US Experience with Emissions Trading

Emissionshandel, Vereinigte Staaten, Emissions trading, United States

The Temporal Efficiency of SO2 Emissions Trading

The Temporal Efficiency of SO2 Emissions Tradin

The European Carbon Market in Action: Lessons from the First Trading Period Interim Report

Abstract and PDF report are also available on the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change website (http://globalchange.mit.edu/).The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) is the largest greenhouse gas market ever established. The European Union is leading the world's first effort to mobilize market forces to tackle climate change. A precise analysis of the EU ETS's performance is essential to its success, as well as to that of future trading programs. The research program "The European Carbon Market in Action: Lessons from the First Trading Period," aims to provide such an analysis. It was launched at the end of 2006 by an international team led by Frank Convery, Christian De Perthuis and Denny Ellerman. This interim report presents the researchers' findings to date. It was prepared after the research program's second workshop, held in Washington DC in January 2008. The first workshop was held in Paris in April 2007. Two additional workshops will be held in Prague in June 2008 and in Paris in September 2008. The researchers' complete analysis will be published at the beginning of 2009.The research program “The European Carbon Market in Action: Lessons from the First Trading Period” has been made possible thanks to the support of: Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, BlueNext, EDF, Euronext, Orbeo, Suez, Total, Veolia

Lessons from Phase 2 compliance with the U.S. Acid Rain Program

This paper provides preliminary answers to four questions concerning the behavior of agents operating under the SO2 Allowance Trading Program that could not be adequately answered until several years' data on compliance behavior in the final Phase II could be observed. The four questions are: 1. How is abatement distributed geographically when all fossil-fuel-fired electricity generating units are included? 2. Will agents draw down the accumulated Phase I bank, as expected and more or less efficiently, during Phase II? 3. Is there any evidence that the failure to endow new generating units with allowances constitutes a barrier to entry? 4. What can be said about the cost of the SO2 Allowance Trading Program in Phase II when all units are included and when it is fully phased in

New entrant and closure provisions : how do they distort?

As a person whose life began in England and ended in North America and who maintained academic affiliations in the United Kingdom, Canada and the U.S., Campbell Watkins had a fine appreciation for the subtle differences that mark the two sides of the North Atlantic. He embodied the cross-fertilization that trans-Atlantic exchanges imply and I have no doubt that that was one of the reasons the IAEE received so much of his attention and benefited so grandly from it. This essay concerns one of those trans-Atlantic exchanges and one of which Campbell would have enjoyed the irony: An American innovation that goes to Europe and becomes bigger than anything yet seen in North America. The transplant is the cap-and-trade form of emissions trading and the European application is the European Union CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). More specifically, this paper focuses on a particular feature of the allocation process in the European variant, the endowment of new entrants with allowances and the forfeiture of allowances when facilities are closed

Lessons form Phase 2 Compliance with the US Acid Rain Program

Lessons form Phase 2 Compliance with the US Acid Rain Progra

Analysis of the Bush proposal to reduce the SO₃ cap

This paper evaluates President Bush's recent proposal to reduce the cap on total SO2 emissions using a model of emissions banking that fits the experience so far under Title IV. It provides a brief introduction to emissions banking and reports results concerning the effect of a the proposed reduction of the cap on emissions, abatement costs, and the value of the existing SO2 allowance endowment.Supported by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research

The world price of coal

A significant increase in the seaborne trade for coal over the past twenty years has unified formerly separate coal markets into a world market in which prices move in tandem. Due to its large domestic market, the United States has become the residual supplier and price setter in the world coal market. Changes in multifactor productivity have been the primary cause of the long-term fluctuations in coal prices that have been observed in the United States since the end of the Second World War and in the world coal market.Supported by the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research

The effects on developing countries of the Kyoto Protocol and carbon dioxide emissions trading

The trading of rights to emit carbon dioxide has not officially been sanctioned by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, but it is of interest to investigate the consequences, both for industrial (Annex B) and developing countries, of allowing such trades. The authors examine the trading of caps assigned to Annex B countries under the Kyoto Protocol and compare the outcome with a world in which Annex B countries meet with their Kyoto targets without trading. Under the trading scenario the former Soviet Union is the main seller of carbon dioxide permits and Japan, the European Union, and the United States are the main buyers. Permit trading is estimated to reduce the aggregate cost of meeting the Kyoto targets by about 50 percent, compared with no trading. Developing countries, though they do not trade, are nonetheless affected by trading. For example, the price of oil and the demand for other developing country exports are higher with trading than without. The authors also consider what might happen if developing countries were to voluntarily accept caps equal to Business as Usual Emissions and were allowed to sell emission reductions below these caps to Annex B countries. The gains from emissions trading could be big enough to give buyers and sellers incentive to support the system. Indeed, a global market for rights to emit carbon dioxide could reduce the cost of meeting the Kyoto targets by almost 90 percent, if the market were to operate competitively. The division of trading gains, however, may make a competitive outcome unlikely: Under perfect competition, the vast majority of trading gains go to buyers of permits rather than to sellers. Even markets in which the supply of permits is restricted can, however, substantially reduce the cost to Annex B countries of meeting their Kyoto targets, while yielding profits to developing countries that elect to sell permits.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Markets and Market Access,Montreal Protocol,Climate Change,Environmental Economics&Policies,Carbon Policy and Trading,Energy and Environment,Economic Theory&Research,Montreal Protocol