India
Meeting - continued from pg. 1
Central to
the meeting's conclusions were recommenda-tions that would
end subsidized service (replacing it, where necessary,
with direct subsides from the government to customers),
put in place a mechanism for full compensation for all
power delivered, and institute rationalized marginal cost
pricing (including time dependent tariffs for larger customers).
Once this is done, accumulated debt from past power subsidies
should be retired so that power systems can be operated
as normal companies, focused on their financial bottom
line.
The meeting,
supported by a grant to Carnegie Mellon from the US Department
of Energy, resulted in a set of detailed policy recommendations
which are being briefed at the highest levels of the Indian
government, and the US DoE.
Publicly owned
power systems in India have become complex bureaucracies,
far more influenced by political pressures and long bureaucratic
traditions, than by economic forces. Power is supplied
free or at extremely low rates to agricultural customers
who consume one-third of the power. Because the government
rarely compensates operating companies for the full cost
of this subsidy, operating companies accumulate large
debts. Industrial customers are charged very high rates
to partially offset the debt. The consequence of high
industrial rates, together with poor power quality and
reliability, is that many industries have installed their
own generation. The result is a vicious downward spiral.
As more firms move off the grid, the remaining firms must
be charged even more to con-tinue to support the cross
subsidy. Higher prices cause yet more firms to install
their own generation, and so it goes. A variety of other
structural problems further complicate the situation.
Participants
in the meeting were drawn from academia, industry, government
and the regulatory sector. US participants included six
experts from EPP.
Participants in US-India Electric Power Conference
Carley
Directing IGERT Training Grant
Kathleen Carley
(SDS/EPP) and her colleagues have received a $2.5-million
NSF grant under the Foundation's Integrative Graduate
Education and Training Program to develop a multidisciplinary
graduate training program in computational analysis of
social and organizational systems. Carley notes that "today,
computational analysis is radically altering the way we
think about organizational design and strategy, coordination,
commerce, organizational learning and information and
diffusion and adaptation at all levels." The goal of the
new graduate training program is to combine a number of
different disciplines in a way that allows students to
address and solve real world problems. More information
on the program can be obtained from Kathleen Carley at
carley@andrew.cmu.edu.
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Integrated
Studies of Health and Climate
Few issues in
global change are more politically compelling than the possibility
that changes in climate could affect human health. To date,
most assessments have failed to include the influence of
many important factors, such as the adaptive response of
the public health system.
With annual
support of $300,000 from several government and industry
sources, ten investigators affiliated with EPP's NSF Center
for Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change
are now embarked on six separate studies related to global
change and human health.
Three of these
studies address issues associated with the spread and management
of infectious diseases such as cryptosporidiosis, malaria,
and dengue. Elizabeth Casman (EPP) explains that "currently
epidemiology does not provide a suitable general model structure
to deal with socioeconomic variables at the same level of
detail as host-parasite-vector interactions." By incorporating
expert subjective judgments, and models of individual and
organizational behavior in a broad integrated assessment
framework, Center investigators hope to rectify this deficiency.
Four other health-related
studies are exploring issues of air pollution. The work
includes a focus on comparing the US with China, India,
and Chile, and an effort to consider individual differences
in exposures to pollutants, rather than ambient concentrations.
Power Plants
Changing TRI Landscape
In a paper in
the September 15 issue of Environmental Science & Technology,
Prof. Ed Rubin (EPP/MechE) concludes that "trace chemical
emissions from most coal-burning power plants in the US
will exceed the reporting thresholds for the Toxic Release
Inventory" when the newly required inventories from such
plants first become publicly available in the year 2000.
"In many communities, an electric power plant will head
the EPA list of local facilities with the largest toxic
releases," Rubin concludes. The largest releases will be
hydrochloric and sulfuric acid, followed by barium compounds
and trace metals. The paper suggests that "emissions from
the electric utility industry will substantially alter the
national picture of toxic releases currently portrayed by
the TRI."
Rubin anticipates
that this dramatic shift in TRI profiles will require a
major effort in risk communication to help communities make
sense of the new data. Electric utilities will likely cite
a recent EPA study of hazardous air pollutants which found
risks from many power plant emissions to be well below levels
of concern. He suggests that the change may also result
in greater use of "toxicity weighting" to facilitate interpretation
of TRI results.
Rubin and his
co-workers have developed new analysis tools to assist utilities.
A recent issue in the EPRI Innovations with EPRI Technology
series featured TVA's use of their PISCES Model to estimate
Toxic Release Inventories from their fossil fired power
plants. EPRI reported that the present value of benefits
to TVA, one of the nation's largest utilities, exceed $800,000
over five years. PISCES performs material balance analysis
of multimedia releases of toxic materials from fossil-fired
power plants. EPRI bulletin, IN-112086, and related information
on PISCES, is available from EPRI manager, Barbara Toole-O'Neil
at btooleo@epri.com.
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