Distributional Preferences and the Incidence of Costs and Benefits in Climate Change Policy

We explore the relationship between willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation and distributional preferences, by which we mean individuals’ opinions about who should be responsible for climate change prevention and whether the share of climate change impacts borne by the poor is a cause for concern. We use 1,770 responses to an online stated preference survey. The domestic costs in our survey’s policy choice scenarios are expressed as a set of randomized shares across four different payment vehicles, and the international cost shares are randomized across four groups of countries. We also elicit respondents’ perceptions of the likely regressivity of climate change impacts under a policy of business-as-usual. WTP is higher when larger cost shares are borne by parties deemed to bear a greater responsibility for mitigation, and when respondents believe (and care) that the impacts of climate change may be borne disproportionately by the world’s poor. That WTP for an environmental policy depends on the distributional consequences of the policy is an unsettling result: efficiency assessments are typically assumed to be separate from equity considerations in most benefit-cost analyses.     

CO2 abatement policy with learning-by-doing in renewable energy

This paper analyzes the implications of CO₂ abatement when there is endogenous technological change in renewable energy. A multi-sector numerical general equilibrium model for Denmark is proposed to reflect two basic assumptions about technological progress in renewable energy. First, there is learning-by-doing and unit costs of production are a decreasing function of cumulated output. Second, technological progress only benefits new vintages of capital. The learning-by-doing process is calibrated to match current projections for technological progress in wind-based electricity. The implications are a marked reduction in the total and marginal cost of abatement and a decline in the optimal level of near-term abatement.     

The Effects of Electricity Costs on Firm Re-location Decisions: Insights for the Pollution Havens Hypothesis?

Electricity costs are partly driven by environmental policy choices. In this paper, the effects of variations in electricity costs—as measured by end-user electricity prices–on firm relocation decisions are investigated. Using a discrete choice model and a data base that has not previously been exploited to study this problem, we investigate the effects of variations in electricity costs on the intensive and extensive re-location decisions of European firms. We find that electricity costs play a significant role in determining relocation destinations. This effect is asymmetric between firms moving into and out of a country, and between high and low energy intensity sectors. The findings of the paper have implications for the Pollution Havens Hypothesis, since they show the extent to which the effects of climate policy on domestic electricity costs can be expected to impact on firm relocation decisions both into and out of a country.     

欧盟关于气候变化政策的新进展

本文分析了欧盟理事会2008年3月批准了欧盟气候与能源的一揽子行动计划的背景,提出：欧盟高度重视气候变化,除了因为气候变化已经日益影响人类的生活外,主要是基于自身能源、经济增长和就业的考虑。分析了欧盟实现减排的方式,更新的排放交易机制将是主要手段,还有发展可再生能源、提高能效、利用清洁发展机制,以及应用碳捕捉与储存技术等,指出：欧盟气候变化关键目标是“两个20％”,即：到2020年,温室气体排放至少减少20％,能源消费中可再生能源的份额占20％。     

Popular Support for Climate Change Mitigation: Evidence from a General Population Mail Survey

Using a sample of 1,651 US households, we explore some determinants of willingness to pay (WTP) for climate change mitigation programs. Our mail survey had a relatively low response rate, so we first use several additional data sources to build a detailed sample selection model. This model uses features of the survey instrument, measures of geographic vulnerability to climate change, seasonality, the political mix in the county, attributes of the address or addressee, and a set of factor scores from an extensive factor analysis of all census tracts in the US. We estimate this model jointly with a model to explain climate policy preferences as a function of the domestic and international distribution of policy costs as well as the climate change impacts that each respondent believes will occur under a policy of business-as-usual. Despite statistically significant patterns of nonresponse, selectivity effects are minimal in this case. WTP for climate change mitigation is greater when the domestic incidence of mitigation costs is borne mostly through higher energy taxes. It is also greater when costs are understood to be shared internationally with other groups of countries, rather than being borne mostly by a country group including the US. People are generally more willing to pay for climate change mitigation if they believe that the harm caused by climate change impacts will be substantial, rather than just moderate. The assistance of former UCLA undergraduate students Ivka Adam, Tashi Ghale, Michelle Gogolewski, Vilija Gulbinas, and Lindy Olsson was essential to survey development and administration. This paper is based upon work supported in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 9818875 to UCLA, with additional support from the Raymond F. Mikesell Foundation at the University of Oregon. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of either the National Science Foundation or ICF International.     

Renewable energy subsidies: Second-best policy or fatal aberration for mitigation?

This paper evaluates the consequences of renewable energy policies on welfare and energy prices in a world where carbon pricing is imperfect and the regulator seeks to limit emissions to a (cumulative) target. The imperfectness of the carbon price is motivated by political concerns regarding distributional effects of increased energy prices. Hence, carbon prices are considered to be temporarily or permanently absent or endogenously constrained by their effect on energy prices. We use a global general equilibrium model with an intertemporal fossil resource sector and calculate intertemporally optimal policies from a broad set of policy instruments including carbon taxes, renewable energy subsidies and feed-in-tariffs, among others. If carbon pricing is permanently missing, mitigation costs increase by a multiple (compared to the optimal carbon pricing policy) for a wide range of parameters describing extraction costs, renewable energy costs, substitution possibilities and normative attitudes. Furthermore, we show that small deviations from the second-best subsidy can lead to strong increases in emissions and consumption losses. This confirms the rising concerns about the occurrence of unintended side effects of climate policy – a new version of the green paradox. Smart combinations of carbon prices and renewable energy subsidies, however, can achieve ambitious mitigation targets at moderate additional costs without leading to high energy price increases.     

Environmental Protection for Sale: Strategic Green Industrial Policy and Climate Finance

Industrial policy has long been criticized as subject to protectionist interests; accordingly, subsidies to domestic producers face disciplines under World Trade Organization agreements, without exceptions for environmental purposes. Now green industrial policy is gaining popularity as governments search for low-carbon solutions that also provide jobs at home. The strategic trade literature has largely ignored the issue of market failures related to green goods. I consider the market for a new environmental good (like low-carbon technology) whose downstream consumption provides external benefits (like reduced emissions). Governments may have some preference for supporting domestic production, such as by interest-group lobbying, introducing a political distortion in their objective function. I examine the national incentives and global rationales for offering production (upstream) and deployment (downstream) subsidies in producer countries, allowing that some of the downstream market may lie in nonregulating third-party countries. Restraints on upstream subsidies erode global welfare when environmental externalities are large enough relative to political distortions. Climate finance is an effective alternative if political distortions are large and governments do not undervalue carbon costs. Numerical simulations of the case of renewable energy indicate that a modest social cost of carbon can imply benefits from allowing upstream subsidies.     

PRELIMINARY ESTIMATES OF CUMULATIVE PRIVATE AND EXTERNAL COSTS OF ENERGY

This is a summary comparison and "first rough cut" cumulation of recent estimates regarding private and external costs of energy. The estimates of external costs take into consideration damage to health and property caused by air pollution from coal, oil, and gas; damage caused by acid rain from coal, and costs of reducing acid rain; costs of delaying global warming caused by carbon dioxide from coal, oil, and gas; national security costs of importing oil, and benefits of oil security; national security costs of minimizing damage from terrorist attacks on nuclear power plants; insurance subsidies for nuclear accidents; storage of nuclear waste; loss of nuclear reactors from accidents and safety risks; and benefits from additional nuclear safety requirements. The estimates of private costs focus on nuclear plants, coal, oil, gas, conservation, wind, solar power plants, and geothermal steam.     

Do environmental benefits matter? Evidence from a choice experiment among house owners in Germany

Residential buildings strongly contribute to global CO₂ emissions due to the high energy demand for electricity and heating, particularly in industrialised countries. Within the EU, decentralised heat generation is of particular relevance for future climate policy, as its emissions are not covered by the EU ETS. We conducted a choice experiment concerning energy retrofits for existing houses in Germany. In the experiment, the approximately 400 sampled house owners could either choose a modern heating system or an improved thermal insulation for their home. We used standard and mixed logit specifications to analyse the choice data. We found environmental benefits to have a significant impact on choices of heating systems. However, they played no role in terms of insulation choices. Based on the estimated mixed logit model, we further obtained willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures for CO₂ savings.     

Policy Framework for Transition to a Low-Carbon World Economy

Climate change mitigation policy is the most difficult to come before our polity in living memory. There can be no solution without international agreement involving all substantial economies, and yet each country has an incentive to free ride on others. The international agreement must have five parts: agreement on the objective in terms of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, agreement on allocation of an emissions entitlements budget among countries, agreement on rules for international trade in entitlements, agreement on developed countries taking the lead on development of low-emissions technologies, and agreement on assistance from developed countries for climate change mitigation in developing countries. Two sources of market failure must be corrected to achieve emissions reduction targets efficiently: the external costs of emitting greenhouse gases and the external benefits of private investment in innovation in relation to low-emissions technologies.     

The Hidden Costs of Wind Generation in a Thermal Power System: What Cost?

New renewable energy generation in Australia is unambiguously more expensive than thermal plant, at least when comparing direct costs. The federal government claims the 20 per cent renewable energy target will increase electricity tariffs by 4 per cent. Apart from the direct costs, critics of renewables cite additional ‘hidden costs’ arising from the intermittency of wind and the subsequent causation of ‘back‐up plant’ for system security. South Australia, where wind's market share now exceeds 17 per cent, provides a valuable case study to analyse ‘hidden costs’. The evidence is that hidden costs are trivial and the government's claim appears accurate.     

SOCIAL COSTS OF ELECTRICITY GENERATION: WIND AND PHOTOVOLTAIC VERSUS FOSSIL AND NUCLEAR

This paper presents the results of research on the total costs to society of different technologies for electric power production in the Federal Republic of Germany. The analysis views electricity costs from a macroeconomic perspective and includes the internal or private costs as well as the social costs. The focus is on fossil and nuclear fuels as conventional energy sources on the one side and on wind and photovoltaic electricity as examples of renewable energy sources on the other.     

SWEDEN AFTER NUCLEAR POWER

The social costs of providing energy are varied and difficult to compare. Sweden's recent energy policy is notable for its broad-based initiatives to internalize those social costs of energy that are difficult to measure in strictly monetary terms. This article focuses on one such initiative– the Swedish law to phase out nuclear power by the year 2010–and its relationship to other national goals: The hydroelectric system is not to expand, carbon dioxide emissions are to remain at current levels or decline, and oil-import dependence is to be minimized. In addition to this challenge, between now and 2010 the Swedish economy is expected to maintain an average 1.9 percent real annual growth rate and to remain competitive industrially. Scenarios of future electricity demand and the accompanying supply mix illustrate the spectrum of costs – internal and external–from which Sweden can choose in implementing the phase-out plan and in determining whether one can identify paths that simultaneously reconcile Sweden's potentially conflicting policy goals. The results show that the direct economic costs of high-efficiency/low-externality scenarios are less than those of low-efficiency/high-externality scenarios. Traditional societal economics does not stand as a barrier to energy futures that are consistent with Sweden's desire to further reduce the external societal costs of energy. The results are also significant since they demonstrate that strategies to reduce global climate change need not rely on nuclear power.     

英国可再生能源产业发展现状

英国在发展可再生能源方面具有良好的自然条件,特别在离岸风能及波浪能和潮汐能方面。但英国在开发这一潜力方面做得并不够好,目前,英国来自可再生能源的发电量占其全部用电需求的不足5％,远远落后于世界上一些先进国家。这其中有多方面的原因,如英国的入网电价相对便宜（与欧洲其他国家相比）,政府对可再生能源行业的财政补贴较少,以及在批准可再生能源项目方面遇到的延误和障碍较多等等。但是,随着近些年一系列鼓励政策和措施的出台,英国在可再生能源方面会有一个较为光明的前景,从而实现它确保能源安全及减少温室气体排放的双重目标。     

The Effect of Feed-in Tariffs on Renewable Electricity Generation: An Instrumental Variables Approach

While carbon taxes and other market-based instruments are widely regarded as optimal for climate mitigation, political constraints have prevented governments from using them. Instead, narrower instruments, including the feed-in tariff (FIT) for renewable electricity generation, have become popular. However, their causal effect on renewable electricity generation remains subject to uncertainty. We use instrumental variables to estimate the causal effect of FITs on renewable electricity generation in 26 industrialized countries, 1979–2005. We find that increasing the FIT by one U.S. cent (2000 constant prices) per kilowatt hour increases the percentage change in renewable electricity’s share of the total by 0.11 % points. All else constant, if a country implemented for a decade the sample mean FIT of three U.S. cents, the national share of renewable electricity would increase by 3.3 % points, which is more than the sample mean. In addition to demonstrating that the FIT is an effective way to increase renewable electricity generation, our approach lays the foundation for future studies of the causal effects of renewable energy policies.     

我国光伏产业发展的风险及应对策略

太阳能光伏系统所具有的规模上的灵活性、地域上的适应性、用电上的便利性等特征,决定了光伏产业的市场潜力巨大、发展前景广阔。但受欧美经济持续下滑、贸易保护主义抬头和企业生产盲目扩张等因素影响,光伏产业发展面临着很多困难和问题。光伏产业在应对气候变化和保证能源安全方面意义重大,需要通过产业、科技、财税、金融、外贸等多方面的政策扶持,促进技术升级改造,优化产品结构,降低产品成本,从而实现光伏产业的持续健康发展,为我国的产业结构调整和实体经济发展发挥积极作用。     

佛得角圣文森特岛能源发展概况、问题与建议

佛得角能源矿产资源缺乏,电力生产主要依赖进口化石能源进行热力发电,尽管可再生能源较为丰富,但尚未充分开发利用。通过对佛得角能源和电力市场的全面考察,统筹考虑圣文森特岛现有电力装机规模、电力生产与消费形势、可再生能源发展潜力,提出圣文森特岛应调整优化能源结构,提高可再生能源在能源供给中的比例;升级改造配电网,推进智能电网建设;鼓励私营业主与企业参与电力设施投资,逐步建立适应 IPP电力投资的政策框架。     

Impact of energy infrastructure investments on renewable electricity generation in major Asian developing economies

The prime objective of this research is to empirically investigate the impact of energy infrastructure investments (public-private-partnership) on renewable electricity generation in major Asian developing economies (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, the Philippines, and Thailand). In doing so, we use the annual data of variables from 1993 to 2017. To achieve the study objective, the authors employ numerous panel econometric approaches such as the Grouped-Mean and Augmented Mean Group estimators. The overall conclusion of the findings is that investments in energy infrastructure play a significant role in promoting renewable electricity generation in Asian developing economies. The results also reveal that financial development, economic development, and openness further rise renewable electricity generation. Based on the findings, the authors attempted to provide novel implications for the promotion of energy infrastructure investments and sustainable development policies for the Asian developing economies. For instance, the authors suggest that governments and policy makers should realise the significance of greener energy and promote investments via public-private partnerships for renewable energy projects.     

Methods in open policy analysis: An application to California's building energy codes

Have building energy codes lowered energy consumption, and have their benefits outweighed costs? Using 2000 Census data, I estimate household energy expenditures by decade of home construction, controlling for household and home characteristics. I find homes built in the 1980s used $35 less in electricity and $46 less in natural gas, per year, compared to 1970s era homes. For Sacramento, energy codes pass a cost-benefit test when low-end policy costs are used, but fail with base-case costs. This study also clarifies how a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) for a representative household fits into a comprehensive CBA.     

Climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy – Carbon targets and the carbon budget

Carbon intensive fuels generate a significant negative externality which is quite relevant for climate change mitigation policy. We propose a dynamic growth model where output is produced using two types of energy sources: fossil fuel and renewable energy. Fossil fuel discovery, extraction, and associated costs are incorporated in our model together with the dynamics of greenhouse gas emissions and consequent damages. Consistent with the empirical facts, our numerical solutions suggest that fossil fuels, especially coal, should not be exploited to depletion. Furthermore, renewable energy should be gradually phased in to meet targets consistent with the Paris 2015 agreement. We show that adopting those policies should slow down the growth rate of cumulative emissions; but the outcome is contingent upon the carbon emission targets set for advanced countries, as distinct from those assigned to developing countries.