tax distortions and global climate policy abstract we consider the efficiency implications of policies to reduce global carbon emissions in a world with pre existing tax distortions we first note that the weak double dividend the proposition that the welfare improvement from a tax reform where environmental taxes are used to lower distorting taxes must be greater than the welfare improvement from a reform where the environmental taxes are returned in a lump sum fashion need not hold in a world with multiple distortions we then present a large scale computable general equilibrium model of the world economy with distortionary taxation we use this model to evaluate a number of policies to reduce carbon emissions we find that the weak double dividend is not obtained in a number of european countries results also demonstrate the point that the interplay between carbon policies and pre existing taxes can differ markedly across countries thus one must be cautious in extrapolating the results from a country specific analysis to other countries

the role of offsets in a post kyoto climate agreement the power sector in china abstract this paper considers how an offset scheme specific to the electricity generation sector could incentivize emissions cuts while avoiding the problems encountered by the clean development mechanism cdm it proposes an approach to project evaluation based on measures of additionality economic viability and contribution to sustainable development specific to this sector and re evaluates 460 registered cdm projects in china that generate electricity using wind natural gas or small hydro it concludes that many small hydro schemes would be viable without the cdm subsidy although these projects have zero emissions from operations offsets issued to projects that are viable without subsidy permit increased emissions in developed countries and lead to a net increase in global emissions to provide some indication of the sustainable development benefits that cdm projects bring to their host countries the paper includes estimates of the projects benefit to public health due to the reduced use of coal for generation the paper provides insights into the economics of projects and their value to host countries that are missed by the official cdm methodologies it contributes to the debate over the design of sector specific offset schemes that may be part of a new global agreement on combating climate change

clean up your own mess an experimental study of moral responsibility and efficiency although market based environmental policy instruments feature prominently in economic theory and are widely employed they often face public resistance we argue that such resistance may be driven by moral responsibility where citizens prefer to tackle the environmental problems that they have caused by themselves rather than delegating the task to others by means of a market mechanism using a laboratory experiment that isolates moral responsibility from alternative explanations we show that moral responsibility induces participants to take inefficient actions that reduce the earnings of the whole group of participants we discuss the implications of this finding for the design and implementation of environmental policies

measuring national economic performance without using prices abstract recent years have seen increasing awareness of the deficiencies of conventionally defined national income as a measure of a nation s overall economic performance alternative measures have been proposed involving either the modification of national income accounting conventions or the abandonment of national income itself in favour of something such as the genuine progress indicator gpi however such alternatives like national income itself all involve the use of monetary valuation for aggregation this paper proposes a new approach to the measurement of national economic performance which follows naturally from ecological economics as the study of economic activity rooted in a proper appreciation of its material circumstances and which does not involve using prices for aggregation the paper gives some results for three variants of the new approach and compares and discusses them while this new approach does not purport to provide a single definitive assessment of the sustainability of current economic activity which is an infeasible goal it could provide useful inputs to relevant research activity and to policy analysis and debate

institutional determinants of success among forestry based carbon sequestration projects in sub saharan africa summary this paper contributes to the debate on the economic and social implications of carbon forestry through the study of 42 programs in africa using carbon offset payments to fund tree planting activities such projects may be understood as multi layered collective action problems growing trees for carbon offsets requires not only international financial incentives to plant trees but also local institutions to monitor impose sanctions and distribute benefits consistent with economic theories large projects appear to realize economies of scale contrary to expectations community based projects on lower quality sites often successfully generate and sell offsets while private for profit initiatives appear susceptible to collapse

rent extraction with a type by type scheme an instrument to incorporate sustainable development into the cdm although the cdm is supposed to assist developing countries in achieving sustainable development sustainable development is not incorporated into the market aspect of the cdm by participating in the cdm developing countries may end up losing all cheap emissions reduction possibilities while obtaining little sustainability benefits this paper proposes rent extraction with a type by type scheme as an instrument to incorporate sustainable development into the cdm the rent extraction with a type by type scheme makes it possible for the cdm host country government to discourage the low cost projects that have little sustainability benefits and to extract more rent from the projects that are developed the main challenge of implementing this instrument is the uncertainty of the opportunity cost but the host country government can adjust the scheme for the uncertainty to achieve its goal therefore the type by type scheme will better assist the host country in achieving sustainable development than a single rate scheme

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 1 an integrated dynamic approach abstract this is the first part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services the existing literature on environmental valuation is based on two distinct foundations the ecological valuation methods derive values by a cost of production approach their common characteristic is the neglect of consumer preferences the economic valuation methods focus on the exchange value of ecosystem services their common characteristic is that they are finally based on consumer preferences and do not adequately take account of the complex internal structure of ecosystems as the existing methods for the valuation of ecosystem services emphasize either the economic system or the ecosystem the main objective of part 1 is to provide the conceptual foundations for a new method of valuation of ecosystem services which deals simultaneously with the ecosystem the economic system and society in a balanced way within a simple pre industrial model it is shown how the interdependencies between the three subsystems influence values and how values change over time

examining the cost efficiency of chinese hydroelectric companies using a finite mixture model this paper evaluates the operational activities of chinese hydroelectric power companies over the period 2000 2010 using a finite mixture model that controls for unobserved heterogeneity in so doing a stochastic frontier latent class model which allows for the existence of different technologies is adopted to estimate cost frontiers this procedure not only enables us to identify different groups among the hydro power companies analysed but also permits the analysis of their cost efficiency the main result is that three groups are identified in the sample each equipped with different technologies suggesting that distinct business strategies need to be adapted to the characteristics of china s hydro power companies some managerial implications are developed

will markets direct investments under the kyoto protocol lessons from the activities implemented jointly pilots under the kyoto protocol countries can meet treaty obligations by investing in projects that reduce or sequester greenhouse gases elsewhere prior to ratification treaty participants agreed to launch country based pilot projects referred to collectively as activities implemented jointly aij to test novel aspects of the project related provisions relying on a ten year history of projects we investigate the determinants of aij investment our findings suggest that review agency preferences related to national political objectives and possibly deeper cultural ties influenced project selection and limited the number of aij projects bilateral ties also appear to have affected investment decisions directly possibly because of related transaction costs the results suggest an investment process different from the assumptions that underlie well known estimates of cost savings related to the protocol s flexibility mechanisms we conclude that if approaches developed under the aij programs to approve projects are retained the scale of investment under kyoto s flexibility provisions and their cost savings will be less than what is generally anticipated and the pattern of investment less driven by abatement costs

research on the development of main policy instruments for improving building energy efficiency policy instrument is the key to drive improving energy efficiency in building sectors this paper presents the current development of bee policy instruments by examining their practices in seven selected countries and regions these policy instruments are classified into three groups the mandatory administration instrument the economic incentive instrument and the voluntary scheme instrument the developments of the three types of instruments are analyzed among the selected countries and regions from the perspectives of the number of policy instruments developed the development trend and the experiences gained in developing these instruments the study shows that different countries have made good progress in achieving better building energy efficiency through adopting different type of policy instruments the research reveals various experiences gained in the process of developing and implementing bee policy instruments from various countries

valuation of ecosystem goods and services part 2 implications of unpredictable novel change abstract this is the second part of a two part paper which offers a new approach to the valuation of ecosystem goods and services in the first part a simple pre industrial model was introduced to show how the interdependencies between the three subsystems society economy and nature influence values and how values change over time in this second part the assumption of perfect foresight is dropped i argue that due to novelty and complexity ex ante unpredictable change occurs within the three subsystems society economy and nature again the simple pre industrial model which was introduced in part 1 serves as a simple paradigm to show how unpredictable novel change limits the possibility to derive accurate estimates of values

intra and extra union flexibility in meeting the european union s emission reduction targets the eu has proposed four flexibility mechanisms for the regulation of greenhouse gas emissions in the period 2013 2020 1 the emissions trade scheme ets a permit market between selected companies 2 trade in non ets allotments between member states 3 the clean development mechanism cdm to purchase offsets in developing countries and 4 trade in cdm warrants between member states this paper shows that aggregate abatement costs fall as flexibility increases however limited flexibility creates rents so that increasing flexibility raises costs in some member states costs are reduced more by the cdm than by non ets trade the cdm warrants market reduces costs by a small amount only market power is a real issue however the warrants market is obsolete in case there is non ets trade the cdm leads to price convergence between the ets and non ets market there would be one price for carbon in the european union if the proposed limits on cdm access are relaxed slightly

a real option based model for promoting sustainable energy projects under the clean development mechanism abstract the clean development mechanism cdm provides a way of assisting sustainable development in developing countries for developed countries to reduce greenhouse gas ghg emissions despite its intended benefits the primary cdm market decreased from us 5 8 billion in 2006 to us 1 5 billion in 2010 one of the primary reasons for the reduction of market size is that developed countries as investors have a high level of risks caused by the volatility of the market price for certified emission reductions cers another issue to be resolved is that developing countries as host countries cannot claim any right to the cers produced on their own land this paper presents a real option based model for both parties developed and developing countries to have their fair share of profits and risks by controlling the uncertainty associated with the future value of cers a case study illustrated that the proposed model can effectively attract investors to cdm projects leading to mitigation of climate change

ecological well being performance growth in china 1994 2014 from perspectives of industrial structure green adjustment and green total factor productivity abstract industrial structure green adjustment isga and green total factor productivity gtfp deriving from development processes for green goals recently attracted great attention as two ways to achieve ecological well being performance ewp growth which is one of the main green development goals that humanity should pursue and which affects the efficiency improvement of transforming ecological consumption into human well being in this paper the effects of isga and gtfp on ewp growth are empirically tested in a dynamic panel model of spatial econometrics using statistics from 30 provinces of china in the 1994 2014 period in particular the indicator system of isga is firstly constructed based on the theories of ewp and three dimensional industrial ecological footprint 3dief the results indicate that spatial spillovers are important factors in the effects the main driving force for ewp growth in provinces of china had gradually shifted from isga to gtfp and gtfp is essential for structural bonuses from isga to take effect in addition a provincial government needs to target reference objects from not only other provinces in the same economic zone s yardstick competition but also isga and gtfp situations in geographically close or economically similar provinces in addition the adverse ewp effects of isga can be mitigated by gtfp increase or a combination of gtfp and isga for provinces in all stages of isga in general improving gtfp will be the main driving force for china s provincial ewp growth and the main venue through which the adverse effects of improper isga can be mitigated the present study contributes to explore the ewp growth effect of isga and gtfp can at least provide a valuable guidance and in depth understanding to researchers operators and policy makers who wish to improve human well being in an ecologically efficient way as well as for the follow up studies

analyzing the kyoto protocol under the marrakesh accords economic efficiency and environmental effectiveness abstract this article evaluates the environmental effectiveness and economic implications of the kyoto protocol kp after the bonn agreement and the marrakesh accords we will break it down into several components that correspond with major steps in the international process pre cop 6 version of the kp with unrestricted international emissions trading but without sinks withdrawal of the usa and decisions on sinks in bonn and marrakesh the marrakesh accords bring annex i emissions in 2010 without the usa at 0 5 under base year levels this corresponds to nearly 2 above the 1990 levels the us withdrawal has by far the greatest impact in reducing the environmental effectiveness of the kp whereas the impact of the decision on sinks is comparatively small the us withdrawal also substantially reduces the permit demand and permit prices will drop dramatically hot air becomes increasingly dominant and may threaten the viability of the kyoto mechanisms km especially in lower baseline business as usual bau scenarios therefore banking of hot air is of absolute importance to improve the environmental effectiveness of the protocol at moderately higher costs while enhancing the development of a viable emission trading market a strategy of curtailing and banking permit supply is also in the interest of the dominant seller russia

encouraging the implementation of small renewable electricity cdm projects an economic analysis of different options abstract apart from contributing to the mitigation of ghg emissions the deployment of renewable electricity clean development mechanism projects re cdm may provide substantial local economic social and environmental sustainability benefits to host countries however in spite of these advantages a wide array of barriers prevents the realisation of these projects they compete with other cdm options which lead to cheaper ghg emissions reductions but which do not provide as much opportunities for sustainable development in developing countries taking into account that in contrast to ghg benefits sustainability benefits are not valued in the market place and that article 12 of the kyoto protocol envisages two objectives for the cdm cost effective emissions reductions and contribution to sustainability this market mechanism might be leading to a market failure in re cdm projects this paper explores the different barriers affecting the implementation of re cdm projects and proposes and analyses several policies and measures that could be implemented to encourage their deployment by tackling those obstacles

policy options to improve the effectiveness of the eu emissions trading system a multi criteria analysis abstract this paper considers several policy options which have been proposed to improve the functioning of the ets these options require an intervention either on the ets cap 30 target set aside carbon central bank long term target or on the carbon price european and national price floor we analyse the impact of each policy on the ets carbon price and emissions a multi criteria evaluation method is applied to compare the policy options against a plurality of environmental economic and procedural criteria we find that the final ranking depends on the goals to be achieved i e the relative weights attributed to the criteria when policymakers want mainly to support the carbon price both in the short and long run while improving ets flexibility and harmonization the ccb and the eu price floor are respectively ranked as first and second best options as the preference for environmental and implementation goals gradually increases the position of the eu price floor and ccb options tend to invert the 30 target should be adopted when reducing emissions is the priority goal while a national price floor is the worst option in this case nevertheless self interested states looking for a relatively quick feasible solution may find it optimal

the market for tradable ghg permits under the kyoto protocol a survey of model studies abstract this paper gathers results from 25 models of the market for tradable greenhouse gas ghg emission permits under the kyoto protocol due to diverging projections of emissions growth and different modeling approaches the model results differ substantially the average market volume is approximately 17 and 33 billion usd under global trading and annex b trading respectively including non carbon ghg lowers compliance costs and permit prices in the absence of the us permit demand roughly equals hot air from the former soviet union these countries can increase their revenues from selling permits by restricting supply which raises the permit price

exploring the bargaining space within international climate negotiations based on political economic and environmental considerations abstract this study provides a conceptual framework for exploring the bargaining space within international climate negotiations based on important economic political and environmental considerations based on it we analyse combinations of the proposed emission reduction ranges for annex i countries as a group 25 40 below 1990 levels and non annex i as a group 15 30 below baseline by 2020 to limit global warming to 2 c we use results of the fair model with costs estimates based on two energy system models we conclude that the range of targets that comply with a set of criteria for economic political and environmental considerations is smaller than that by environmental considerations alone more specifically we find that according to our criteria a 30 annex i reduction target below 1990 levels combined with a 20 non annex i reduction target below baseline emission levels i e 20 to 30 above 2005 levels is the only combination of targets fulfilling all our criteria for both energy system models otherwise reaching the 2 c target becomes less likely technically infeasible or non annex i abatement costs are likely to exceed those of annex i a result which we consider less plausible from a political viewpoint in our conceptual framework

introduction to the stability of rational expectations equilibrium abstract this paper surveys the literature which examines the stability of the expectations that agents are assumed to have in a rational expectations equilibrium ree this issue is more complex than the usual statistical estimation problem because the relationship between observable variables and payoff relevant variables is endogenous one approach taken in the literature yields convergence to a ree but requires agents to have extensive knowledge about the structure and dynamics of the model that prevails while they learn a second approach does not assume that agents have correctly specified likelihood functions and finds that ree may not be stable

the effect of social capital on group loan repayment evidence from field experiments an important question to microfinance is the relevance of existing social capital in target communities to the performance of group lending this research presents evidence from field experiments in south africa and armenia in which subjects participate in trust and microfinance games we present evidence that personal trust between group members and social homogeneity are more important to group loan repayment than general societal trust or acquaintanceship between members we also find some evidence of reciprocity those who have been helped by other group members in the past are more likely to contribute in the future during the past decade exploring the role that social capital plays in economic behaviour has emerged as one of the most fascinating and fertile areas of economic research although precise definitions of social capital are notoriously difficult to pin down one of the early pioneers of the concept coleman 1988 defines social capital as social structure that facilitates certain actions of actors within the structure in his definition coleman specifically highlights the roles of mutual obligation expectations and trustworthiness social norms social sanctions and the transmission of information important studies in both developed and developing countries have analysed the impact of social capital in economic relationships putnam s celebrated work making democracy work civic traditions in modern italy 1993 and bowling alone america s declining social capital 1995 brought attention to the role that social capital plays in the development of the modern state udry s ground breaking 1994 work in nigeria illustrated how the social capital existing in traditional societies may allow for more efficient credit contracts than in developed economies with weaker social

the monetary compensation mechanism an alternative to the clean development mechanism abstract one of the key challenges in resolving global warming problem is how to induce developing countries to reduce emissions the cdm was proposed in the kyoto protocol as a means of obtaining the cooperation of developing countries in controlling greenhouse gases but it has some intrinsic problems and has generated considerable controversy this paper presents an alternative mechanism the monetary compensation mechanism mcm i study the characteristics of this mechanism with a dynamic principal agent model by solving the model numerically i obtain the optimal solution for a scenario based on 1990 data the monetary compensation rate under the mcm is comparable to the price of cers in the cdm but the mcm has several advantages over the cdm

cross asset speculation in stock markets in practice heterogeneously informed speculators combine private information about multiple stocks with information in prices taking into account how their trades influence the inferences of other speculators via prices we show how this speculation causes prices to be more correlated than asset fundamentals raising price volatility the covariance structure of asset fundamentals drives that of prices while the covariance structure of liquidity trade drives that of order flows we characterize how speculator profits vary with the distributions of information and liquidity trade across assets and speculators and relate the cross asset factor structure of order flows to that of returns

the clean development mechanism in a world carbon market this paper discusses the role of the clean development mechanism cdm on the market for carbon quotas and countries commitments to reduce their carbon emission levels we show that the cdm contributes to an efficient funding of clean technology investments in least developed countries however the cdm is not neutral on the global level of carbon emissions as it entices countries to raise their emission caps the cdm may also make inappropriate the inclusion of any country that takes no emission abatement commitment it can even make inefficient a country s decision to commit to an emission target

learning by doing and learning from others human capital and technical change in agriculture household level panel data from a nationally representative sample of rural indian households describing the adoption and profitability of high yielding seed varieties hyvs associated with the green revolution are used to test the implications of a model incorporating learning by doing and learning spillovers the estimates indicate that i imperfect knowledge about the management of the new seeds was a significant barrier to adoption ii this barrier diminished as farmer experience with the new technologies increased iii own experience and neighbors experience with hyvs significantly increased hyv profitability and iv farmers do not fully incorporate the village returns to learning in making adoption decisions

markets for energy efficiency exploring the implications of an eu wide tradable white certificate scheme recent developments in european energy policy reveal an increasing interest in implementing the so called tradable white certificate twc schemes to improve energy efficiency based on three evaluation criteria cost effectiveness environmental effectiveness and distributional equity this paper analyses the implications of implementing a european wide twc scheme targeting the household and commercial sectors using a bottom up model quantitative results show significant cost effective potentials for improvements ca 1400 twh in cumulative energy savings by 2020 with the household sector gas and space heating representing most of the twc supply in terms of eligible sector fuel and energy service demand respectively if a single market price of negative externalities is considered a societal costeffective potential of energy savings above 30 compared to the baseline is observed in environmental terms the resulting greenhouse gas emission reductions are around 200mt co2 eq by 2010 representing nearly 60 of the eu kyoto target from the qualitative perspective several embedded ancillary benefits are identified e g employment generation improved comfort level reduced fuel poverty security of energy supply whereas an eu wide twc increases liquidity and reduces the risks ofmarket power autarky compliance strategies may be expected in order to capture co benefits nationally cross subsidies could occur due to investment recovery mechanisms and there is a risk that effects may be regressive for low income households assumptions undertaken by the modelling approach strongly indicate that high effectiveness of other policy instruments is needed for an eu wide twc scheme to be cost effective less

transnational markets for sustainable development governance the case of redd summary transnational sustainable development that is sustainable development policy initiatives involving actors in multiple countries often involves donor sponsorship of sustainable development projects similar to matching markets like venture capital employment searches or college admissions these transaction systems also known as matching markets can be seen in a variety of phenomena in transnational development governance including private aid public private sustainable development projects and transnational polycentric governance initiatives in this paper we utilize the matching market framework to develop a new approach to addressing an important question in development studies how do donors understood as donor agencies funds and foundations and firms choose which projects to support beginning with the observation that matching markets in sustainable development governance are heavily constrained by transaction costs in the absence of formal institutions that lower costs of searching monitoring and communicating with potential partners we hypothesize that both donors and project participants are motivated to utilize strategies to lower transaction costs of making connections which results in selection of projects based on the presence of transnational brokers or familiar partners or as part of a strategy of spatial specialization conceptualizing the choices made in this matching market as an affiliation network connecting donors to sponsored projects we utilize exponential random graph models of 91 funders support of 195 reducing emissions from deforestation redd and sustainable forest management pilot projects undertaken between 1989 and june 2012 to test the effects of transaction costs on donors choices of projects to sponsor we find that brokerage prior collaboration with the donor in question and spatial specialization all contribute to the ability of project proponents to attract funder support often outperforming relevant project characteristics such as carbon density and accessibility these findings suggest tensions between local scale project implementation and the transnational search for resource support observed qualitatively in the development studies literature can have significant effects on the overall structure of transnational collaboration on sustainable development

cdm potential of spv pumps in india so far the cumulative number of renewable energy systems such as solar photovoltaic spv irrigation pumps in the agriculture sector in india is far below their theoretical potential despite government subsidy programmes one of the major barriers are the high costs of investments in these systems the clean development mechanism cdm provides industrialized countries with an incentive to invest in emission reduction projects in developing countries to achieve a reduction in co2 emissions at lowest cost that also promotes sustainable development in the host country solar photovoltaic spv irrigation pumps could be of interest under the cdm because they directly displace greenhouse gas emissions while contributing to sustainable rural development however there is only one spv project under the cdm so far

can measures of well being and progress help societies to achieve sustainable development the search for sustainability and the growing apprehension with environmental degradation are increasingly attracting researchers from around the world and bringing the need for developing indicators that include the economy society and environment this study compares the emergy indices with 10 known indicators taken from the literature gross domestic product gross domestic product per capita human development index happiness index life expectancy democracy index ecological footprint surplus biocapacity wellbeing index and environmental sustainability index 2002 correlations are made using the spearman coefficients to verify correlations between the fractions of renewable natural resources non renewable natural resources resources from the economy and the emergy indices with the known indicators and indexes emerged with the literature indicators the analysis of the results is made by illustrative matrices and graphs the results suggest that the combination of socio economic and biophysical indicators is essential to provide a better understanding of the limits of economic growth and while ensuring sustainable societal well being

planning and financial literacy how do women fare many older us households have done little or no planning for retirement and there is a substantial population that seems to undersave for retirement of particular concern is the relative position of older women who are more vulnerable to old age poverty due to their longer longevity this paper uses data from a special module we devised on planning and financial literacy in the 2004 health and retirement study it shows that women display much lower levels of financial literacy than the older population as a whole in addition women who are less financially literate are also less likely to plan for retirement and be successful planners these findings have important implications for policy and for programs aimed at fostering financial security at older ages

do changes in pension incentives affect retirement a longitudinal study of subjective retirement expectations this paper investigates the responsiveness of individuals retirement decisions to forward looking measures of pension accumulations in contrast to previous research we use within person variation in retirement incentives and are able to control for unobserved heterogeneity in tastes for retirement by studying a panel of subjective retirement expectations we confirm that individuals do respond as expected to pension incentives even when we control for individual fixed effects however the magnitude of these responses differs when estimated from models based on within person versus cross sectional variation the inclusion of fixed effects reduces the response by about half

clean development investments an incentive compatible cge modeling framework the clean development mechanism established under the kyoto protocol allows industrialized annex i countries to offset part of their domestic emissions by investing in emissions reduction projects in developing non annex i countries computable general equilibrium analysis of the clean development mechanism s impacts so far mimics the clean development mechanism as a sector emissions trading scheme thereby overstating its potential to save climate change mitigation costs this study develops a novel approach that represents the clean development mechanism more realistically by compensating clean development mechanism implementing sectors for additional abatement cost and by endogenizing clean development mechanism credits as a function of investment compared with previous representations the proposed approach is more consistent in its incentive structure and investment characteristics at the sector level an empirical application of the new methodology demonstrates that the economy wide cost savings from the clean development mechanism tend to be lower than suggested by conventional modeling approaches while clean development mechanism implementing sectors do not lose in output

decarbonizing europe s power sector by 2050 analyzing the economic implications of alternative decarbonization pathways abstract the european union aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 95 in 2050 compared to 1990 levels the transition towards a low carbon economy implies the almost complete decarbonization of europe s power sector which could be achieved along various pathways in this paper we evaluate the economic implications of alternative energy policies for europe s power sector by applying a linear dynamic electricity system optimization model in over 36 scenarios we find that the costs of decarbonizing europe s power sector by 2050 vary between 139 and 633 bn 2010 which corresponds to an increase of between 11 and 44 compared to the total system costs when no co2 reduction targets are implemented in line with economic theory the decarbonization of europe s power sector is achieved at minimal costs under a stand alone co2 reduction target which ensures competition between all low carbon technologies if however renewable energies are exempted from competition via supplementary renewable energy res e targets or if investments in new nuclear and ccs power plants are politically restricted the costs of decarbonization significantly rise moreover we find that the excess costs of supplementary res e targets depend on the acceptance of alternative low carbon technologies for example given a complete nuclear phase out in europe by 2050 and politically implemented restrictions on the application of ccs to conventional power plants supplementary res e targets are redundant while in such a scenario the overall costs of decarbonization are comparatively high the excess costs of supplementary res e targets are close to zero

social interaction and stock market participation we propose that stock market participation is influenced by social interaction in our model any given social investor finds the market more attractive when more of his peers participate we test this theory using data from the health and retirement study and find that social households those who interact with their neighbors or attend church are substantially more likely to invest in the market than non social households controlling for wealth race education and risk tolerance moreover consistent with a peer effects story the impact of sociability is stronger in states where stock market participation rates are higher

emissions pricing spillovers and public investment in environmentally friendly technologies in a second best world of below optimal pollution pricing the public return to r d may be greater than under pigouvian pricing due to excess benefits of increasing abatement or it may be lower since private actors lack the incentives to take full advantage of the new cleaner technologies this paper uses a simple model to demonstrate the interaction between environmental policies r d externalities and the social return to innovation the results indicate that strong public support for innovation in abatement technologies is only justified if at least a moderate emissions policy is in place and spillover effects are significant if emissions policy can adjust to cost changes the public role may be enhanced since private actors will prefer to avoid ratcheting social gains from innovation increase only if innovation can allow emissions to be more fully priced technology policy is more effective with fuller emissions pricing and is better viewed as a complement to than a substitute for mitigation policy

tradable permits and unrealized gains from trade with the advent of tradable permit programs for bad outputs e g so2 emissions concerns arose over whether the theoretical gains from trade would be realized we will employ a methodology that calculates the potential gains accruing to coal fired electric power plants from implementing a tradable permit program the magnitude of the potential gains in a plant s kilowatt hour output from a tradable permit program relative to its observed production provides insights into the existence of intertemporal allocative inefficiencies and spatial allocative inefficiencies after the implementation of a tradable permit program

the effects of financial education in the workplace evidence from a survey of households abstract we use a novel household survey to investigate the effects of employer based financial education on personal saving we explore cross sectional relations between the availability of employer based financial education and various measures of asset accumulation and we interpret these patterns in light of various potentially confounding factors our findings favor the hypothesis that employer based financial education stimulates saving both in general and for retirement

estimating welfare aspects of changes in energy prices from preference heterogeneity abstract the european union s energy and climate policy package is expected to cause an increase in end user prices of electricity and fuels this paper assesses the distributional effects of these price increases in cyprus by specifying and estimating a consumer demand system with price heterogeneity between households this novel method allows obtaining robust parameter estimates even when household expenditure surveys are limited as is the case in many european countries the empirical analysis is conducted both conditional on energy related household characteristics and unconditionally we then use the estimated demand system to conduct welfare analysis we find that the rise in energy prices results in welfare losses of eur 101 per household in 2009 prices in year 2020 or a nationwide welfare loss of more than eur 2009 33 million price increases will be regressive and will affect small and urban households more strongly than the rest of the population furthermore we find that the largest proportion of welfare loss is due to loss of household s income purchasing power caused by higher energy prices while the changes in relative prices induce deadweight loss which is a small part of welfare loss because of the limited substitutability of energy with other goods

co2 abatement from renewables in the german electricity sector does a co2 price help abstract the overlapping impact of the emission trading system ets and renewable energy re deployment targets creates a classic case of interaction effects whereas the price interaction is widely recognized and has been thoroughly discussed the effect of an overlapping instrument on the abatement attributable to an instrument has gained little attention this paper estimates the actual reduction in demand for european union allowances that has occurred due to re deployment focusing on the german electricity sector for the five years 2006 through 2010 based on a unit commitment model we estimate that co 2 emissions from the german electricity sector are reduced by 35 to 60 mtons or 10 to 18 of what estimated emissions would have been without any re policy but with the co 2 price remaining in place at the observed level furthermore we find that the abatement attributable to re injections is greater in the presence of an allowance price than otherwise the same holds for the ets effect in presence of re injection this interaction effect is consistently positive for the german electricity system at least for the considered years and on the order of 0 5 to 1 5 of emissions

wind farm investment risks under uncertain cdm benefit in china abstract china has set an ambitious target to increase its wind power capacity by 35 gw from 2007 to 2020 the country s hunger for clean power provides great opportunities for wind energy investors however risks from china s uncertain electricity market regulation and an uncertain energy policy framework mainly due to uncertain clean development mechanism cdm benefits prevent foreign investors from investing in china s wind energy the objectives of this paper are to 1 quantify wind energy investment risk premiums in an uncertain international energy policy context and 2 evaluate the impact of uncertain cdm benefits on the net present values of wind power projects with four scenarios this study simulates possible prices of certified emissions reductions cers from wind power projects project net present values npvs have been calculated the project risk premiums are drawn from different and uncertain cer prices our key findings show that uncertain cdm benefits will significantly affect the project npvs this paper concludes that the chinese government needs revising its tariff incentives most likely by introducing fixed feed in tariffs fits and re examining its cdm granting policy and its wind project tax rates to facilitate wind power development and enable china to achieve its wind energy target

improving the attractiveness of cdm projects through allowing and incorporating options abstract the paper puts forward a proposal that within clean development mechanism cdm projects investors be allowed to benefit from options this will require a cdm rule change through the presence of options the downside risk resulting from low carbon prices and or low achieved emission reductions on projects can be limited while any upside resulting from high carbon prices and or high achieved emission reductions can be taken advantage of it is demonstrated that the presence of options improves the financial attractiveness of cdm projects and this is at no detriment to any stakeholder the flow on from the proposal is that more cdm projects should be realisable if options are available and this in turn will lead to reduced global emissions and improved sustainability the proposal is supported by the necessary theory and is demonstrated on two registered cdm projects one on hydropower and one on wind power

modeling the price dynamics of co2 emission allowances abstract in this paper we analyze the short term spot price behavior of carbon dioxide co 2 emission allowances of the new eu wide co 2 emissions trading system eu ets after reviewing the stylized facts of this new class of assets we investigate several approaches for modeling the returns of emission allowances due to different phases of price and volatility behavior in the returns we suggest the use of markov switching and ar garch models for stochastic modeling we examine the approaches by conducting an in sample and out of sample forecasting analysis and by comparing the results to alternative approaches our findings strongly support the adequacy of the models capturing characteristics like skewness excess kurtosis and in particular different phases of volatility behavior in the returns

information immobility and the home bias puzzle many argue that home bias arises because home investors can predict home asset payoffs more accurately than foreigners can but why does global information access not eliminate this asymmetry we model investors endowed with a small home information advantage who choose what information to learn before they invest surprisingly even when home investors can learn what foreigners know they choose not to investors profit more from knowing information others do not know learning amplifies information asymmetry the model matches patterns of local and industry bias foreign investments portfolio outperformance and asset prices finally we propose new avenues for empirical research

rethinking and reshaping the climate policy literature review and proposed guidelines abstract addressing climate change represents a governing the climate commons on a global scale the tragedy of the commons might better be described as the failure of governing the commons hardin s solutions were centralized government and private property which have long been criticized as oversimplified however governing the unprecedented climate commons there is only a global federalism of climate policy the kyoto protocol the kyoto cannot keep atmospheric co2 level below 450 ppm rising 2 c some key evidences of the kyoto failures are identified the kyoto failures do not indicate that the kyoto is a wrong tool of centralized government instead the kyoto failures are derived from the fact that the only centralized government cannot effectively govern the commons which have been proven by the efforts of governing the commons last four decades here we propose a wide diversity of governance systems for climate common to addressing global warming the multi level and multi scale governing system includes but is not limited to i starting at home ii emphasizing the local approach iii efforts of global level focusing these top emitters iv improved information sharing v privatizing the property of climate to avoid free riders vi combination mitigation with adaptive vii improved ecology services to expand carbon sinks we argue that the kyoto failures indicate again that reliance on a single solution may result in more of a problem than a solution in governing the common therefore continuing to wait for another global federalism of climate policy may lead to missing the chance to make significant mitigations and adaptations in time to battling the climate change post 2012 multi level and multi scale approaches could make a difference in collective action for governing the climate commons to meet climate challenge

analyzing cost of grid connection of renewable energy development in china abstract renewable energy is believed to be the central issue in sustainable development literatures on renewables costs are rather sparse especially on costs of integration and system balancing the objective of this paper is to fill the research gap by providing an assessment for the cost of china s grid connected renewable energy development and analyze its sharing between different stakeholders due to china s pricing mechanism of renewable energy and their cost decreasing potential the pricing model of feed in tariff and dynamic technological learning processes are employed in the estimation of purchasing cost the positive bias is overcome by considering china s energy saving dispatching policy the results suggest that purchasing cost would be 32 57 40 80 billion yuan over 2012 2020 and peak in 2017 grid integration costs which further involve costs of grid infrastructure and system balancing are also investigated we find that grid infrastructure will cost 27 88 billion yuan by 2015 and soar to 45 32 billion by 2020 while system balancing will cost 31 49 billion yuan in 2015 and 63 97 billion yuan in 2020 among which a substantial part over 60 comes from electricity loss in energy transfer the different parts of these costs are underwritten by disparate participants due to china s renewable energy policies and its institutional arrangement purchasing cost is shared by power consumers through res the cost of grid infrastructure is mainly covered by grid enterprises and there is no mechanism to specify how to share the cost electricity loss during system balancing which might become a major obstacle for system balancing

intra union flexibility of non ets emission reduction obligations in the european union the eu proposal on greenhouse gas emission reduction has 28 targets for 2020 an eu wide one for co2 emissions covered by the european trading system ets and one target for non ets emissions per member state implementation is more expensive than needed i consider three alternative proposals to reduce costs in the irish proposal member states can purchase ets permits to offset excess non ets emissions in the polish proposal member states can sell excess non ets emissions in the ets in the swedish proposal member states can trade their non ets allocations i compare these alternatives to the default policy no flexibility outside the ets and the cost effective solution full flexibility i calibrate a simple model to the results of the eu impact assessment which did not disclose all details and made odd assumptions the non ets allocation exceeds the projected emissions for three member states the alternative flexibility mechanisms would be used to only a limited extent but would cut the costs of meeting the target the swedish and polish proposals come closest to the cost effective solution because of the hot air the irish proposal performs best if there are negative surprises in either abatement costs or emissions the swedish proposal will become policy

unilateral regulation of bilateral trade in greenhouse gas emission permits this paper considers the coordination of domestic markets for tradable emission permits where countries determine their own emission reduction targets using a two country model linking such schemes is beneficial to both countries but may cause the exporting country to decrease its emission reduction target and export more permits this in turn would not only reduce the costs for both countries as less emissions have to be reduced but it also lowers the environmental benefits of the importing country one price instrument tariff and two quantity instruments discount quota to prevent the exporting country from issuing more permits are examined each instrument restricts trade and alters the terms of trade for the two countries the importing country and regulator prefers an import tariff and an import quota to a carbon discount if the exporting country releases additional permits the importing country should not try to keep total emissions constant as that would be ineffective and maybe even counterproductive instead the importing country should aim to keep the total import constant this would impose costs on the exporting country that are independent of the policy instrument an import quota would be the cheapest option for the importing country an import quota would also stress the idea of supplementary of the flexible mechanism as it increases the share of emissions reduced domestically compliance and liability issues constrain the market further however both the importing and the exporting country would prefer that the permit seller is liable in case of non compliance as sellers liability would less constrain the market

a cost benefit analysis of the eu 20 20 2020 package the european commission did not publish a cost benefit analysis for its 2020 climate package this paper fills that gap comparing the marginal costs and benefits of greenhouse gas emission reduction the uncertainty about the marginal costs of climate change is large and skewed and estimates partly reflect ethical choices e g the discount rate the 2010 carbon price in the eu emissions trading system can readily be justified by a cost benefit analysis emission reduction is not expensive provided that policy is well designed a condition not met by planned eu policy it is probably twice as expensive as needed costing one in ten years of economic growth the eu targets for 2020 are unlikely to meet the benefit cost test for a standard discount rate 3 pure rate of time preference the benefit cost ratio is rather poor 1 30 so that benefits need to be very much higher or costs very much lower than typically assumed to justify the 2020 targets only a very low discount rate 0 prtp would justify the 20 emission reduction target for 2020

carbon mitigation in the electric power sector under cap and trade and renewables policies in europe co2 emissions from the electric power sector and energy intensive industries are capped under a cap and trade system i e the eu ets when other indirect measures are taken to impact emissions in a specific sector under the cap such as a push for renewables in the electric power sector this has implications on the overall allowance price and on co2 emissions both from this specific sector and the other sectors under the cap the central contribution of this paper is the derivation of impact curves which describe these interactions i e the impact on allowance price and the shift of emissions across sectors from a set of detailed simulations of the electric power system operation a so called emission plane is obtained from which impact curves can be derived focus is on interactions between co2 abatement through fuel switching and measures affecting the residual electricity demand such as deployment of renewables in the electric power sector as well as on interactions with other sectors both in a short term framework a case study for central western europe is presented the analysis reveals a substantial impact of renewables on co2 emissions and hence on emissions shifts across sectors and or on the co2 price

prices versus quantities with incomplete enforcement abstract i study whether incomplete enforcement of a regulation has any impact on the choice between price e g taxes and quantity e g tradeable quotas instruments results indicate that a second best design accounting for incomplete enforcement can be implemented equally well with either instrument as long as the benefit and cost curves are known with certainty if these curves are uncertain to the regulator however the quantity instrument performs relatively better than the price instrument the reason is that the effective amount of control under the quantity instrument is no longer fixed which makes this instrument come closer to a non linear instrument

costs of certified emission reductions under the clean development mechanism of the kyoto protocol abstract this paper examines the cost structure of certified emission reductions cers through various types of projects under the clean development mechanism cdm of the kyoto protocol using the cdm project data the costs of cers and their variation across technology and over time and space are estimated by applying alternative functional forms and specifications results show that the average cost of cers decreases with the project scale and duration scale and duration effects significantly vary across project types and there is an upward trend in costs the results also show that the distribution of the projects in the cdm portfolio or a given location does not strictly follow the relative cost structure nor does the distribution of the cdm projects in different host countries follow the principle of comparative advantage more than 84 of the cdm portfolio consists of various energy projects with substantially higher costs of cers than afforestation and reforestation industrial and landfill gas reduction and methane avoidance projects which are only 12 of all projects while per unit cost of abatement plays an important role in the bottom up and top down models to evaluate emission reduction potential and analyze policy alternatives the findings contradict the presumption of such models that project investors seek out low cost opportunities at the aggregate level the cost of cer by the projects in asia and europe is similar but higher than those hosted in africa americas and oceania yet more than 83 of the projects in the cdm portfolio are located in asia more than 69 of the projects are in china and india alone china appears to have a comparative advantage i e lowest opportunity cost in energy efficiency projects while india has a comparative advantage in hydro power projects and brazil has a comparative advantage in wind power projects in contrast energy efficiency category accounts for only 8 of the cdm projects in china hydro power accounts for 12 of the projects in india and wind power accounts for 18 of the projects in brazil the results provide a basis for evaluating the incentives that the mechanism offers as a cost effective policy instrument that balances greenhouse gas mitigation across sectors and regions while fulfilling the objective of the convention

eu climate change policy 2013 2020 using the clean development mechanism more effectively in the non eu ets sector abstract under european union proposals for co 2 emission reduction between 2013 and 2020 a member state can transfer to another member state the right to use its unused clean development mechanism cdm credits the paper addresses three issues in relation to these cdm warrants cdm w first how should the member state treat the cdm w in making decisions concerning emission reduction the price of the property right is an important signal for a member state in deciding the level of domestic abatement compared to trading in cdm w s in other words a shadow price for cdm w s should be used in formulating the emission strategy in order to determine whether or not a member state is a buyer or seller of cdm w s second what mechanism should be used to facilitate the exchange of cdm w s the preferred mechanism depends on the market size over which there appears to be some ambiguity market intermediaries such as over the counter trades and exchanges are preferred if market size is small auctions if the market size is large third who should realise the value of cdm w s the state existing polluters etc the value of cdm w s should accrue to the state

exploring poverty traps and social exclusion in south africa using qualitative and quantitative data abstract recent theoretical work hypothesises that a polarised society like south africa will suffer a legacy of ineffective social capital and blocked pathways of upward mobility that leaves large numbers of people trapped in poverty to explore these ideas this paper employs a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods novel econometric analysis of asset dynamics over the 1993 98 period identifies a dynamic asset poverty threshold that signals that large numbers of south africans are indeed trapped without a pathway out of poverty qualitative analysis of this period and the period 1998 2001 more deeply examines patterns of mobility and confirms the continuation of this pattern of limited upward mobility and a low level poverty trap in addition the qualitative data permit a closer look at the specific role played by social relationships while finding ample evidence of active social capital and networks these are more helpful for non poor households for the poor social capital at best helps sta

barriers to formal saving micro and macroeconomic effects this paper examines different barriers to formal saving considering various interventions and their possible effects at microeconomic and macroeconomic levels it presents a comprehensive review of the literature based on a detailed classification of the barriers associated with supply side factors related to access to financial products and demand side barriers related to the use and frequency of use of those products the paper concludes that this classification and analysis contributes to a fuller understanding of the question of financial inclusion and how to achieve it

the eu 20 20 2020 targets an overview of the emf22 assessment three computable general equilibrium models are used to estimate the economic implications of a stylized version of eu climate policy if implemented at the lowest possible cost the 20 emissions reduction would lead to a welfare loss of 0 5 2 0 by 2020 second best policies increase costs a policy with two carbon prices one for the ets one for the non ets could increase costs by up to 50 a policy with 28 carbon prices one for the ets one each for each member state could increase costs by another 40 the renewables standard could raise the costs of emissions reduction by 90 overall the inefficiencies in policy lead to a cost that is 100 125 too high the models differ greatly in the detail of their results the ets non ets split may have a negligible impact on welfare while the renewables standard may even improve welfare the models agree however that the distortions introduced by total eu package imply a substantial welfare loss over and above the costs needed to meet the climate target the marginal total and excess costs reported here are notably higher than those in the impact assessment of the european commission

analysis of the eu policy package on climate change and renewables abstract in 2009 the eu decided to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at least by 20 in 2020 compared to 1990 and to supply 20 of energy needs by 2020 from renewable energy sources this paper uses an energy model coupled with a non co 2 greenhouse gas model to assess the range of policy options that were debated to meet both targets policy options include trading of renewable targets carbon trading in power plants and industry and the use of the clean development mechanism to improve cost efficiency the models also examined fairness by analysing the distribution of emission reduction in the non emission trading sector the distribution of co 2 allowances in the emission trading sector and the reallocation of renewable targets across member states the overall costs of meeting both targets range from 0 4 to 0 6 of gdp in 2020 for the eu as a whole the redistribution mechanisms employed significantly improve fairness compared to a cost effective solution

the fundamentals of the future international emissions trading system the study aims to analyze the sectoral marginal abatements cost curves for a number of eu countries as well as to examine the efficiency aspects and the economic impacts for the major sectors of the ets under different carbon market configurations in 2010 and 2020 to produce a consistent and realistic assessment we employ sources such as ghg national inventories naps and poles world energy model to constitute the sectoral base year and 2010 2020 emission levels in different countries and regions we then use the market analysis tool aspen which enables to derive supply and demand from sectoral maccs produced with the poles model and to evaluate the economic impacts on the carbon market participants the paper shows that in compliance with the kyoto targets the benefits of an enlarged carbon market are significant since more than 50 of the abatement in the short term have to be achieved in ets sectors which may indeed use cdm or ji credits a second major conclusion is that in 2020 the new flexibility margins provided by the adjustment of investments in new capacities compensate for the increase in pressure towards stronger emission reductions this reduces the relative importance of the enlarged carbon market

white certificates for energy efficiency improvement with energy taxes a theoretical economic model in this paper we analyze interactions of two energy policy instruments namely a white certificates whc scheme as an innovative policy instrument for energy efficiency improvement and energy taxation these policy instruments differ in terms of objectives and final impacts on the price of electricity we examine the effect of these policy instruments in the electricity sector focusing on electricity producers and suppliers in a competitive market using microeconomic theory we identify synergies between market players and demonstrate the total effect on the electricity price when suppliers internalize the behaviour of producers in their decisions this model refers to an ideal market situation of full liberalization the cases we examine consist of electricity producers with and without a carbon tax electricity suppliers with and without an electricity tax and with whc obligations furthermore we present a parallel implementation of whc for electricity suppliers with carbon tax on electricity producers and an electricity tax with whc obligations to electricity suppliers we demonstrate differences in optimization behaviour of producers and suppliers based on a couple of cases of whc with carbon and electricity taxes various positive and negative effects of both schemes in terms of target achievement and efficiency are present which can lead to an added value of such schemes in the policy mix although uncertainties of outcomes are quite high a basic finding is that in a merit order several parameters can increase final electricity price after the implementation of different policies demand for electricity and electricity supply cost at a large scale and then follow the level of level of obligation for energy saving level of penalty and price of whc representing the marginal costs of energy saving projects the impact magnitude of parameters depends on the values chosen and on the initial position of suppliers i e if their actual behaviour deviates from full compliance with targets

self confidence and personal motivation the maintenance and enhancement of self esteem has always been identified as a fundamental human impulse philosophers writers educators and of course psychologists have all emphasized the crucial role played by self image in motivation affect and social interactions the aim of this chapter is to bring these concerns into the realm of economic analysis and show that this has important implications for how agents process information and make decisions conversely the tools of economic modelling can help shed light on a number of apparently irrational behaviours documented by psychologists

financial education and behavioral finance new insights into the role of information in financial decisions recent empirical evidence based on surveys and experimental activities within the fields of behavioral finance and financial education has offered economists new empirically based insights into how individuals use information in making financial decisions specifically the importance of information in financial decisions may be reduced or eliminated by psychological aspects of the individual such as a state of overconfidence that is individual or shared with a group or by the individual s limited ability to process complex and abundant information this paper aims to complement this emerging body of literature by studying how individuals perceive and process information when making financial decisions we review these contributions and suggest a number of broad guidelines that can provide a framework for future discussion of this topic within financial decision theory

carbon market risks and rewards firm perceptions of cdm investment decisions in brazil and india the carbon market experiences of brazil and india represent policy success stories under several criteria a careful evaluation however reveals challenges to market development that should be addressed in order to make the rollout of a post 2012 cdm more effective we conducted firm level interviews covering 82 cdm plants in the sugar and cement sectors in brazil and india focusing on how individual managers understood the potential benefits and risks of undertaking clean development mechanism cdm investments our results indicate that the cdm operates in a far more complex way in practice than that of simply adding a marginal increment to a project s internal rate of return our results indicate the following first although anticipated revenue played a central role in most managers decisions to pursue cdm investments there was no standard practice to account for financial benefits of cdm investments second some managers identified non financial reputational factors as their primary motivation for pursuing cdm projects and third under fluctuating regulatory regimes with real immediate costs and uncertain cdm revenue managers favored projects that often did not require carbon revenue to be viable the post 2012 cdm architecture can benefit from incorporating these insights and in particular reassess goals for strict additionality and mechanisms for achieving it

transaction costs institutional rigidities and the size of the clean development mechanism transaction costs and institutional rigidities will reduce the attractiveness of the kyoto protocol flexibility mechanisms compared to domestic greenhouse gas abatement options the clean development mechanism cdm in particular is likely to entail considerable costs of baseline development project registration verification and certification the activities implemented jointly pilot phase and the prototype carbon fund programme give indications about these costs there is evidence that projects with high implementation costs have high transaction costs as well moreover cdm projects have to be approved by host country institutions and so far only a small share of host countries has been able to set up these institutions several of the larger host countries intend to only approve projects if the market price is above a certain threshold some governments will also levy fees to finance costs of approval bodies we assess these issues using a quantitative model of the kyoto protocol permit market we conclude that while changes in demand from annex b countries remain the crucial factor the size of the cdm will depend to a significant degree on transaction costs and institutional barriers in host countries

the promotion of sustainable development in china through the optimization of a tax subsidy plan among hfc and power generation cdm projects abstract china is expected to reach record growth by 2020 in the energy sector by at least doubling its electricity generation capacity in order to protect the environment and foster economic development china will greatly benefit from transfers of state of the art power generation technologies through international agreements such as the clean development mechanism cdm however a buyer driven carbon market and a highly competitive environment due to more cost effective projects attribute to china s need to achieve a balance between sustainability and profitability for cdm projects implemented in china in the cdm tax subsidy optimization model cdmtso model here developed a sustainable development assessment method evaluates the cdm projects economic and environmental benefits and an optimization program returns tax subsidy rates at which the greatest number of cdm technologies becomes viable and where better cdm projects can be the most profitable bringing china s development on a more sustainable path the results show that the cdmtso model brings the sustainable cdm projects internal rate of return closed to 10 if a discount rate of 9 is considered it allows three clean energy technologies natural gas combined cycle wind energy and hydropower to become economically viable and the environmental costs avoided are increased by 37

evidence of the clean development mechanism impact on the chinese electric power system s low carbon transition the extension of the kyoto protocol till 2020 has left uncertainty dominating the future of climate change negotiations meanwhile on going debate on the variety of measures introduced by the protocol demonstrate that there is no consensus among academics and policy makers on the efficacy of those measures by focusing on a specific but extensive case study which encompasses the whole contribution of the clean development mechanism cdm to the chinese electricity production sector this paper aims to reflect upon the effectiveness of that mechanism during its originally planned lifetime which was to be the end of 2012 the paper contributes to the international debate by offering a new evidence based perspective on the efficacy of the cdm in a strategic sector of the most relevant non annex i country the obtained empirical results can serve as evaluation instruments for both academics and policy makers involved in the elaboration of a new protocol and its related mechanisms while at the same time offering a stimulus for further analyses sharing similar objectives the results reveal a new perspective on the chinese electricity system s low carbon transition while prompting debate over the original efficacy of the cdm

imbalance in europe s effort sharing decision scope for strengthening incentives for energy savings in the non ets sectors abstract europe s 2020 greenhouse gas ghg reduction target consists of two sub targets one for the emissions trading scheme ets sectors and one for the non ets sectors the non ets target covers co 2 emissions in buildings transport and non ets industry and non co 2 ghg emissions the non ets target is known as europe s effort sharing decision this article discusses the gdp per capita method the european commission has applied in setting member state specific targets for the non ets the effort sharing and shows that it results in an imbalanced reduction effort among the member states it turns out that the principal mechanism of the gdp per capita method low gdp countries get room to catch up with high gdp countries by allowing them to increase emissions is obscured by the non co 2 ghgs the baseline projections of which are highly policy induced and not correlated with the growth of gdp per capita we propose an alternative method that 1 corrects for the policy induced decrease of non co 2 ghg emissions and 2 is based on energy savings potentials this approach could be used in future target setting for non ets sectors including in the case that the overarching eu wide target would be strengthened and would provide a direct support to europe s energy savings ambitions and policies

linking daly s proposition to policymaking for sustainable development indicators and pathways abstract the statement that in the full world increasing the ultimate efficiency expressed as service throughput is the necessary condition for humanity to achieve high levels of well being within ecological limits is honoured as daly s proposition in this paper the purpose of this paper is to make daly s proposition effective guidance for policymaking related to sustainable development for this aim this paper puts forward the indicator ecological well being performance which is composed of the human development index and the ecological footprint to measure the ultimate efficiency furthermore by means of matrix analysis and factor decomposition analysis the respective pathways for countries at different stages of development to make the sustainable development transition were discussed the g20 countries were taken as the cases to conduct the research the empirical results show that improvements in well being and increases in throughput level are not necessarily positively related the relationship between the two depends on how countries control throughput levels and improve the ecological well being performance which also explains different performances on the sustainable development transition in a simple way this contribution provides new methods and criteria to track and evaluate national performance on sustainable development by referring to daly s original theories

clean development mechanism cdm after the first commitment period assessment of the world s portfolio and the role of latin america abstract the clean development mechanism cdm represents the main effort to help developing countries develop sustainably and developed countries to reach their emission reductions targets set under the kyoto protocol with the ending of the first commitment period there is an opportunity to assess the state of the cdm portfolio 2008 2012 this article is the first effort to evaluate the cdm portfolio throughout the first commitment period as well as the first paper focused on latin america s cdm portfolio as a whole concentrating on renewable energy projects moreover a special analysis is performed for chile latin america s third most important cdm country after brazil and mexico 6th worldwide after china india korea brazil and mexico and first in cers registered among the small countries an ideal host because of its high political stability government effectiveness access to capital and regulatory quality in addition a study was performed on 180 renewable energy projects in latin america revealing that the additionality assessments performed under the cdm are too subjective hindering the validation of the projects and their transparency the main policy implication of this research is to expose the need for a radical change to the succeeding document to the kyoto protocol in order to reduce the inequality amongst host countries and ensure that cdm fulfills its sustainable development claim some of the proposed measures include establishing uniform benchmarks to be used against similar projects a thorough validation for declared barriers simplifying the registering process and providing international aid for the least developed countries that have historically lacked the ability to participate in the cdm

a tale of two market failures technology and environmental policy abstract market failures associated with environmental pollution interact with market failures associated with the innovation and diffusion of new technologies these combined market failures provide a strong rationale for a portfolio of public policies that foster emissions reduction as well as the development and adoption of environmentally beneficial technology both theory and empirical evidence suggest that the rate and direction of technological advance is influenced by market and regulatory incentives and can be cost effectively harnessed through the use of economic incentive based policy in the presence of weak or nonexistent environmental policies investments in the development and diffusion of new environmentally beneficial technologies are very likely to be less than would be socially desirable positive knowledge and adoption spillovers and information problems can further weaken innovation incentives while environmental technology policy is fraught with difficulties a long term view suggests a strategy of experimenting with policy approaches and systematically evaluating their success

stochastic carbon sinks for combating carbon dioxide emissions in the eu abstract this paper carries out numerical calculations on the potential of carbon sinks in the eu emissions trading scheme ets and national commitments under conditions of stochastic carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and carbon sequestration by forests chance constraint programming is used to analyze the role of stochastic carbon sinks for national and eu wide compliance costs the analytical results show that the inclusion of the carbon sink option can reduce costs for low enough marginal cost and risk discount but also that costless carbon sinks as by products from forestry are not part of a cost effective solution under a high reliability concern cost savings are reduced due to risk discounting under a reliability concern in particular when assigning chebyshev s inequality as compared with a normal probability distribution it is also shown that the supply of forest sinks on the market depends on the differences in marginal abatement cost between the trading and the non trading sectors and in risk discounting between achievements of the ets cap and the national commitment relatively low marginal abatement cost in the non trading sector and high risk discounting of national commitment achievements increase the supply of sinks in the market and hence reduces the equilibrium price the empirical application illustrates the importance of risk discounting for the magnitude of cost savings obtained from introducing forest carbon sinks in the eu ets and national commitments

extracting the resource rent from the cdm projects can the chinese government do better the revenue generated from a cdm project in china will be shared by the government and the project owner and is also subject to the corporate income tax this paper studies the impacts of the revenue sharing policy and income tax on the cdm market the economic model presented in this paper shows that higher cost cdm projects will be more affected by the cdm policies than lower cost projects in addition the majority of cers will be generated from lower cost projects this kind of distribution of cers across different types of cdm projects which is in line with the current picture of the cdm market in china is not consistent with the goal of sustainable development a simulation shows that a type by type tax fee scheme would be more effective in assisting sustainable development than the current cdm policies the study also suggests the government use negative tax fee with the type by type scheme to subsidize the cdm projects that generate large sustainability benefits but would otherwise not be developed due to high costs if all of the revenue from the cdm is recycled it is estimated that cers generation will increase by 98 28 mtc mainly from the cdm projects that have substantial sustainability benefits for the host country

biodiesel value chain and access to energy in ethiopia policies and business prospects abstract similar to many net oil importing sub sahara african countries ethiopia s economy is rural and as it stands today it is far from being a fossil fuel based economy instead the economy is largely powered by traditional burning of solid biomass despite its small share in the overall energy supply 7 imported fuel absorbs half of ethiopia s foreign currency earnings the common justifications behind the development of biofuels such as energy source diversification foreign currency saving rural poverty alleviation through employment and technology transfers were all appealing for ethiopian policy advisers in 2007 mostly influenced by the global discourse ethiopia launched a biofuel expansion strategy and a massive ad hoc investment promotion of two biodiesel crops castor and jatropha in this paper we synthesize the various biodiesel development initiatives and modes of production and point out at the gaps in policy formulation and project implementation evaluating the prospect and constraints for biodiesel production in ethiopia we conclude that most of the prerequisites for a viable biodiesel industry still need to be met we identify key areas and priorities to further strengthen the development of the biodiesel sector