Praschl, C., Lutter, S., Giljum, S. (2008)

‘The oil stocks of our country will be depleted within the next 9 years!’ With this sentence the CEO of the United States Geological Survey Institute (USGS) already raised some kind of apocalyptic sentiment after the First World War in 1919. As a reaction, President Coolidge installed the ‘Federal Oil Conservation Board’ to enact various laws which should protect national oil resources. But it soon became clear that there exist larger fossil fuel resources than mankind imagined at that time. After the resource intensive war periods, post war exploitation by the industrialising world followed, and fossil fuel and mineral sources still seemed infinite.

But when the Club of Rome published the study ‘The limits to growth’ in 1972 which predicted a depletion of oil resources at the end of the twentieth century it became clear, that there exists an end to unlimited growth based on fossil fuels.
The book was based upon the first research to make serious use of computers in modeling the consequences of a rapidly growing global population. Most of the scenarios pointed to a major economic crisis happening in the early 1990s. Obviously, this is not what happened.

However, global extraction of natural resource is steadily increasing. Since 1980, global extraction of abiotic (fossil fuels, minerals) and biotic (agriculture, forestry, fishing) resources has augmented from 40 to 58 billion tonnes in 2005. Scenarios anticipate a total resource extraction of around 80 billion tonnes in 2020 (200 % of the 1980-value), necessary to sustain the worldwide economic growth (Giljum et al., 2008). Depending on the level of economic development, trade patterns and industrial structures, growth rates and extraction intensities vary between different world regions.

The European economy is increasingly dependent on resource imports from other world regions. In comparison to the overall global growth rate (45 % over the last 25 years), Europe’s resource extraction grew only by 3 %, but studies
show that these domestic raw materials are increasingly substituted by imports from other world regions. Latin America, for instance, is specialising noticeably in the export of resource-intensive products, such as metal ores or biomass for
biofuels. In 2005, Chile extracted fivefold the amount of copper of 1980, Brazil threefold the amount of sugar cane – being the raw material for ethanol fuel.

On the one hand, this development leads to a considerable dependency of Europe on the imports of other countries, which may put industry at risks of higher prices and more difficult access. On the other hand, it also leads to an “outsourcing” of the environmental burden, connected to resource extraction and processing activities to other world regions.

In the following report, the questions of how much of the reserves and resources of fossil fuels and minerals are still in the earth and how they are distributed between the world regions are answered. When considering the results of the analysis, it becomes more obvious that a fundamental change in energy and resource use politics and economics has to take place in the European Union and other countries with highly developed economies. In addition, in the case of not
only fossil fuels, the majority of resources are located in political unstable areas. Furthermore, climate change is a serious and fundamental problem. Therefore, a drastic rethinking and a switch to renewable energy technologies in Europe is not only advisable, it is necessary.

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Just recently FEEM (Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei), project leader of the EU FP6 project EXIOPOL published the call for application to the EXIOPOL Summer School on Environmental Accounting: Externality Valuation and Input-Tools for Policy Analysis, 11-17 July 2010, Venice, Italy. The Summer School is targeted to postgraduate students.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS EXIOPOL SUMMER SCHOOL on Environmental Accounting: Externality Valuation and Input-Output Tools for Policy Analysis

Venice, July 11th – 17th, 2010

http://www.feem-project.net/exiopol/

Deadline for applications: April 1st, 2010

The 2010 Exiopol Summer School will take place from the 11th to the 17th of July at the VIU campus on the Island of San Servolo, in Venice, located just in front of St. Mark’ Square. The theme of this Summer School is “Environmental accounting: externality valuation and Input-Output tools for policy analysis“.
Policy makers are increasingly searching for tools that allow them to address economic, social and environmental problems in an integrated framework, consistent with a sustainable development framework which is driving much of the thinking of public policy. At the micro level researchers employ valuation methods to develop estimates of the value of environmental goods and services, so that decisions in this domain can be informed by the costs and benefits of environmental changes. But many policy decisions need to be taken not at the micro level of the plant or local community, but at the level of the state, region or even the Union. While there are many tools for making such decisions in the economic sphere, including the use of input-output matrices, the same is not true for the environmental sphere. The ‘scaling up’ from the micro to the macro is being addressed by the FP6 EXIOPOL Integrated Project. Taking advantage of the research experience of this IP, the Summer School, presents and discusses the up-to-date bottom-up externality valuation methods and top-down Environmentally Extended Input Output tools. .

FACULTY and LECTURE TOPICS

Prof. Tim Taylor, University of Bath, UK
Methodological advances in exernality valuation.

Prof. Stale Navrud, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norway
A value transfer protocol and comparison of value transfer techniques for biodiversity/ecosystem services valuation.

Prof. Paulo A.L.D. Nunes, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Italy
The economic valuation of biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Dr. Mikael Skou Andersen, NERI, Aarhus University, Denmark or Rainer Friedrich, University of Stuttgart, Germany
Impact pathway methods and application to agriculture and health risks valuation.

Dr. Arnold Tukker, TNO Built Environment and Geosciences, Innovation and Environment, The Netherlands
Introduction to EE IO.

Dr. Reinout Heijungs or Ir. Arjan de Koning, Institute of Environmental Science (CML), University of Leiden, The Netherlands
Relation between LCA, SFA, EE IO and impact assessment methods.

Dr. Frederik Neuwahl, European Commission – Joint Research Centre, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), Spain
Examples of uses of EE IO with hands-on exercises.

Prof. Jan Oosterhaven or Dr. Dirk Stelder, Univeristy of Groningen, The Netherlands
Multi-regional EE IO / EE IO and and trade with various examples a.o. using the IRIOS software.

ADMISSION AND SCHOLARSHIPS

The Summer School is targeted to postgraduate students. Admission is conditional on the presentation by each student of his/her doctoral work; therefore PhD students who want to apply normally need to be advanced in their PhD to have produced at least one substantive chapter, but not to have completely finished their thesis.
Given the highly interactive activities planned at the Summer School, the number of participants is limited to 20. There is no participation fee. All applicants can apply for a scholarship.

For further information on application and funding please access the EXIOPOL Summer School Website at: http://www.feem-project.net/exiopol/scheda.php?ids=45 or contact the Summer School Secretariat.

Summer School Secretariat
Ms. Angela Marigo and Ms. Ughetta Molin Fop
Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei
exiopol@feem.it
http://www.feem-project.net/exiopol/