Conservation investments

Changing the current situation. One might decide that aggressive stock investments are too risky given the stock market environment. Therefore, a more conservative investment approach is warranted. 

Very conservative investments, such as government bonds, pay low returns in the range of 5 to 7 percent, but the risk involved is practically negligible. Preferred stocks yield returns of about 7 to 9 percent. There is some risk involved in preferred-stock investments since a business depression or catastrophe could cause reduction in returns or even a loss of the major portion of the capital investment. Common stocks may yield very high returns however, the returns fluctuate considerably with varying economic conditions, and there is always the possibility of losing much or all of the original investment. 

These factors play an important part in the decision making process of any manufacturer considering energy conservation investment. In fact, most manufacturers will not invest in conservation measures having a payback period in excess of about 2 years. An illustration of how these factors can distort an investment decision can be seen from an actual case study. 

One of the top conservation strategies identified collectively by this group of conservation organizations was the need to address atmospheric deposition as a threat to the entire Catskills ecosystem. As the forests of the Catskill Mountains provide significant ecosystem services, not least of which is the water supply for 9 million people in New York City, this is no small concern. To the planning participants, the links to the sources of ecosystem stress were obvious, and the significant, century-old conservation investments were not secure. 

Harkins, T. (2002), The Farm Bill a Strong New Research and Conservation Investment , CSE News, American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society, and Soil Science Society of America, Vol. 47, No. 4. 

Capital investment, capital costs, operating costs, return on investment, and energy conservation have all been discussed (6). In the economic analysis, the speed of each type of pump considered is normalized to 1 m /s as a common basis. 

Net Present Va.Iue, Each of the net annual cash flows can be discounted to the present time using a discount factor for the number of years involved. The discounted flows are then all at the same time point and can be combined. The sum of these discounted net flows is called the net present value (NPV), a popular profit criterion. Because the discounted positive flows first offset the negative investment flows in the NPV summation, the investment capital is recovered if the NPV is greater than zero. This early recovery of the investment does not correspond to typical capital recovery patterns, but gives a conservative and systematic assumption for investment recovery. 

Optimal economic insulation thickness may be determined Iw various methods. Two of these are the minimum-total-cost method and the incremental-cost method (or marginal-cost method). The minimum-total-cost method involves the actual calculations of lost energy and insulation costs for each insulation thickness. The thickness producing the lowest total cost is the optimal economic solution. The optimum thickness is determined to be the point where the last dollar invested in insulation results in exactly 1 in energy-cost savings ( ETI— Economic Thickness for Industrial Insulation, Conservation Pap. 46, Federal Energy Administration, August 1976). The incremental-cost method provides a simplified and direcl solution for the least-cost thickness. 

These aggregated, or macro, cui ves are especially useful for policymakers because they show the potential tradeoffs between energy consei vation policies and investments in new supplies. This is otherwise difficult because most energy conservation measures are small, highly dispersed, and cannot be instantly undertaken, while energy supplies (such as power plants) typically appear in a few large units. 

Planning for the future in Mediterranean climates requires serious investments in water conservation and consideration of alternative freshwater sources. Alternative... 

Conservative is used to define orchard and management factors that once introduced cannot, or are extremely difficult to, change or require substantial additional investment to do so. Among these are soil and other site-specific conditions, choice of variety/cultivar and rootstock, planting density and tree canopy formation, system stabilisation measures at orchard set-up and installations to buffer extreme events. 

Clark HAJ (1989) Conservation advice and investment on farms a study in three English counties. 

Periodically Congress has permitted the use of tax credits as a direct reduction from income taxes. Examples are tax credits for installing energy conservation devices, use of alcohol fuels and electric vehicles, development of orphan drugs, creation of low-income housing, and some research expenditures. Tax credits have been used historically to stimulate capital investment in the United States. Such deductions are more valuable than depreciation because they represent direct deductions from the tax bill after taxes are computed on income. 

In this respect, the specific investments for pipelines assumed here are rather conservative. Owing to the high steel prices, for typical long-distance natural gas pipelines (with a diameter of 10 inches or 25 cm) capital costs are currently... 

The products cannot be compared with regard to the environment and health-related risks, so great the level of uncertainty and the fear of making a wrong decision are. This situation encourages a conservative stance in investment and procurement decisions of chemicals users. Patchy information for new products are thus frequently overstressed (in mai r instances also for tactical reasons). This conservative stance is favoured even more by the fact that most users know of cases where the substitutes proved to be just as problematic or even more problematic after a few years. 

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