Zhou Xiuru, Ye Weili, Zhang Bing
State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of The Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210093, PR China.
State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Environmental Planning and Policy Simulation, Chinese Academy for Environmental Planning, Beijing, 100012, PR China.
J Environ Manage. 2016 Mar 1;168:252-9. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.11.041. Epub 2015 Dec 24.
Transaction costs and uncertainty are considered to be significant obstacles in the emissions trading market, especially for including nonpoint source in water quality trading. This study develops a nonlinear programming model to simulate how uncertainty and transaction costs affect the performance of point/nonpoint source (PS/NPS) water quality trading in the Lake Tai watershed, China. The results demonstrate that PS/NPS water quality trading is a highly cost-effective instrument for emissions abatement in the Lake Tai watershed, which can save 89.33% on pollution abatement costs compared to trading only between nonpoint sources. However, uncertainty can significantly reduce the cost-effectiveness by reducing trading volume. In addition, transaction costs from bargaining and decision making raise total pollution abatement costs directly and cause the offset system to deviate from the optimal state. While proper investment in monitoring and measuring of nonpoint emissions can decrease uncertainty and save on the total abatement costs. Finally, we show that the dispersed ownership of China's farmland will bring high uncertainty and transaction costs into the PS/NPS offset system, even if the pollution abatement cost is lower than for point sources.
交易成本和不确定性被认为是排放交易市场中的重大障碍，特别是在水质交易中纳入非点源污染方面。本研究开发了一个非线性规划模型，以模拟不确定性和交易成本如何影响中国太湖流域点源/非点源（PS/NPS）水质交易的绩效。结果表明，PS/NPS水质交易是太湖流域减排的一种极具成本效益的手段，与仅在非点源之间进行交易相比，可节省89.33%的污染减排成本。然而，不确定性会通过减少交易量显著降低成本效益。此外，谈判和决策产生的交易成本会直接提高总污染减排成本，并导致抵消系统偏离最优状态。而对非点源排放监测和测量进行适当投资可以降低不确定性并节省总减排成本。最后，我们表明，即使污染减排成本低于点源，中国农田分散的所有权也会给PS/NPS抵消系统带来高不确定性和交易成本。
