Climate politics from Kyoto to Bonn: from little to nothing?!?

We investigate how the U.S. withdrawal and the amendments of the Bonn climate policy conference in 2001 will change the economic and environmental impacts of the Kyoto Protocol in its original form. Based on simulations with a large-scale computable general equilibrium model, we find that U.S. withdrawal together with the new provisions of Bonn are likely to reduce environmental effectiveness to zero. U.S. compliance under the new Bonn amendments would accommodate a substantial cut in global emissions at small compliance costs for OECD countries rising some hopes that the U.S. might rejoin the Kyoto Protocol during the next years. --climate policy,emission trading,computable general equilibrium

Fair division with general equilibrium effects and international climate politics

This paper introduces a solution for the fair division of common property resources in production economies with multiple inputs and outputs. It is derived from complementing the Walrasian solution by welfare bounds, whose ethical justification rests on commonality of ownership. We then apply this solution to the question of burden sharing in the climate change regime, using an intertemporal computable general equilibrium model. For a wide range of initial allocations of CO2 emission rights, we find that developing countries should participate in emission reduction efforts in order to increase their global efficiency, but should also be fully compensated for their incremental abatement costs. --Fair division,climate change,common property resources,welfare bounds,CGE models

Industry-level emission trading between power producers in the EU

In this paper we investigate how restrictions for emission trading to the energy-intensive power sector will affect the magnitude and distribution of abatement costs across EU countries vis-?-vis a comprehensive EU emission trading regime. We find that emission trading between European power sectors allows the harvest of a major part of the efficiency gains provided by full trade as compared to strictly domestic action. However, trade restrictions may create a more unequal distribution of abatement costs across member states than is the case for a comprehensive trade regime. The reason for this is that restricted permit trade enhances the secondary terms-of-trade benefits to EU member countries with low marginal abatement costs at the expense of the other EU member states. --emission trading,computable general equilibrium

Rio - 10 Years After: A Critical Appraisal of Climate Policy

Ten years after the initial Climate Change Convention from Rio in 1992, the developed world is likely to ratify the Kyoto Protocol which has been celebrated as a milestone in climate protection. Standard economic theory, however, casts doubt that Kyoto will go beyond symbolic policy. In this paper we show that the final concretion of the Kyoto Protocol obeys the theoretical prediction: Kyoto more or less boils down to business-as-usual without significant compliance costs to ratifying parties. --climate policy,emission trading,hot air

A practical approach to offset permits in post Kyoto climate policy

International Carbon Offsets from developing countries and emerging economies such as permits from the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) will potentially play an important role for cost containment in domestic greenhouse gas regulation schemes in industrialised countries. We analyse the potential role of offset permits assuming that major emitters such as the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand install domestic greenhouse gas regulation schemes to achieve the emissions reductions pledged in the Copenhagen Accord and seek cost containment. We estimate a potential demand for offset permits of 627 to 667 MtCO2e p.a. from industrialised countries. To describe the supply structure, we derive marginal abatement cost curves for developing countries and emerging economies. We find that developing countries and emerging economies can supply 627 to 667 MtCO2e p.a. at costs of approximately EUR 10 (in 2004 EUR), neglecting transaction costs and country specific risks. The highest potentials for the generation of carbon offsets are present in China, India and the rest of Asia. --emissions trading,offsets,CDM,marginal abatement costs,climate policy

Efficiency, Compensation, and Discrimination: What is at Stake When Implementing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme?

In 2005, an EU-wide emissions trading scheme covering major CO2 producing sites shall come into power. The key objective of the trading scheme is to promote cost-efficiency of carbon reduction within the EU. We identify policy-relevant tradeoffs between overall efficiency, compensation and competitive neutrality which arise in the concrete implementation of the EU emissions trading scheme through National Allocation Plans. --emissions trading,allowance allocation,competition,National Allocation Plans,computable general equilibrium

Decomposing general equilibrium effects of policy intervention in multi-regional trade models: method and sample application

Policy interventions in large open economies do not only affect the allocation of domestic resources but change international market prices. The change in international prices implies an indirect secondary burden or benefit for all trading countries. This secondary terms of trade effect may have important welfare implications: Countries without change in domestic policies may nevertheless gain or suffer from the action of other countries; in turn, the primary welfare effect of countries interfering domestically may be substantially enhanced or weakened due to international spill-overs. Obviously, policy makers of economies that are integrated into international markets have an essential interest to gain insights about the different sources of welfare changes associated with domestic policy changes. In this paper, we present a decomposition that splits the overall welfare effect into a domestic market effect holding international prices constant and an international market effect as a result of changes in international prices (terms of trade effect). We demonstrate the usefulness of our decomposition approach in the context of an empirical welfare analysis of international carbon abatement policies. --

Contraction of global carbon emissions: how acceptable are alternative emission entitlement schemes

The allocation of emissions entitlements across countries is the single most controversial issue in international climate policy. Extreme positions within the policy debate range from entitlement based on current emission patterns (CEP) to equal-per-capita (EPC) allocations.Convergence (COV) from an initial CEP allocation towards EPC emission rights represents a reconciliation of the two. This paper maintains that the acceptability of alternative entitlement schemes depends on their implications for economic welfare and uses a dynamic multi-region general equilibrium model for a comparative economic assessment of the above allocation rules. We find welfare implications for the varius regions to be strongly influenced by changes in the terms of trade. Especially, regions may experience considerable welfare losses even under entitlement schemes which impose no binding emission constraint on them. Among the arrangements examined, COV cum emissions trading stands out for offering the developing countries substantial incentives for paticipation in the international greenhouse gas abatement effort without imposing excessive burdens on the industrialized countries. --climate policy,economic welfare,international equity,emissions trading,computable general equilibrium modeling

Market and Economic Modelling of the Intelligent Grid: End of Year Report 2009

The overall goal of Project 2 has been to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impacts of distributed energy (DG) on the Australian Electricity System. The research team at the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group (EEMG) has constructed a variety of sophisticated models to analyse the various impacts of significant increases in DG. These models stress that the spatial configuration of the grid really matters - this has tended to be neglected in economic discussions of the costs of DG relative to conventional, centralized power generation. The modelling also makes it clear that efficient storage systems will often be critical in solving transient stability problems on the grid as we move to the greater provision of renewable DG. We show that DG can help to defer of transmission investments in certain conditions. The existing grid structure was constructed with different priorities in mind and we show that its replacement can come at a prohibitive cost unless the capability of the local grid to accommodate DG is assessed very carefully.Distributed Generation. Energy Economics, Electricity Markets, Renewable Energy

Alleviating Adverse Implications of EU Climate Policy on Competitiveness: The Case for Border Tax Adjustments or the Clean Development Mechanism?

Ambitious unilateral EU environmental policy has raised concerns about adverse competitiveness implications for European energy-intensive and export-oriented sectors. We analyze the economic and environmental implications of two different measures to address these concerns in the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS): border tax adjustments (BTA) and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). Numerical simulations with a computable general equilibrium model of the global economy demonstrate that alternative BTA regimes are suitable to alleviate adverse competiveness implications of unilateral European climate policy on energy-intensive and export-oriented industries. The regulatory protection of these industries via subsidies for EU exporters and tariffs for non-EU importers goes, however, at the expense of sectors which are excluded from the EU ETS. We show that the choice of alternative benchmarks (i.e. carbon intensities) for the level of BTA substantially affects these competitiveness implications. The simulations further indicate that limited access to low-cost emission abatement via the CDM in the EU ETS alleviates adverse competitiveness impacts to a comparable extent as the most ambitious BTA scheme. Increasing where-flexibility of emission abatement thus represents an attractive market-based alternative to the application of border tax adjustments in unilateral climate policy. --Emissions Trading,EU ETS,Competitiveness,Border tax adjustments,Clean Development Mechanism,CGE model