The Copyright Tribunal of Singapore today released its decision in SingNet v COMPASS.
SingNet is an ISP subsidiary of SingTel. The Composers and Authors Society of Singapore (COMPASS) had been negotiating with SingNet over the cost of the licence SingNet needed to broadcast music. SingNet brought proceedings claiming that the licence fee requested by COMPASS was unreasonable. Frontier Economics was retained by lawyers for COMPASS to provide advice and to give evidence at the hearing. The Tribunal dismissed SingNet’s claim.
Frontier Economics advises clients on a range of intellectual property valuation and dispute support matters.
In September 1990, Scientific American published a special issue entitled ‘Energy for Planet Earth’. In this publication, Scientific American explored the sources of energy, the future for energy, made predictions on technological breakthroughs and suggested solutions for what they considered was an imminent energy crisis.
Many of these predictions by Scientific American were made for 2020. Given we have reached that date, we can look back and compare the predictions with what actually happened. In a three-part series, Frontier Economics will compare actual outcomes to 2020 with the predictions made by Scientific American.
This comparison of actual versus predicted outcomes, especially where technological change is involved, can help us learn about the factors that have been determinative to the global community and provide guidance on how we can improve economic forecasts.
We focus on three areas where Scientific American made long term forecasts:
Each of these is the subject of a separate note. This note examines the performance of Scientific American’s forecasts of energy intensity.
In Part One we reviewed the performance of Scientific American’s long-term forecasts on primary Energy Demand. We found that, overall, Scientific American’s forecast was reasonably accurate. However, Scientific American did not perform as well on the growth performance by country. Most significantly, Scientific America materially underestimated the rapid and large increase in the growth of developing nations, such as China and India. That is, countries that were relatively poor in 1990 grew more quickly than expected, and they used energy to achieve this growth.
In this second part of our three-part series, we assess the performance of Scientific American’s forecast of energy intensity.
To view the full report, download the publication via the button below.
DOWNLOAD FULL PUBLICATIONThe costs of excessive urban heat are significant and lead to negative consequences for the health of our communities, environments and infrastructure. Increasingly, integrated planning of our natural and built environment covering blue, green and grey infrastructure is recognised as a force to reduce urban heat. This bulletin describes how mainstream evaluation practice can incorporate economic tools to identify, quantify and integrate urban cooling into decision-making frameworks in order to quantify benefits and support better decisions.
Australia is particularly exposed to the physical risks of climate change, including heatwaves. In 2019 and 2020, Australia experienced the two hottest summers on record, with major metropolitan areas, as well as regional towns, experiencing catastrophic bushfires.
Across the coming decades, global temperatures are expected to rise more than 2.4⁰C above pre-industrial levels, the consequences of which are likely to disproportionally fall on our urban spaces.
Cities are more vulnerable to temperature rises because vegetation, open space and tree canopy is often replaced with concrete, roads and other heat-absorbing materials that radiate the heat they absorb during the day and through the night.
Our cities are already paying the price of excessive urban heat. These costs include increased pressure on our water and energy infrastructure as the infrastructure manages the consequences of increasing average and maximum urban temperatures. These also include increased likelihood of heat-related illness which put pressure on our healthcare sectors. Of all natural hazards, heatwaves currently represent the biggest cause of death in Australia.
However excessive urban heat can create longer-term costs associated with inactivity and mental health related illness as a result of reduced opportunities for passive and active outdoor recreation. Many of these costs accrue slowly over time.
At the same time, mainstream approaches to the provision of infrastructure and services are often blind to these costs, or struggle to rigorously recognise and incorporate them into decision making.
The good news is we have the tools to address urban heat: integrated planning of our natural and built environment covering blue, green, and grey infrastructure. This includes integrating the provision of:
Blue, green and grey infrastructure provides the potential to use existing and any new infrastructure more efficiently and create cool, liveable communities and environments. In many respects, these investments can have public good related characteristics with benefits accruing to a range of beneficiaries, some beyond the local environment.
It is increasingly recognised that blue, green and grey infrastructure plays an integral role in the provision of cool, green, liveable cities. Despite this, historically the benefits of reduced urban heat have not been well integrated into infrastructure investment decisions.
In our experience, this is because the site-specific, dispersed nature of urban heat means for integrated blue, green and grey infrastructure investments (compared to more traditional investments), it can be more difficult to:
Too often these barriers have led to sub-optimal consideration of the benefits of reducing urban heat and risks inefficient allocation of scarce community resources and funding. This is especially pressing given that the current scale of urban development across Australia presents time-limited window of opportunity to avoid locking in our historical urban development paradigm for the long-run. Our decisions made today cannot be easily reversed.
The question then is, how do we embed active consideration of these urban cooling benefits into our decision-making process?
While government policy could mandate investment in blue and green infrastructure, prescribing a one-size-fits-all approach does not guarantee smart investments. In some circumstances, the expense of setting up and maintaining blue, green and grey infrastructure will be more than outweighed by its benefits.
Economic evaluation frameworks such as cost benefit analysis (CBA) provide the means to identify value-enhancing urban-cooling investments through incorporating and monetising these broader costs and benefits. This requires 3 steps:
While these steps are not always easy and can require collaboration across sectors and disciplines, they provide a robust and defensible framework for identifying where and when blue and green investments can cost-effectively manage urban heat.
The Western Parkland City is a priority growth area located in one of the hottest and driest parts of Greater Sydney. To draw people and businesses to the area, the City will need to offer a ‘cool and green’ environment. This means creating attractive urban communities and appealing places to live, work and play.
However, this urbanisation will place major pressure on the health of Wianamatta South Creek, its tributaries and the local environment and pose significant challenges in meeting a much higher community demand for water-related services. Water will also be needed to increase the urban tree canopy, maintain shaded, open and green space and support water features
Infrastructure NSW and Frontier Economics’ strategic options business case for the Western Parkland City (South Creek Catchment) found that, in the face of these challenges, integrated land use and water cycle management in the City can deliver significant economic, social and environment benefits.
The framework developed to monetise these economic, social and environmental impacts, found that integrated land use and water cycle management can deliver around $6.5 billion in benefits to the local, Greater Sydney and broader NSW communities.[1]
A key driver of these benefits was related to urban cooling related investments, which could lead to a reduction of up to 2.2°C in forecast maximum summer daily temperatures across the Western Parkland City. This reduction in urban temperature, in turn, was found to lead to associated reductions in energy consumption, peak demand, and heat-related deaths and healthcare costs.
Our analysis showed that quantifying these values in dollar figures enables effective policy, regulatory and investment decision-making, and ultimately leads to more attractive, liveable and productive places.
Further, as a result of our work with INSW, Infrastructure Australia designated blue-green infrastructure in the Western Parkland City as a national priority initiative.[1] It is a rare example of a non-traditional infrastructure project on the list.
There is often only one chance to get urban spaces truly right, and now is the time to integrate the benefits of urban cooling into our urban infrastructure choices. It becomes harder and more costly to rectify the outcomes of poor past decisions.
Failure to address the resilience of cities to urban heat − including the role of blue, green and grey infrastructure − as a part of decision-making exposes the community to growing risks, which if were to crystalise would impose significant and broad economic, social and environmental costs.
Decision-makers should approach and incorporate economic, planning, design and development decisions.
Basing infrastructure decisions on good economics that draws on scientific, ecological, planning and engineering expertise and properly factors in economic, social and environmental outcomes into the ultimate investment decision is critical to delivering cool, green, liveable and resilient cities today and for decades to come.
This will require collaboration between economists, scientists, planners across the public and private sector to better identify, quantify, value and incorporate these benefits into decision-making.
[1] See NSW Government, Greater Sydney Water Strategy – Draft,2021, p80: https://www.industry.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0017/470501/draft-strategy.pdf
[2] https://www.infrastructureaustralia.gov.au/map/south-creek-integrated-land-use-and-water-cycle-management
DOWNLOAD FULL PUBLICATIONThe Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) announced today that it will not oppose Cleanaway’s proposed acquisition of two landfills and five transfer stations in Sydney from Suez. The ACCC was concerned about the effects on competition for the transport and processing of putrescible waste (that is, waste that contains putrescible organics, such as food waste). Frontier Economics was retained by lawyers for Cleanaway to undertake an empirical analysis of the geographic markets in which transfer stations competed.
Frontier Economics advises clients on a range of competition and dispute support matters.
The Australian Gas Industry Trust (AGIT) and Jemena have published a study undertaken by Frontier Economics on The role of gas in the transition to net-zero power generation. Our study was commissioned by AGIT and Jemena to understand the changing role that gas generation plays in today’s electricity markets, and how that role will continue to evolve as electricity markets transition to net-zero emissions.
Our study found that the requirement for flexible generation will continue to increase as the penetration of intermittent renewable generation increases and that gas generation will have an important ongoing role to play. These findings are consistent with what we observe in electricity markets around the world, including markets with a bigger share of intermittent renewable generation than Australia. In these markets, gas generation continues to play an important role by providing generation capacity that is both firm and flexible.
The NSW Government has recently announced a target of reducing the state’s emissions by 50% by 2030 on 2005 levels. Meeting this target while driving increased prosperity requires the realisation of the cheapest sources of abatement.
Consistent with this commitment, there is an opportunity to expand the role of forests in NSW’s climate strategy by stopping logging in state forests. Frontier Economics and Professor Andrew Macintosh of the Australian National University have prepared a report, Comparing the value of alternative uses of native forests in Southern NSW, that looks at the climate and economic outcomes of this strategy, based on a case study in the southern forests of NSW, covering the Southern and Eden Regional Forest Agreement (RFA) areas.
Based on conservative assumptions, the study found stopping native forestry in the Southern and Eden RFA areas would produce a net economic benefit to the state of approximately $60 million, while also reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by almost 1 million tonnes (Mt) per year over the period 2022-2041.
The National Australia Bank Limited (NAB) sought to acquire the Australian consumer business of Citigroup Australia Pty Limited (Citi). They applied for informal clearance of the proposed acquisition from the ACCC. The ACCC’s investigation focused in particular on the white-label business of Citi and whether NAB would have an incentive post-acquisition to damage this business which competed with its own-label cards.
Frontier Economics was retained by lawyers of the parties to assess these incentives and write a report which was submitted to the ACCC. The ACCC announced today that it would not oppose the acquisition.
Frontier Economics advises clients on a range of competition and dispute support matters.
The property sector has been exploring the ways that climate change could affect business, and until now, this has mostly been focused on the physical effects. However, it is important that businesses don't overlook transition risks as they start to deal with the move to a low carbon economy. There is growing industry level discussion about the potential material financial impacts of this transition for the property sector. We see three key issues as important for those businesses navigating their way through this challenge.
These are:
Frontier Economics and Edge Environment have partnered to provide comprehensive sustainability and economic advice to guide businesses through climate change risk and reporting. A new article, co-authored by Ben Mason from Frontier Economics, along with Mark Siebentritt, Miranda Siu and Jackie McKeon from Edge Environment, discusses the challenges that the property sector face navigating this complex area.
To read the full article, click below:
At a speech to the Competition and Consumer Workshop 2021 of the Law Council of Australia on 27 August 2021, the Chair of the ACCC, Rod Sims, proposed a single new formal process for assessing the effects of mergers on competition.
Philip Williams, competition and dispute support lead at Frontier Economics, has been an expert witness in numerous merger matters that have appeared before the courts. He discusses this proposal in the attached note.
DOWNLOAD FULL PUBLICATIONInfrastructure Australia today released the 2021 Australian Infrastructure Plan, which provides Australia’s green, grey and blue infrastructure sector with a 15 year roadmap to drive economic growth, maintain and enhance our standard of living and improve the resilience and sustainability of Australia’s essential infrastructure.
The 2021 Plan provides Infrastructure Australia’s reform pathway to respond to the 180 infrastructure challenges and opportunities identified in the 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit. There are a number of key themes in the plan. We highlight and discuss several of these below.
The inclusion of waste and social infrastructure (such as green and blue infrastructure) for the first time, alongside energy, transport, telecommunications and water.
The need for place-based decision-making, including the need to holistically plan blue, green and grey infrastructure.
Recognition of the need for a consistent approach to valuing the economic, social and environmental benefits of blue, green and grey infrastructure (which has also been recognised by NSW’s Department of Planning Industry and Environment). Frontier Economics has discussed this in two recent bulletins: Greening our cities: from vision to value and Greening our cities: from vision to reality.
The need to embed sustainability and resilience into infrastructure decision-making, including the importance of a consistent all-hazards, systems approach to resilience planning and quantification of the costs, impacts and benefits of resilience investment.
Recognition of the need for clear management and governance of the water cycle, including stormwater and waterways.
The need to remove targets, mandates and subsidies for certain types of water, including recycled water. (For a look at how to encourage uptake of recycled water initiatives, and barriers, Frontier Economics undertook a review for Infrastructure NSW.)
It is a comprehensive plan addressing all aspects of infrastructure. It puts forth a compelling vision of Australia in 2036, that includes liveable, attractive and resilient communities with social infrastructure supporting a strong, healthy and prosperous nation.
The urban economics team at Frontier Economics advises across these areas. For more information or to discuss a project, please contact us.
