UMD Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3
New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.
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Item WALK ALONG THE RIVER: COMMUNITY DESIGN PROCESS FOR THE NORTON RIVERWALK(2017) Reilly, Charles Dylan; Ellis, Christopher D; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The City of Norton, nestled in Southwest Virginia’s coal country, has a proposed 2-mile Riverwalk running along the Guest River and connecting to an existing Safe Routes to School sidewalk. The designer employed informal interviews, a design charrette, and formal presentations during the summer of 2016 to better understand the challenges and opportunities for the Riverwalk. Design ideas from the community engagement process were triangulated and compared against the site analysis, to better understand which ideas had the most support and were feasible. The resulting design from this process focused on improving pedestrian connectivity; improving quality of life for residents and attracting visitors; and telling Norton’s history, from towering chestnuts to coal mining. The community engagement process reached about 145 people and produced media buzz for the project with four front-page articles in local and regional newspapers. The charrette brought residents from diverse perspectives to the design table.Item An Ex Post Evaluation of the U.S. Acid Rain Program(2014) Chan, Hei Sing; Cropper, Maureen; Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Emissions trading programs have been recommended by economists and implemented by policy makers because they are expected to keep compliance costs low; but, studies on actual savings are limited. This paper is the first to conduct a comprehensive ex post analysis of the cost savings from the Acid Rain Program (ARP), the largest emissions trading program to be implemented in the U.S. In Chapter 2, I provide a brief overview of the Acid Rain Program. I then discuss other policies that are relevant to evaluating the ARP including the New Source Performance Standard and local emission standards. I conclude the chapter by analyzing the determinants of local emission standards and arguing that it is safe to treat these standards as exogenous. In Chapter 3 I illustrate the cost savings from a cap-and-trade system such as the ARP, and discuss factors affecting the potential gains from trade and the determinants. I then estimate a discrete choice model of coal procurement and scrubber installation to recover structural parameters of compliance cost functions at the generating unit level. Using the model I predict compliance choices under a uniform emission standard that yields the same aggregate emissions as the ARP. In Chapter 4, I estimate cost savings under the ARP to be about 265-380 million (1995 USD) per year. The numbers are much smaller than in previous literature (Carlson et al., 2000; Ellerman et al., 2000). I propose that lower transport costs reduced cost heterogeneity across generating units, and that improvements in scrubbing technology and state policies may have also contributed to a decrease in cost savings.Item ESSAYS ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT IN INDIA(2013) Malik, Kabir; Cropper, Maureen; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Expanding electricity generation is driving economic activity in the developing world. Increasing energy demand, largely met through the combustion of coal and natural gas, poses significant trade-offs between development objectives and environmental well-being. In this dissertation I examine the Indian electricity sector. Chapter 1 studies the impact of regulatory changes affecting state-owned electricity utilities on the efficiency of coal-fired power plants. The results indicate that the unbundling of generation companies from state-owned utilities improved operating reliability at coal-fired power plants. The improvements were, however, restricted to states that restructured their electricity utilities prior to the Electricity Act of 2003. The results also show that the reforms did not result in an improvement in thermal efficiency or capital utilization at these plants. Chapter 2 estimates the health impacts from PM2.5, SO2 and NOx emissions from coal-fired plants in India. I derive estimates of the total premature mortality impact from each plant in my sample associated with each of the three pollutants. I find that the majority of the impact, about 70%, is due to SO2 emissions--a pollutant currently unregulated in India due to the low sulfur content of Indian coal. I also conduct a cost benefit analysis of two pollution control options currently available in India--coal washing and the installation of an flue-gas desulfurization unit (FGD). The results from the case study show that both options pass the cost-benefit test using reasonable estimates of the Value of a Statistical Life (VSL) for India. Chapter 3 more thoroughly examines the benefits and costs of FGD retrofit at coal-fired power plants in India. Using emissions estimates and output from a medium-range Lagrangian puff (atmospheric) model I estimate the net benefits of FGD installation for a sample of power plants. The results show that a substantial proportion of power plants pass the cost-benefit test for an FGD installation using reasonable estimates of the VSL for India. The results indicate a substantial scope for FGD installation to control SO2 emissions in the Indian power sector and suggest that it should be considered as a viable option for pollution control policy.