Tutorial 6: Recycling

Motivation

Building on ABC Country's sales permitting system from Tutorial 5, we'll now add a recovery and recycling program targeting the same HFC-134a domestic refrigeration sector. This demonstrates how recycling policies work and explores the introduction of secondary substance in addition to the virgin substance we've been manipulating so far.

Adding the Recycling Policy

Let's create ABC's recovery program:

• Click Add Policy and name it "Domestic Recycling"
• Select Domestic Refrigeration as the application and HFC-134a as the substance
• Go to the Recycle tab and click Add Recycling
• Set 20% recovery with 90% reuse.
• Let's have this happen at recharge (at the point of servicing).
• Leave induced demand at 100% (the default).
• Start in year 2027.
• Click Finish

Add Simulations

Add both a Recycling simulation with just Domestic Recycling selected. Then, add a combined simulation with both Sales Permit and Domestic Recycling included. Again, use years 2025 to 2035.

Results

Piecing together what is going on with multiple policies can take a little work but let's dig in. For this, go ahead and enable Attribute initial charge to importer just to make it easier to reason about how volumes are shifting.

Next, the Emissions radio button tells an interesting story where recycling captuers some of those emissions. Also, this is where the combination of policies may be effective. Once we add in the cap as well, the two complement each other to achieve a higher impact than either on their own.

Note that we said 100% induced demand. This means that virgin consumption does not on its own decrease because recycling is present. This is common in recycling programs where recycling does not 1:1 offset virgin production. Determining the correct rate of displacement (100% - induced demand) can require a bit of work. Induced demand is likely neither 0% or 100% in practice. However, this ambiguity goes away when we add the cap policy. When both are employed together, we see a stronger response in terms of emissions.

For comparison, try setting the induced demand to 0% instead. With 0% induced demand, every kg of recycled substance means one less kg of virgin substance produced - a direct 1:1 offset. First, check the Population view and notice that BAU and recycling scenarios now have the same amount of equipment, since recycling no longer drives additional demand. Next, switch to Consumption and observe that virgin domestic production is now lower in the recycling scenario. Finally, return to Emissions to see that they remain lower with recycling in either case, though the mechanism differs between 0% and 100% induced demand. For the purposes of the later tutorials, let's leave induced demand at 100%, but remember that you can try out different values along the way. Also, when doing this comparison, you may want to ensure "attribute initial charge consumption to importer" is checked.

Conclusion

You've successfully implemented ABC Country's comprehensive HFC-134a strategy combining permitting and recycling policies. This tutorial demonstrated how recycling appears as an alternative supply source and complements demand-side restrictions for maximum policy effectiveness.

Download the completed tutorial: tutorial_06.qta - this contains the complete model with combined permitting and recycling policies

Next Steps

Tutorial 7 will transition from the UI-based interface to direct QubecTalk programming. You'll discover that you've been programming all along and learn to implement advanced multi-substance policies only possible through direct coding. QubecTalk also makes it easier to modify simulations faster. For example, this can help with switching from tonnes of substance to equipment unit counts. While technically possible in the UI, we will find in Tutorial 8 that those kinds of changes may be much more efficient through code.

Previous: Tutorial 5 | Next: Tutorial 7