The European Union's Potential for Strategic Emissions Trading through Minimal Permit Sale Contracts

Strategic market behavior by permit sellers will harm the European Union as the EU as a whole is expected to become a large net buyer of permits in a follow-up agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. In this paper we explore how the EU could benefit from making permit trade agreements with non-EU countries. These trade agreements involve a minimum permit sales requirement complemented by a financial transfer from the EU to the other contract party. Such agreements enable the EU to act strategically in the permit market on behalf of its member states, although each member state is assumed to behave as a price taker in the permit market. Using a stylized numerical simulation model we show that an appropriately designed permit trade agreement between the EU and China can cut EU’s total compliance cost significantly. This result is robust for a wide range of parameterizations of the simulation model.emissions permit, post-Kyoto climate agreement, strategic permit trade

Market power in the market for greenhouse emission permits : the interplay with the fossil fule markets

Implementation of the Kyoto Protocol is likely to leave Russa and other Eastern European countries with market power in the market for emission permits. Ceteris paribus, this will raise the permit price above the competitive permit price. However, Russia is also a large exporter of fossil fuels. A high price on emission permits may lower the producer price on fossil fuels. Thus if Russia coordinates its permit market and fossil fuel market policies, market power will not necessarily lead to a higher permit price. Fossil fuel producers may also exert market power in the permit market, provided they conceive the permit price to be influeneced by their production volumes. If higher volumes drive up the permit price, Russian fuel producers may become more aggressive relative to their competitors in the fuel markets if the sale of fuels is coordinated with the sale of permits. The result is reversed if high fuel production drives the permit price down

National climate policy, firm survival, and investments

In this paper we consider how to design a national tradable quota system to reduce emissions of climate gases when the regulator is concerned about the survival of specific firms. The problem is studied using a two-period model with a stochastic price in the second period. This enables us to include the effects of a chosen design of the tradable quota system on irreversible investment in abatement technology. We look at the social cost of ensuring firm survival for different ways of allocating free quotas and for different assumptions of whether an investment in abatement technology is cost minimizing or not. Acknowledgements We thank Michael Hoel and Asbjørn Torvanger for their valuable comments

Internalizing negative environmental impacts from wind power production: Coasian bargaining, offsetting schemes and environmental taxes

On the one hand, wind power production is necessary for decarbonizing the electricity sector. On the other hand, we risk replacing one environmental problem with other environmental problems, that is, stopping climate change in exchange with increased loss of pristine land and biodiversity. The present paper provides a novel contribution to the literature on how to regulate the development of wind power plants (WPPs). Current regulation is largely based on a concession system, where both environmental taxes and offset schemes are left unexplored. We develop a theoretical model of WPP development with offsets and environmental taxes. We show that if additional loss of pristine nature and biodiversity is acceptable at some monetary price, establishing an offset market for WPP development and combining it with an environmental tax will be socially desirable. In fact, this solution is preferable to both only having an environmental tax or only having a compulsory offset market. However, if no more loss of pristine land and biodiversity can be tolerated, compulsory and complete offsetting should be the norm. We look at two restoration projects in Norway and evaluate to what extent they could have been used as offsets for a recent WPP development in Norway. We conclude that they can, but an offset scheme demands good measurement methods and regulations to ensure equivalence in the values of ecosystem services lost and gaine

Policies for electrification of the car fleet in the short and long run – subsidizing electric vehicles or subsidizing charging stations?

Abatement can be performed by measures that have an impact on present emissions, but no lasting effect, and by long-lived infrastructure investments. We study the optimal combination of short and long-lived options for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, by specifying abatement cost functions depending on abatement from these two options. Electrification of the transport sector is used as an example. A transition from internal combustion engines vehicles (ICEVs) to electric vehicles (EVs) can be incentivized by both subsidies on purchases of EVs and increased density of fast chargers. Subsidizing the purchase of EVs only leads to emissions reductions in the next few years (static option), whereas investment in infrastructure also will reduce abatement costs in several years to come (dynamic option). We find that the present marginal abatement cost of the dynamic alternative exceeds the costs of static abatement in optimum, thus the dynamic option may be profitable even if it is more expensive. A higher expected abatement cost in later periods most likely makes it even more profitable to use the dynamic policy instrument. This framework is used for a numerical study on electrification of the transport sector in Norway. The numerical simulations confirm the results of the theory model. Flexibility in the domestic target over time and the presence of an international permit market affect the combination of static and dynamic abatement. This stresses the importance of early and time consistent plans for international regulations of GHG emissions.This paper is funded by the Norwegian Research Council through the Electrans project, which is part of the ENERGIX program, and PLATON - PLATform for Open and Nationally accessible climate policy knowledge