Download or read book Analysis of United States Greenhouse Gas Cap and trade Proposals Using a Forward looking Economic Model written by Angelo Gurgel and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We develop a forward-looking version of the recursive dynamic MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model, and apply it to examine the economic implications of proposals in the US Congress to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We find that shocks in the consumption path are smoothed out in the forward-looking model and that the lifetime welfare cost of GHG policy is lower than in the recursive model, since the forward-looking model can fully optimize over time. The forward-looking model allows us to explore issues for which it is uniquely well suited, including revenue-recycling and early action crediting. We find capital tax recycling to be more welfare-cost reducing than labor tax recycling because of its long-term effect on economic growth. Also, there are substantial incentives for early action credits; however, when spread over the full horizon of the policy they do not have a substantial effect on lifetime welfare costs.
Download or read book United States Greenhouse Gas Cap and trade Proposals written by Angelo Gurgel and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (cont.) We find (1) capital tax recycling to be more welfare-cost reducing than labor tax recycling because of its long term effect on economic growth, (2) potentially substantial incentives for early action credits relative to emission levels in years after a policy is announced but before it is implemented that, however, when spread over the full horizon of the policy do not have a substantial effect on lifetime welfare cost or the CO2-e price, and (3) strong effects on estimates of near-term welfare costs depending on exactly how a backstop technology is represented, indicating the problematic aspects of focusing on short-term welfare costs in a forward-looking model unless there is some confidence that the backstop technology is realistically represented.
Download or read book Assessment of United States Greenhouse Gas Cap and trade Proposals written by Sergey Vladimirovich Paltsev and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2007 the US Congress began considering a set of bills to implement a cap-and-trade system to limit the nation's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The MIT Integrated Global System Model (IGSM) - and its economic component, the Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model - were used to assess these proposals. In the absence of policy, the EPPA model projects a doubling of US greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Global emissions, driven by growth in developing countries, are projected to increase even more. Unrestrained, these emissions would lead to an increase in global CO2 concentration from a current level of 380 ppmv to about 550 ppmv by 2050 and to near 900 ppmv by 2100, resulting in a year 2100 global temperature 3.5-4.5°C above the current level. The more ambitious of the Congressional proposals could limit this increase to around 2°C, but only if other nations, including developing countries, also strongly controlled greenhouse gas emissions. With these more aggressive reductions, the economic cost measured in terms of changes in total welfare in the United States could range from 1.5% to almost 2% by the 2040-2050 period, with 2015 CO2-equivalent prices between $30 and $55, rising to between $120 and $210 by 2050. This level of cost would not seriously affect US GDP growth but would imply large-scale changes in its energy system.
Download or read book Climate Change Trade Measures Considerations for U S Policy Makers written by Loren Yager and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 50 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Global climate change is one of the most significant long-term policy challenges facing the U.S., and policies to mitigate climate change will have important economic, social, and environmental implications. This report examines the potential effects of greenhouse gas emissions pricing on U.S. industries¿ internat. competitiveness and trade measures being considered as part of U.S. legislative proposals to address climate change. It examines: (1) what is known about estimating industry effects; (2) examples of industries that may be vulnerable to a loss in internat. competitiveness from emissions pricing; (3) trade measures and other approaches to address competitiveness issues; and (4) potential internat. implications of trade measures.
Download or read book Analysis of U S Greenhouse Gas Tax Proposals written by Gilbert E. Metcalf and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: (Cont.) Thus the choice between a carbon tax and cap-and-trade system can be made on the basis of considerations other than their effectiveness at reducing emissions over some control period. Either approach (or some hybrid of the two approaches) can be equally effective at reducing GHG emissions in the United States.
Download or read book Modeling the Economics of Greenhouse Gas Mitigation written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2011-02-24 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Models are fundamental for estimating the possible costs and effectiveness of different policies for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. There is a wide array of models to perform such analysis, differing in the level of technological detail, treatment of technological progress, spatial and sector details, and representation of the interaction of the energy sector to the overall economy and environment. These differences impact model results, including cost estimates. More fundamentally, these models differ as to how they represent fundamental processes that have a large impact on policy analysis-such as how different models represent technological learning and cost reductions that come through increasing production volumes, or how different models represent baseline conditions. Reliable estimates of the costs and potential impacts on the United States economy of various emissions reduction and other mitigation strategies are critical to the development of the federal climate change research and development portfolio. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the National Academies organized a workshop, summarized in this volume, to consider some of these types of modeling issues.
Download or read book Climate Change Trade Measures Estimating Industry Effects written by Loren Yager and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on 2010-02 with total page 14 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Countries can take varying approaches to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Since energy use is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions, policies designed to increase energy efficiency or induce a switch to less greenhouse-gas-intensive fuels, such as from coal to natural gas, can reduce emissions in the short term. In the long term, however, major technology changes will be needed to establish a less carbon-intensive energy infrastructure. To that end, a U.S. policy to mitigate climate change may require facilities to achieve specified reductions or employ a market-based mechanism, such as establishing a price on emissions. Charts and tables.
Download or read book The Economics of US Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction Policy written by Wesley Allen Look and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political economy of US climate policy has revolved around state- and district- level distributional economics, and to a lesser extent household-level distribution questions. Many politicians and analysts have suggested that state- and district-level climate policy costs (and their distribution) are a function of local carbon intensity and commensurate electricity price sensitivity. However, other studies have suggested that what is most important in determining costs is the means by which revenues from a price on carbon are allocated. This is one of the first studies to analyze these questions simultaneously across all 50 United States, household income classes and a timeframe that reflects most recent policy proposals (2015 - 2050). I use a recursive dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to estimate the economic effects of a US "cap-and-dividend" policy, by simulating the implementation of the Carbon Limits and Energy for America's Renewal (CLEAR) Act, a bill proposed by Senators Cantwell (D-WA) and Collins (R-ME) in 2009. I find that while carbon intensity and electricity prices are indeed important in determining compliance costs in some states, they are only part of the story. My results suggest that revenue allocation mechanisms and new investment trends related to the switch to low-carbon infrastructure are more influential than incumbent carbon intensity or electricity price impacts in determining the distribution of state-level policy costs. These findings suggest that the current debate in the United States legislature over climate policy, and the constellation of both supporters and dissenters, is based upon an incomplete set of assumptions that must be revisited. Finally, please note that this study does not claim to comprehensively model the CLEAR Act,. nor does it incorporate a number of important data and assumptions, including: the latest data on natural gas resources and prices, the price effects on coal of EPA greenhouse gas and mercury regulations, the most recent trends in renewable energy pricing.
Download or read book Economics of climate change hearing written by and published by DIANE Publishing. This book was released on with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Forward Looking Version of the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis written by Mustafa H. M. Babiker and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper documents a forward looking multi-regional general equilibrium model developed from the latest version of the recursive-dynamic MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. The model represents full inter-temporal optimization (perfect foresight), which makes it possible to better address economic and policy issues such as borrowing and banking of GHG allowances, efficiency implications of environmental tax recycling, endogenous depletion of fossil resources, international capital flows, and optimal emissions abatement paths among others. It was designed with the flexibility to represent different aggregations of countries and regions, different horizon lengths, as well as the ability to accommodate different assumptions about the economy, in terms of economic growth, foreign trade closure, labor leisure choice, taxes on primary factors, vintaging of capital and data calibration. The forward-looking dynamic model provides a complementary tool for policy analyses, to assess the robustness of results from the recursive EPPA model, and to illustrate important differences in results that are driven by the perfect foresight behavior. We present some applications of the model that include the reference case and its comparison with the recursive EPPA version, as well as some greenhouse gas mitigation cases where we explore economic impacts with and without inter-temporal trade of permits.
Download or read book Green and Mean written by United States. Congress. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economics of Climate Change written by United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 90 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Greenhouse Gas Protocol written by and published by World Business Pub.. This book was released on 2004 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard helps companies and other organizations to identify, calculate, and report GHG emissions. It is designed to set the standard for accurate, complete, consistent, relevant and transparent accounting and reporting of GHG emissions.
Download or read book The Economics of Climate Change written by Robert Shackleton and published by Congressional Budget Office. This book was released on 2003 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) study--prepared at the request of the Ranking Member of the House Committee on Science--presents an overview of issues related to climate change, focusing primarily on its economic aspects. The study draws from numerous published sources to summarize the current state of climate science and provide a conceptual framework for addressing climate change as an economic problem. It also examines public policy options and discusses the potential complications and benefits of international coordination. In keeping with CBO's mandate to provide impartial analysis, the study makes no recommendations.
Download or read book Argument in the Greenhouse written by Sujata Gupta and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2005-10-05 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can greenhouse gases be controlled and reduced? Will it be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into `real world' applied economic analysis, the authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological taxt reform, developing countries, and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on eissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies, likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels. be in time? This book adds a significant new contribution to the crucial climate change/global warming debate. Incorporating the key political and legal considerations into 'real world' applied economic analysis, the book's authors provide a unique focus on the wider political economy of the problem. All the key issues of controlling climate change (costs, timing and degree of stabilisation, ecological tax reform, developing countries and evolution of international agreements), are placed firmly within the current legal and political economy context, with state-of-the-art economic techniques introduced to analyse different policy proposals. Covering both the developing and developed world, this book identifies important new policies to foster effective agreements on emmissions and prevent global warming - realistic policies which are likely to receive support at both international and domestic levels.
Download or read book A Computable General Equilibrium Analysis of Current Climate Change Policy in the United States written by Jodie L. Capling and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this research I develop a static computable general equilibrium model of the global economy and apply the model to analyze greenhouse gas emission reduction policy. The model is comprised of two regions, the US and ROW (Rest of World), and I use it to simulate policy from 2010 to 2050 in 10 year intervals. I focus on analyzing cap-and-trade systems currently relevant in the US. I found that reducing emissions with a cap-and-trade system would have moderate costs and small negative impacts on the US GDP and consumer welfare. I also found that output-based allocation of revenue to industry could slightly increase the price of emission permits and that linking a US cap-and-trade system to international systems could reduce the price of emission permits in the US. In my analysis carbon capture and storage has an important role in emissions mitigation.
Download or read book Essays in Energy Economics and Climate Policy written by Daniel Cullenward and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As U.S. climate policy begins to emerge at the state and federal levels, new technological, economic, and legal challenges follow close behind. With the aim of contributing to effective, science-based climate policy, this dissertation portfolio draws on insights from energy economics and environmental law to address current policy debates. My research comprises two sets of projects. One category, which deals with national-level climate policy, focuses on front-end policy design choices and fundamental arguments over the merits of competing mitigation strategies. The other category addresses California's evolving climate policy regime, providing scientific and legal input into ongoing policy development processes. Both approaches demonstrate an expansion on conventional approaches to academic research, bridging the gap between applied and theoretical research in a way that graduate students from a range of backgrounds can adopt in their own work. PART I -- NATIONAL ENERGY DATA AND MODELING Projects in the first category integrate economic analysis and energy modeling to inform federal policy, which is just beginning to grapple with the climate challenge. Within this category, I explore two related problems: (1) the inadequacy of national energy data and (2) the challenges of using energy models to assess prospective climate policies. Data (Chapters 1-2): I identify significant conceptual mistakes that result from improperly extrapolating policy conclusions from semi-empirical energy consumption data. This issue is particularly important for research addressing the potential of energy efficiency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Because empirical energy data are so limited, many researchers rely on secondary data series to calibrate models or develop policy insights. My work shows how prominent criticisms of the potential for energy efficiency are based on major conceptual misunderstandings of the available data. Modeling (Chapters 3-4): My colleague Jordan Wilkerson and I set up a fully functioning copy of the U.S. Department of Energy's National Energy Modeling System (NEMS) at Stanford. In one study, we show how the model's treatment of end-use energy efficiency economics in the residential and commercial buildings sectors is driven in large part by non-price parameters. This finding has important implications for the model's ability to project energy efficiency responses to price-based policies, such as a carbon tax. Working with faculty in law and engineering, we also use NEMS-Stanford to model the economic and environmental implications of a carbon fee-and-dividend bill introduced in the U.S. Senate in the spring of 2013. Our work breaks down the expected economic impacts across household income levels and census regions, offering the first distributional analysis of recent carbon tax proposals using the government's official energy model. PART II -- CLIMATE POLICY IN CALIFORNIA Projects in the second category focus on the climate policy regime in California, where regulators are in the process of implementing a comprehensive cap-and-trade system. I completed research on three related policy issues, working in close collaboration with Stanford's Environmental Law Clinic: (1) participation in a lawsuit, in which I defended the constitutionality of State regulators' use of lifecycle assessment methods, (2) the development of carbon offset protocols, and (3) the regulation of resource shuffling in the electricity sector, an issue that has important implications for the State's carbon market. Litigating science (Chapters 5-7): In December 2011, a federal court struck down part of California's climate policy as unconstitutional. The primary reason was that the judge found that the policy's use of lifecycle assessment methods impermissibly discriminated against interstate commerce, violating the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution. In response, my colleague David Weiskopf and I represented two groups of scientists on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, providing science-based arguments to address the legal questions in the case. Offset protocols (Chapters 8-9): California's climate law allows regulated entities to use carbon offsets to meet their emissions reduction targets, earning credit for actions taken to reduce emissions outside of the regulated system. Crucially, offset projects must be "additional" when compared against the counterfactual scenario that would have taken place in the absence of the offset project. This means that absent the financial incentive provided by the offset credit, the project activities would not otherwise have taken place. I wrote comment letters critiquing offset protocols for forestry projects in Mexico and coalmine methane destruction in the U.S., providing technical and legal analysis to improve the protocols' treatment of additionality. Resource shuffling (Chapter 10): State law requires its climate regulations to minimize leakage, which is defined as a reduction of emissions within the state system that is linked to a corresponding increase in emissions outside of the system. Yet the electricity sector is owned and operated across state boundaries, and thus readily subject to a form of leakage called resource shuffling. Resource shuffling occurs when companies in the electricity sector swap their contracts for high-emitting resources with low-emitting replacements, without any change in the physical operation of the electricity system. Because this kind of exchange creates leakage, the California Air Resources Board banned resource shuffling. Recently, however, the Board introduced draft rules that exempt many activities from the prohibition. My colleague David Weiskopf and I critique the State's proposed regulatory structure, showing how a creative lawyer could exploit loopholes to permit leakage in almost any situation. We present the fullest accounting to date for leakage risks associated with early divestment from out-of-state coal, which provides a significant amount of California's electricity supply. We find that if California companies are permitted to offload the emissions liability associated with these plants to companies that do not face reporting requirements under California's climate law, this could result in significant amounts of leakage--potentially even more leakage than the cumulative mitigation requirements expected under the cap-and-trade market through 2020. We also offer a fully developed proposal for revised regulations that expand compliance options while reducing the leakage risks we identify.
