Carbon Abatement and its international effects in Europe including effects on other pollutants: a general equilibrium approach

This paper outlines the development of a CGE model as a tool for analysing many of the issues relating to the introduction of environmental taxation, such as interaction with other taxes, revenue recycling, international carbon 'leakage' and tax export effects. The model is linked to IIASA's RAINS model to expand the analysis to cover other cross-boundary pollution. Analysis of a 30 ECU per tonne carbon tax applied in Germany, the UK and the rest of the European Union indicate that it could achieve savings of the order of 20 per cent in carbon emissions compared to business as usual, at little economic cost to the EU countries. The emission savings may be slightly higher in Germany and lower in the UK than the rest of the EU, while the latter would also gain more from terms of trade effects. The tax would bring substantial savings in sulphur emissions. Alternatively, if emissions were allowed to stay constant, the saving on abatement technology would mean a modest improvement in the net cost of the tax. Effects on Nitrogen emissions are smaller.

The Allocation of Carbon Permits within One Country : A General Equilibrium Analysis of the United Kingdom

As part of the Kyoto agreement on limiting carbon emissions, from 2008 onwards an international market in auction able carbon permits will be established. This raises the issue of whether trading should be simply between governments or between companies, or in the latter case how such permits should be allocated. Our paper uses the British section of a CGE model of the European energy sectors to evaluate the economics of various methods of allocating permits within a country, as discussed in Lord Marshall’s recent report to the British government. The option of allocation entirely by auction is similar to the setting of a carbon tax, and the recycling of revenues to reduce or offset other economic distortions could produce a potential net benefit to incomes and employment. 'Grandfathering' some of the permits free to large firms, according to their base year carbon emissions, would mean loss of the benefits of recycling auction revenues. This might be exacerbated if it created windfall profits repatriated by foreign shareholders. The third major alternative is to review the allocation regularly, awarding permits to all firms according to a ‘benchmark’ allocation, based on 'best practice' as estimated by outside experts. This would be similar in practice to recycling the revenue as an output subsidy to the industry, though it could be complicated to implement. Such a system could allow much of the potential ‘double dividend’ to be realized, though it might still be preferable to auction permits, with the revenues used to offset taxes across a wider spread of industry

Structural and spectroscopic studies with dithizone and its derivatives

Bibliography: p. 262-274.An X-ray crystal structure detennination of 3-nitro-l,5-di(2,6-dimethylphenyl) fonnazan, ArN:N•C(N02):N•NHAr (Ar= 2,6-dimethylphenyl), has shown that the N-N-C-N-N chain is stabilized by an unusual hydrogen bond in the closed-ring syn,s-cis configuration relative to the formal double C=N and single C-N bonds. The bond lengths reveal complete n-electron delocalization along the chain which results in a mesomeric structure; the possibility of such a mesomeric structure existing in solution rather than a rapid tautomeric equilibrium between two limiting forms of the resonance hybrid has been considered in the light of i.r. and n.m.r. spectroscopic measurements. The temporal changes in the visible absorption spectrum of S-methyldithizone, PhN:N•C(SCH3):N•NHPh, have been shown to arise from syn-anti isomerization about the fonnal C=N double bond and rotation about the C-N single bond by considering the evidence provided by i. r. and n.m.r. spectroscopic studies combined with the X-ray crystal structure of the di(o-tolyl) homologue. The parent compound dithizone, PhN:N•C(SH):N•NHPh, previously thought to exist as an equilibritim of thiol and thione forms in solution has now been shown to consist of a single species in solution mainly by consideration of its n.m.r. spectroscopic properties. Organomercury(II) complexes of dithizone have been shown to be photochromic in solution; X-ray crystal structure detenninations of phenyland methylmercury(II) dithizonate, besides revealing rare three-coordination of mercury, have been combined with spectroscopic measurements on the normal and activated fonns to reveal the structure of the labile photo-isomers