The Limits of Entrapment: The Negotiations on EU Reduction Targets, 2007-11

In 2007, the EU decided to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20/30 per cent, something which was considered a proof of the EU's willingness to take on high targets independently of others. In the period 2009-11, the EU was debating but could not reach an agreement on stepping up to a 30 per cent reduction target. This raises the question: why did the EU go from being capable of adopting high targets independently of others to being incapable of agreeing whether it should increase its mitigation effort? It is argued that whereas actors sceptical of a high target could be rhetorically entrapped in 2007, such entrapment was impossible in the 2009-11 period. The lack of entrapment can be explained in terms of changes in the international and socio-economic contexts, which led to changes in the policy processes and the normative environment, which again made effective entrapment impossible

Permit Allocation in Emissions Trading using the Boltzmann Distribution

In emissions trading, the initial allocation of permits is an intractable issue because it needs to be essentially fair to the participating countries. There are many ways to distribute a given total amount of emissions permits among countries, but the existing distribution methods, such as auctioning and grandfathering, have been debated. In this paper we describe a new method for allocating permits in emissions trading using the Boltzmann distribution. We introduce the Boltzmann distribution to permit allocation by combining it with concepts in emissions trading. We then demonstrate through empirical data analysis how emissions permits can be allocated in practice among participating countries. The new allocation method using the Boltzmann distribution describes the most probable, natural, and unbiased distribution of emissions permits among multiple countries. Simple and versatile, this new method holds potential for many economic and environmental applications.Comment: 25 pages of main text, 3 figures, 3 table