Ecologic leads a consortium of 18 European Research Institutes that supports the EEA on environmental economic activities between 2004 and 2008. The consortium includes several high-level experts in Environmental Economics, both from old and new EU Member States.

Research questions

The European Environment Agency (EEA) produces objective, reliable and comparable information for policy makes of European environmental and sustainable development, and for the wider European public. The EEA already makes use of environmentally related economic information and methods, such as:

• assessments of economic activities as driving forces of environmental degradation;
• the costs and benefits of alternative policy solutions;
• the use of economic instruments of environmental policy; 
• the monetary valuation of environmental goods and service, and the costs of damage to the environment; as well as
• indicators for several issues relating to environmental policies.

Tasks of the consortium

Under the EEA Strategy 2004-2008, a more structured approach is now called for, which will increase the use of economic approaches and methods in environmental policy making. Therefore Ecologic and its partner institutes provide support to the EEA in further developing three areas of work on environmental economics:

1. At the strategic level: support on programming of activities across the EEA for the period 2005-2008. This includes assessing and reporting on progress with the integration of environmental into other policy areas, but also the inclusion of economic aspects  into environmental policy and policies for sustainable development. 
2. At the operational level: support on gathering information and data on environmental economics, conducting environmental-economic analyses and assessments and on reporting and communication of the results to a wide range of stakeholders.
3. Support on networking and communication activities of EEA, in particular to the network of environmental economists being established by the EEA in co-operation with the European Commission.

Expert Advisory Group

• Roy Brouwer, IVM
• Michael Hanemann, University of Berkeley
• Fritz Hinterberger, SERI
• R. Andreas Kraemer, Ecologic
• Josefina Maestu
• David Pearce
• Tore Söderqvist, Enveco Miljöekonomi
• Keimpe Wieringa, RIVM