An early assessment of national allocation plans for phase 2 of EU emission trading

Based on 18 National Allocation Plans (NAP) for phase 2 (2008-2012) of the EU Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), we explore to which extent individual Member States (MS) intend to use the ETS effectively and efficiently to reduce CO2 emissions. Our analyses at the macro level of these NAPs show that on average the ET-budgets in phase 2 are only about 3 % lower than the budgets in phase 1 (2005-2007), historical emissions in 2005 and projected emissions in 2010. While on average, the old MS intend to reduce emissions by about 10 %, compared to projected emissions, the im-plied excess allocation in the new MS is more than 20 %. When compared with a cost-efficient split of the required emission reductions, the ET-budgets in the EU-15 MS are generally too large. Thus, the burden for non-trading sectors (households, tertiary and transport) will be too high. Noteworthy are also the high shares of governments' intended and companies' possible use of Kyoto Mechanisms, which challenge the traditional position held by the EU on supplementarity. In general, our analyses at the micro level of the allocation methods (across countries and phases) suggest that MS tend to stick with the oncepts and methodologies developed in phase 1, unless these actually contradict rulings by the European Commission. Thus the progress made towards more efficient and more harmonized allocation rules is generally small. With some variation, all NAPs include persistent inefficient rules for closures and new installations which distort dynamic innovation incentives and tend to preserve existing production structures. Observed improvements include a (rather small) increase in auctioning and the use of benchmarking for existing and new installations. Also, the NAPs of a few old MS have simplified special provisions for process-related emissions or combined heat and power. In contrast, new MS have often introduced such provisions in phase 2. We conclude that potentials to improve environmental effectiveness and economic efficiency are far from being tapped. Improvements crucially hinge on the outcome of the European Commission's review process. --

Incentives for energy efficiency in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme

This paper explores the incentives for energy efficiency induced by the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) for installations in the energy and industry sectors. Our analysis of the National Allocation Plans for 27 EU Member States for phase 2 of the EU ETS (2008-2012) suggests that the price and cost effects for improvements in carbon and energy efficiency in the energy and industry sectors will be stronger than in phase 1 (2005-2007), but only because the European Commission has substantially reduced the number of allowances to be allocated by the Member States. To the extent that companies from these sectors (notably power producers) pass through the extra costs for carbon, higher prices for allowances translate into stronger incentives for demand- side energy efficiency. With the cuts in allocation to energy and industry sectors these will be forced to greater reductions, thus the non-ET sectors like household, tertiary and transport will have to reduce less, which is more in line with the cost-efficient share of emission reductions. The findings also imply that domestic efficiency improvements in the energy and industry sectors may remain limited since companies can make substantial use of credits from the Kyoto Mechanisms. The analysis of the rules for existing installations, new projects and closures suggests that incentives for energy efficiency are higher in phase 2 than in phase 1 because of the increased application of benchmarking to new and existing installations and because a lower share of allowances will be allocated for free. Nevertheless, there is still ample scope to further improve the EU ETS so that the full potential for energy efficiency can be realized. --Climate policy,emission trading,energy efficiency,innovation

The Generalized Hartle-Hawking Initial State: Quantum Field Theory on Einstein Conifolds

Recent arguments have indicated that the sum over histories formulation of quantum amplitudes for gravity should include sums over conifolds, a set of histories with more general topology than that of manifolds. This paper addresses the consequences of conifold histories in gravitational functional integrals that also include scalar fields. This study will be carried out explicitly for the generalized Hartle-Hawking initial state, that is the Hartle-Hawking initial state generalized to a sum over conifolds. In the perturbative limit of the semiclassical approximation to the generalized Hartle-Hawking state, one finds that quantum field theory on Einstein conifolds is recovered. In particular, the quantum field theory of a scalar field on de Sitter spacetime with $RP^3$ spatial topology is derived from the generalized Hartle-Hawking initial state in this approximation. This derivation is carried out for a scalar field of arbitrary mass and scalar curvature coupling. Additionally, the generalized Hartle-Hawking boundary condition produces a state that is not identical to but corresponds to the Bunch-Davies vacuum on $RP^3$ de Sitter spacetime. This result cannot be obtained from the original Hartle-Hawking state formulated as a sum over manifolds as there is no Einstein manifold with round $RP^3$ boundary.Comment: Revtex 3, 31 pages, 4 epsf figure

Engineering an interaction and entanglement between distant atoms

We propose a scheme to generate an effective interaction of arbitrary strength between the internal degrees of freedom of two atoms placed in distant cavities connected by an optical fiber. The strength depends on the field intensity in the cavities. As an application of this interaction, we calculate the amount of entanglement it generates between the internal states of the distant atoms. The scheme effectively converts entanglement distribution networks to networks of interacting spins.Comment: published versio

Coherent scattering of a Multiphoton Quantum Superposition by a Mirror-BEC

We present the proposition of an experiment in which the multiphoton quantum superposition consisting of N= 10^5 particles generated by a quantum-injected optical parametric amplifier (QI-OPA), seeded by a single-photon belonging to an EPR entangled pair, is made to interact with a Mirror-BEC shaped as a Bragg interference structure. The overall process will realize a Macroscopic Quantum Superposition (MQS) involving a microscopic single-photon state of polarization entangled with the coherent macroscopic transfer of momentum to the BEC structure, acting in space-like separated distant places.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Generation of a superposition of multiple mesoscopic states of radiation in a resonant cavity

Using resonant interaction between atoms and the field in a high quality cavity, we show how to generate a superposition of many mesoscopic states of the field. We study the quasi-probability distributions and demonstrate the nonclassicality of the superposition in terms of the zeroes of the Q-function as well as the negativity of the Wigner function. We discuss the decoherence of the generated superposition state. We propose homodyne techniques of the type developed by Auffeves et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 230405 (2003)] to monitor the superposition of many mesoscopic states.Comment: submitted to Phys. Rev.