Abstract

This paper applies cost-benefit analysis to assess social and private net benefits from rainbow trout and European whitefish aquaculture under recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) and marine net cage technologies. In addition to private investment and operational costs, we include eutrophication damage from nutrients and value the fish produced by its producer price. The assessment is made in terms of annualized present value of net benefits. We find that net cage production outperforms RAS by a wide margin for rainbow trout production. For the European whitefish, RAS narrows this gap considerably, but net cage production still receives higher net benefits. We extend our discussion to the specific challenge of the Weser ruling of the EU’s Water Framework Directive, which effectively hinders expansion of aquaculture production, and examine whether one-time offsets would provide aquaculture the possibility to expand production. We find that one-time offsetting provides higher net benefits compared to not offsetting with both technologies but is easier to execute for RAS.

摘要

本文应用成本效益分析来评估循环水产养殖系统（RAS）和海水网箱技术下虹鳟鱼和欧洲白鲑养殖的社会和私人净效益。除了私人投资和运营成本外，我们还考虑了营养物质造成的富营养化损害，并根据其生产者价格对所生产的鱼类进行估价。评估是根据净收益的年化现值进行的。我们发现网箱生产在虹鳟鱼生产方面远远优于 RAS。对于欧洲白鲑，RAS 大大缩小了这一差距，但网箱生产仍然获得更高的净效益。我们将讨论扩展到欧盟水框架指令威悉裁决的具体挑战，该指令有效地阻碍了水产养殖产量的扩大，并研究一次性抵消是否能为水产养殖业扩大生产提供可能性。我们发现，与两种技术都不进行抵消相比，一次性抵消可提供更高的净收益，但更易于 RAS 执行。