“TELMA” - A policy model for optimal allocation of region-wide emissions

The paper describes a policy tool capable of solving and evaluating cost-effective policies for the optimal allocation of a region's air-shed resources among competing pollution sources. It is designed specifically to evaluate the economic implications of changes in ambient air-quality standards, the use of alternative abatement technologies or different pollution control approaches. The highly-polluted air-shed of the metropolitan region of the Haifa Bay area in northern Israel has been selected for testing the usefulness of the model. The policy analysis tool is a PC software package. It is a flexible, user-friendly planning model for evaluating alternative scenarios involving changes in policy parameters. It consists of an optimization module (a mixed integer programming model), a pollution dispersion module and an interface module, which connects these two modules together, and serves as an interface between them and the user, via a sequence of menu screens.