Pricing Carbon Emissions: Economic Reality and Utopia

ISBN-13: 9781032003627 / Angielski / Twarda / 2021 / 232 str.

Aviel Verbruggen

Opis

Pricing Carbon Emissions provides an economic critique on the utopian idea of a uniform carbon price for addressing rising carbon emissions, exposing the flaws in the economic propositions with a key focus on the EU’s Emissions Trading System (ETS).

Spis treści

1 Introduction 1.1 The Scene of Climate and Energy Policy, Carbon Pricing and Emissions Trading 1.2 EU-ETS History in a nutshell 1.3 Some Economic Concepts behind Carbon Pricing 1.4 Equal impact of emitted CO2-eq. molecules is no argument for uniform pricing 1.5 Recommendation2 Diversity disqualifies global uniform carbon pricing for effective climate policy 2.1 Introduction 2.2 The concept of diversity and its implications for policy 2.3 Amalgamation versus specificity 2.4 Global uniform carbon pricing: discourse and performance 2.5 In conclusion3 Anatomy of Emissions Trading Systems: What is the EU ETS? 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Goals of EU policy (component [i]) 3.3 Allocation of tradable emissions permits (component [iv]) 3.4 Carbon emissions prices (component [iii]) 3.5 Costs of abatement (component [ii]) 3.6 Linking the four components of ETS 3.7 Wrap-up 4 What could the EU ETS founders learn from US SO2 emissions permit trade? 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Differences between US SO2 and EU CO2 emissions permit markets 4.3 Salient characteristics of the US acid rain programs 4.4 Choices made by the architects of the EU ETS 4.5 Concluding reflections5 Early European experience with Tradable Green Certificates neglected by EU ETS architects 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Directive 2001/77/EC on the promotion of electricity produced from RE sources 5.3 Flanders market construct for Tradable Green Certificates 5.4 Flanders TGC experiment holds important lessons 5.5 The EC’s formal evaluation of RE support instruments (EC 2005) 5.6 Conclusions 6 Critique on Price Induced Technological Innovation and on Fringe Pricing6.1 Introduction 6.2 Corporate strategy maximizes financial returns 6.3 Pricing carbon emissions and industrial firm’s likely reactions 6.4 The gap between ‘marginal cost pricing’ and ‘fringe pricing’6.5 The impact of higher EU ETS permit prices 6.6 Concluding considerations 7 A political economy of the EU ETS 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Climate Policy in the 3rd Millennium 7.3 Actors on the EU ETS scene 7.4 The EU ETS Policy Arena 7.5 Permits trading in artificial markets 7.6 Economics critique on the EU ETS 7.7 Bewildering EU ETS discourse8 From evaluation to a well thought-out ‘Act Now’ 8.1 Issues on Carbon Pricing (CP) 8.2 Climate Policy and ‘Act Now’ transformations Annex A Environmental policy-making and carbon pricingAnnex B Cost-Benefit Analysis in the context of Climate ChangeAnnex C Cost-effectiveness and diversity of emitting sourcesAnnex D The German Feed-in-Tariff (FIT): successful financial incentiveAnnex E Ageing Electricity Economics: Marginal Cost pricing - Fringe pricing

O autorze

Aviel Verbruggen is Emeritus Professor at University of Antwerp, Belgium. His experiences and knowledge focus primarily on the subjects of politics, engineering and economics.