Koirala, Bohara and Berrens (2014) found that requiring energy efficiency building codes raises housing prices but they then attempted to find out if this price rise is offset by reductions in household energy expenditures down the road.
Using sample data from the American Community Survey 2007, they found that energy efficiency regulations in building codes, once capitalized, increases housing rents by 23.35 per cent. The offset in reduced monthly energy expenditures only amounts to 6.47 per cent. The codes cost $163.19 per month and only save us $7.71.
Paul Joskow pointed out that these costs do not take account of the costs of intermittency: wind power is not generated on a calm day, nor solar power at night. Conventional power plants must be kept on standby. Electricity demand also varies during the day in ways that the supply from wind and solar generation may not match.
The theory’s name is meant to evoke 19th century laws banning alcohol sales.
Baptists supported Sunday closing laws for moral and religious reasons, while bootleggers were eager to stifle their legal competition.
Politicians were able to pose as acting in the interests of public morality, even while taking contributions from bootleggers.
Yandle and Buck argue that during the battle over the Kyoto Protocol, he “Baptist” environmental groups provided moral support while “bootlegger” corporations and nations worked in the background to seek economic advantages over their rivals.
(1) a desire to base policy on the best-available science;
(2) a willingness to engage in deliberation and compromise to balance environmental protection against other compelling social and economic interests; and,
(3) a willingness to consider alternative regulatory strategies that can deliver environmental protection at lower-cost than traditional command-and-control regulation.
Zywicki concludes that It has been argued that environmental regulation can be best understood as the product of an unlikely alliance of “Baptists and Bootleggers” – public-interested environmental activist groups and private-interested firms and industries seeking to use regulation for competitive advantage.
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. - J Robert Oppenheimer.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments