218 and 26 have created significant
impediments to economically rational and sustainable funding of California’s most
important water service, management, and regulatory programs; (2) judicial
interpretations of the constitutional restrictions generally have compounded these
impediments; and (3) reform of the law is needed. The Article concludes with
recommendations that water agencies, the legislature, the courts, and the voters
should consider as a means of correcting (or at least ameliorating) those aspects of
the law that are inconsistent with sound and creative water resources administration
A link to the recent study quantifying California’s water rights.
Environmental & Energy Valuation News
Environmental Research Letters (2014 v9 p084012; doi:10.1088/1748-9326/9/8/084012) / by Theodore E Grantham and Joshua H Viers
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/9/8/084012/
For 100 years, California’s State Water Resources Control Board and its predecessors have been responsible for allocating available water supplies to beneficial uses, but inaccurate and incomplete accounting of water rights has made the state ill-equipped to satisfy growing societal demands for water supply reliability and healthy ecosystems. Here, we present the first comprehensive evaluation of appropriative water rights to identify where, and to what extent, water has been dedicated to human uses relative to natural supplies. The results show that water right allocations total 400 billion cubic meters, approximately five times the state’s mean annual runoff. In the state’s major river basins, water rights account for up to 1000% of natural surface water supplies, with the greatest degree of appropriation observed in tributaries to the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers and…
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