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

Environmental tax differentiation between industries and households - implications for efficiency and employment: a multi-sector intertemporal CGE analysis for Germany

This paper investigates the economic impacts of environmental tax reforms designed to reach given emission reduction targets for the German economy. Our focus is on the efficiency and employment implications of alternative schemes for emission tax differentiation between the production sector and the household sector. We point out that strong tax discrimination in favor of the production sector may cause substantial excess costs. Differences in the emission tax base and the respective ease of emission mitigation across the production sector and the household sector are shown to play a crucial role for explaining our results. --environmental taxes,taxing production vs. taxing consumption,environmental tax reforms,computable general equilibrium

The Kyoto Protocol: A Review and Perspectives

International concern about climate change has led to the Kyoto Protocol, negotiated in 1997, which contains legally binding emission targets for industrialized countries to be achieved during the commitment period 2008-2012. While proponents of the Protocol celebrate it as a breakthrough in international climate policy, opponents criticize that its approach, namely setting targets and timetables for emission reductions, is seriously flawed. This paper provides a critical assessment of the Protocol?s potential performance and discusses amendments to foster its effectiveness and efficiency. It concludes that, even without any effective emission reductions in the initial commitment period, the ratification of Kyoto is important for the further policy process of climate protection. The Kyoto Protocol has established a flexible broad-based international mechanism that provides a valuable starting point for shaping efficient climate policies in the future. --climate policy,cost-benefit analysis,Kyoto Protocol

Cooling down hot air: a global CGE analysis of post-Kyoto carbon abatement strategies

The Kyoto Protocol marks a break-through in global warming mitigation policies as it sets legally binding emissions targets for major emitting regions. However, realisation of the Protocol depends on the clarification of several issues one of which is the permissible scope of international emissions trading between signatory countries. Unrestricted trade produces hot air when signatory countries whose Kyoto targets are well above their business as usual emissions trade in larger amounts of ?abundant? emission rights. Concerns on hot air motivated proposals for caps on emissions trading by the EU. These caps are strictly refused by the USA and other non-European industrialized countries who want to exploit the full efficiency gains from trade. In this paper we show that there are cooling down strategies which can reconcile both positions. International permit trade provides enough efficiency gains to make all signatory countries better off than without permit trade while mitigating hot air. In other words, part of the efficiency gains from free trade could be used to pay for higher abatement targets of signatory countries which assure the same environmental effectiveness as compared to strictly domestic action or restricted permit trade. --

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

Assessing Voluntary Commitments: Monitoring is Not Enough!

This paper deals with a special type of voluntary approach to protect the environment, for example, that we would like to term voluntary commitment. Its major characteristic is that it represents a unilateral declaration without a decisively active role of regulators. In other words, voluntary commitments are, by definition, not the result of intensive mutual negotiations between participants and regulators. By combining theoretical considerations on the economic rationale for the popularity of voluntary commitments with an investigation of principal conceptual and statistical problems regarding their empirical assessment, it seems unlikely that voluntary commitments generally trigger significant deviations from business-as-usual. This casts doubt on the effectiveness and, hence, the efficiency of this specific type of voluntary approach. Effectiveness, guaranteed through more demanding goals, requires intensive mutual negotiations – monitoring is not enough. --Voluntary Agreements,Counterfactual,Evaluation

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

Climate policy induced investments in developing countries: the implications of investment risks

International climate policy has assigned the leading role in emissions abatement to the industrialized countries while developing countries remain uncommitted to binding emission reduction targets. However, cooperation between the industrialized and the developing world through joint implementation of emission abatement promises substantial economic gains to both parties. In this context, the policy debate on joint implementation has addressed the question of how investment risks to project-based emission crediting between industrialized countries and developing countries affect the magnitude and distribution of such gains. In our quantitative analysis, we find that the incorporation of country-specific investment risks induces rather small changes vis-?-vis a situation where investment risks are neglected. Only if investors go for high safety of returns is there a distinct decline in the overall volume of emission crediting and the associated total economic benefits. While the welfare effects of risk incorporation for industrialized countries are unequivocally negative, the implications across developing countries are ambiguous. Whereas low-risk developing countries attract higher project volumes and benefit from higher effective prices per emission credit compared to a reference scenario without risk, the opposite applies to high-risk countries. Sensitivity analysis with respect to higher risk estimates show that shifts in the comparative advantage of emission abatement against high-risk countries may become dramatic as only very low-cost mitigation projects will be realized, driving down the country?s benefits from emission crediting to the advantage of low-risk developing countries. This result is supported by empirical evidence on regional imbalances of activities implemented jointly under the pilot phase of the Kyoto Protocol. --international climate policy,investment risks

On the Design of Optimal Grandfathering Schemes for Emission Allowances

To meet its commitment under the Kyoto Protocol, the EU plans to implement an emissions trading system with grandfathering of allowances. Besides having distributional impacts, the choice of the grandfathering scheme may affect efficiency if firms anticipate how future allocations depend on upcoming decisions. In this paper, we determine central design rules for optimal grandfathering within a simple two-period model. We find that for (small) open trading systems, where allowance prices are exogenous, first-best second-period grandfathering schemes must not depend on firm-specific decisions in the first period. Second-best schemes correspond to a Ramsey rule of optimal tax differentiation and are generally based on both previous emissions and output. However, of closed emissions trading systems, i.e. endogeneous allowance prices, first- and second-best rules coincide and must not depend on previous output levels. They consist of an assignment proportional to the emissions in the first period plus a term which does not depend on firm-specific decisions in either of the two periods. --emissions trading,grandfathering,efficiency

Climate Policy Beyond Kyoto: Quo Vadis? A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis Based on Expert Judgements

Despite of the apparent failure of the Kyoto Protocol with respect to environmental effectiveness, it has established a broad international mechanism that might be able to provide a global reduction of greenhouse gas emissions during a second commitment period. In this paper we investigate the likely future of post-Kyoto policies. Our primary objective is to identify policy-relevant abatement scenarios and to quantify the associated economic implications across major world regions. Based on a cross-impact analysis we first evaluate an expert poll to select the most likely post-Kyoto climate policy scenarios. We then use a computable general equilibrium model to assess the economic implications of these key scenarios. We find that post-Kyoto agreements are likely to cover only small reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions with abatement duties predominantly assigned to the industrialized countries while developing countries do not make any commitments, but can sell emission abatement to the industrialized world. Equity rules to allocate abatement duties are mainly based on the sovereignty principle or ability-to-pay. Global adjustment costs arising from post-Kyoto policies are very moderate but fuel exporting countries are likely to face quite considerable costs because of adverse terms-of-trade effects on fossil fuel markets. --climate policy,cross-impact analysis,computable general equilibrium modeling