1) Yes.  Primary goals of testing were to ensure:
   a) Our filters implementation actually filter things.  For this you would need pulp and elasticsearch running.
   b) Ensure that the environment is created and maintained in candlepin
   c) Ensure that repos and candlepin environments are not deleted across promotions/refreshes

both b & c were not being handled properly until very recently.  

2) Aside from the @dev environment only used for the two promotion tests and the @@repo2 which is only used for a couple tests, everything is used in all of the tests.   I could move the @dev and @@repo2 creation to their retrospective tests if  you would prefer and delete them in the ensure block.