加拿大应对气候变化新举措

近年来，全球性极端天气频仍，气候变化议题引起全球热切关注。加拿大是温室气体排放大国之一，人均排量更是名列前茅。近两年，加拿大出台了一系列减排和节能增效的政策和措施，同时加大力度促进清洁技术的开发和部署，希望在现有技术优势的基础上引领新能源时代。本文对加拿大近年为应对气候变化采取的政策和措施进行解读分析，发现一些可供借鉴之处。     

气候变化政策中的技术变迁模型

技术变迁对于减缓和适应气候变化起着至关重要的作用。对近年来关于气候变化政策模型研究中的技术变迁处理方法进行了回顾。气候变化政策模型中广泛应用的有"自下而上"和"自上而下"两种方法,前者强调对能源系统细节的、技术性的处理方法,后者强调理论上对整个经济体的一致性描述。自下而上和自上而下模型都是为了帮助设计温室气体的减排政策,但是两种模型都依赖于对能源替代性和技术变迁动力学的过于简单的假设。通过对气候变化政策分析中常用的综合性模型进行归纳,总结不同模型的前提假设和模型中处理技术变迁的不同方法,以及不同的计算方法。     

Climate Change Taxes and Energy Efficiency in Japan

In 2003 Japan proposed a Climate Change Tax to reduce its CO₂ emissions to the level required by the Kyoto Protocol. If implemented, the tax would be levied on fossil fuel use and the revenue distributed to encourage the purchase of energy efficient equipment. Analysis using the MIT Emissions Prediction and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model shows that this policy is unlikely to bring Japan into compliance with its Kyoto target unless the subsidy encourages improvement in energy intensity well beyond Japan’s recent historical experience. Similar demand-management programs in the US, where there has been extensive experience, have not been nearly as effective as they would need to be to achieve energy efficiency goals of the proposal. The Tax proposal also calls for limits on international emission trading. We find that this limit substantially affects costs of compliance. The welfare loss with full emissions trading is 1/6 that when Japan meets its target though domestic actions only, the carbon price is lower, and there is a smaller loss of energy-intensive exports. Japan can achieve substantial savings from emissions trading even under cases where, for example, the full amount of the Russian allowance is not available in international markets.     

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％。     

中国适应气候变化的科技政策变迁与展望

适应气候变化的科技政策是该领域科技活动的重要保障。以2007—2020年期间212份适应气候变化的中央科技政策文件作为分析样本,采用共词和聚类方法,分析不同时期适应性科技政策主题聚焦点演进和变化。研究结果显示,“技术研发”“技术成果应用推广”“资金保障”“监测应急能力发展规划”“水利科技发展支持”等主题发生了明显的政策逻辑变迁。整体来看,适应性科技政策呈现密切结合国家气候适应战略演进而深化发展的特点,未来中国适应气候变化的科技政策应进一步引导适应技术科研方向,助力气候适应科技成果转化,提供财政、信息等资源支持。     

Climate Change,Innovation, and Economic Growth: The Contributions of William Nordhaus and Paul Romer

ABSTRACT

William Nordhaus and Paul Romer shared the 2018 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for their work on long-run macroeconomic analysis. Nordhaus adapted the neoclassical growth model to study climate change, while Romer developed a model of innovation-based growth. The authors provide two distinct explanations of what drives growth, and employ contrasting methodologies for interpreting the results of their mathematical models. Macroeconomic policy in general, and climate policy in particular, would benefit from better integrating the theory and methods of these two laureates.     

Carbon Subsidies,Taxes and Optimal Forest Management

We consider the effect of carbon credit payment schemes on forest owners’ land use and harvest decisions. We study two possible credit allocation regimes: one where credits are allocated according to the actual amount of carbon sequestered by the trees on a piece of land and another where credits are allocated according to the long-run potential to sequester carbon on the land. Using a real options model with uncertain future timber prices, we examine the effect on the timing of harvests and the replanting-abandonment decision. We show that both schemes discourage deforestation. Compensating growers for actual carbon sequestration leads to longer rotation periods between harvests, while basing compensation only on the long-run potential level of sequestration induces shorter rotation periods. The former scheme leads to greater benefits of carbon sequestration at lower cost than the latter scheme. Although inducing moderate levels of sequestration is expensive under both schemes, the cost falls dramatically when the level of payments climbs above some threshold. Indeed, providing the payments are sufficiently generous, carbon credit payment schemes offer an effective means of increasing carbon sequestration. The views expressed in this paper are strictly those of the authors and do not represent the views of the New Zealand Commerce Commission. We thank Lewis Evans and two anonymous referees for many very helpful comments. Kevin Counsell, Steen Videbeck, and participants at an ISCR seminar also provided useful suggestions. Fletcher Forests Ltd and the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry generously provided data.     

Environment,Directed Technical Change and Economic Policy

We study the effects of an economic policy in an endogenous growth general equilibrium framework where production of consumption goods requires two resource inputs: a polluting non-renewable resource and a non-polluting labour resource. The use of the former contributes to the accumulation of pollution in the atmosphere, which affects welfare. There is a specific research sector associated with each of those resources. We provide a full welfare analysis, and we describe the equilibrium paths in a decentralized economy. We go on to study the effects of three associated economic policy tools: a tax on the polluting resource, and two research subsidies. We show that the optimal environmental policy has two main effects; it delays the extraction of the resource and with it the level of polluting emissions and it reallocates research efforts, decreasing the amount put into “grey” research to the benefit of “green” research. We also show that the environmental policy is grey-biased in the short-term, and green-biased in the long-term. Finally, we compute the optimal values for these tools.      

碳税对我国的影响及其政策响应

二氧化碳(CO2)是引起全球气候变化的最重要的温室气体(GHG)之一。温室气体的减排是当前国际社会普遍关注的热点环境问题。碳税常常被认为是成本有效的碳减排政策工具,目前已有一些国家征收碳税或能源税。文章介绍了碳税的理论基础及其在一些国家的征收实践,总结和分析了国内外一些学者关于实施碳税对温室气体减排、对经济和能源系统的影响的研究结果,并在此基础上讨论了我国对碳税制度的政策响应和对策。     

Getting the Resilience Right: Climate Change and Development Policy in the ‘African Age’

ABSTRACT

Founded on a call to place climate change adaptation and climate risk management at the heart of contemporary development practice, the World Bank’s Africa Climate Business Plan presents an ambitious agenda for coordinating $19bn of loans, grants and investment over the coming decade. The centrepiece of this recasting of development thinking is the notion of resilience, which ties together the various activities proposed under the Plan. Resilience must respectively be strengthened, empowered and enabled in order for African countries to withstand climate change impacts. In this paper we subject this new climate-resilient development discourse to critical scrutiny. Using the theoretical lens of post-politics, we caution how the ill-defined category of resilience is deployed to reinforce a profoundly depoliticising agenda in which climate change is posited as an external threat to an otherwise seamless narrative of African advancement. In so doing, we illustrate how the Bank obscures the contested histories of African development and uses the discourse of climate-resilient development to perpetuate its neoliberal agenda within the continent.     

技术政策需求分析模型及其在应对气候变化领域的应用

针对目前在技术政策的制定与实施方面我国与发达国家有较大差距的现状,引入技术生命周期理论,建立技术政策需求分析模型;并应用于应对气候变化领域:在综述国内外应对气候变化的技术政策实施现状的基础上,通过列表对比分析,最终得出我国应对气候变化的技术政策需求,以期为政策制定者提供决策参考,为我国应对气候变化目标顺利实现提供政策支持。     

Control of SO2 emissions from power plants: A case of induced technological innovation in the U.S.

This paper investigates how the details of government actions induce innovation—the overlapping activities of invention, adoption and diffusion, and learning by doing—in “environmental technology,” products and processes that either control pollutant emissions or prevent emissions altogether. It applies multiple quantitative and qualitative measures of innovation to a case subject to several “technology-push” and “demand-pull” instruments: sulfur dioxide control technology for power plants. The study employs analyses of public R&D funding, patents, expert interviews, learning curves, conference proceedings, and experience curves. Results indicate that: regulation and the anticipation of regulation stimulate invention; technology-push instruments appear to be less effective at prompting invention than demand-pull instruments; and regulatory stringency focuses inventive activity along certain technology pathways. Increased diffusion of the technology results in significant and predictable operating cost reductions in existing systems, as well as notable efficiency improvements and capital cost reductions in new systems. Government plays an important role in fostering knowledge transfer via technical conferences, as well as affecting the pattern of collaborative relationships within the technical research community via regulatory changes that affect the market for the technology. Finally, the case provides little evidence for the claim that cap-and-trade instruments induce innovation more effectively than other instruments.     

Discursive Contestation on Technological Innovation and the Institutional Design of the UNFCCC in the New Climate Change Regime

ABSTRACT

Under the new climate change regime ushered in by the 2015 Paris Agreement, technology development and transfer have emerged as essential means of global action for climate change mitigation and adaptation. In particular, technological innovation has appeared as a leading component to be accelerated, encouraged, and enabled under the Paris Agreement. However, while making the rule book to implement the Paris Agreement, a clash has occurred between developed and developing countries over the meaning of technological innovation and the intervening policies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to support innovation in developing countries. By exploring rule-making processes and expert-meetings under the UNFCCC, this paper examines how this discursive contestation has progressed in relation to the meaning of technological innovation and the creation of an appropriate institutional design to support developing countries’ achievement of technological innovation. The analysis is based on the theoretical framework of discursive contestation between the two discourses of de-regulatory ecological modernisation and green governmentality with right-to-development. This research concludes by positing some policy implications.     

Research Frontiers in the Economics of Climate Change

Academic and policy debates over climate change risks and policies have stimulated economic research in a variety of fields. In this article I briefly discuss eight overlapping areas of current research in which further effort is particularly warranted. These areas include decision criteria for policy; risk assessment and adaptation; uncertainty and learning; abatement cost and the innovation and diffusion of technology; and the credibility of policies and international agreements. Further analysis in these areas not only will advance academic understanding but also will provide insights of considerable importance to policymakers.     

Climate Change and the Polanyian Counter-movement: Carbon Markets or Degrowth?

In the midst of a wave of market expansion, carbon markets have been proposed as the best way to address global climate change. While some argue that carbon markets represent a modern example of a Polanyian counter-movement to the environmental crisis, we adopt a structural interpretation of Polanyi to refute this claim. Carbon markets represent a further expansion of markets that fails to address the underlying contradictions related to the commodification of nature. In addition, they increase risks to society and the domination of economic elites. While carbon markets further subject social and ecological relations to market mechanisms, we examine degrowth as a possible response to climate change that prioritises social and environmental goals over economic growth. While degrowth continues to be dismissed as impractical or impossible, a growing number of scholars, scientists and activists argue it is the only way to address global climate change. In contrast to carbon markets, we argue degrowth could represent a genuine Polanyian counter-movement in response to climate change. In addition, degrowth could help all those disenfranchised by market fundamentalism by addressing the triple crises related to the commodification of land, labour and money.     

美国应对气候变化政策新动向及其影响

奥巴马第二任期开始以来,美国政府在应对气候变化方面有一系列新动向,包括发布美国国家气候评估报告(草案)、力促相关行政措施出台、推动中美签署《中美应对气候变化联合声明》、针对德班平台谈判提出“轴辐式协议”全球气候治理框架等。一方面,由于国内政治因素的影响,美国的气候变化政策不会发生大的变化;另一方面,由于美国在全球经济、政治和外交中具有强大的综合实力,这些最新动向仍将对国际气候制度走向和全球低碳发展产生一定影响。我国在推动建立公平合理有效的国际气候制度和新型中美大国关系过程中,需谨慎权衡利弊,同时,从立法、财税、金融、标准、低碳技术研发与推广应用方面切实推进我国低碳发展。     

Climate Change and the Stability of Water Allocation Agreements

We analyse agreements on river water allocation between riparian countries. Besides being efficient, water allocation agreements need to be stable in order to be effective in increasing the efficiency of water use. In this paper we assess the stability of water allocation agreements using a game theoretic model. We consider the effects of climate change and the choice of a sharing rule on stability. Our results show that a decrease in mean river flow decreases the stability of an agreement, while an increased variance can have a positive or a negative effect on stability. An agreement where the downstream country is allocated a fixed amount of water has the lowest stability compared to other sharing rules. These results hold for both constant and flexible non-water transfers.     

意大利应对能源危机和气候变化的主要措施

意大利是一个能源高度依赖进口的国家,在可再生能源的利用和使用技术方面处于世界领先地位。其节能减排计划是在欧洲气候能源包计划总体框架的基础上进行的,有出台鼓励改善建筑能源效率政策、实施建筑光伏计划、热太阳能利用等;在应对气候变化方面,适时修改税收政策,加强废弃物的立法管理,推行新型城市交通变化,发展碳捕获和存储技术等。我国应看到欧美联手利用气候变化问题抬高第三世界国家发展经济的门槛。     

Environmental Policy and Technological Change

The relationship between technological changeand environmental policy has receivedincreasing attention from scholars and policymakers alike over the past ten years. This ispartly because the environmental impacts ofsocial activity are significantly affected bytechnological change, and partly becauseenvironmental policy interventions themselvescreate new constraints and incentives thataffect the process of technologicaldevelopments. Our central purpose in thisarticle is to provide environmental economistswith a useful guide to research ontechnological change and the analytical toolsthat can be used to explore further theinteraction between technology and theenvironment. In Part 1 of the article, weprovide an overview of analytical frameworksfor investigating the economics oftechnological change, highlighting key issuesfor the researcher. In Part 2, we turn ourattention to theoretical analysis of theeffects of environmental policy ontechnological change, and in Part 3, we focuson issues related to the empirical analysis oftechnology innovation and diffusion. Finally,we conclude in Part 4 with some additionalsuggestions for research.     

Climate change—environmental and technology policies in a strategic context

There are a number of features of climate change which make it one of the most challenging problems confronting policy makers and policy analysts. In this paper we consider three such features: (i) climate change is a global pollutant so there are strategic interactions between governments over climate policy; (ii) cutting greenhouse gas emissions can have significant cost effects across a number of sectors of the economy, raising concerns about the implications of climate change policy on competitive advantage; (iii) the long-time scales on which climate change operates means that an important dimension of climate change policy is policy towards R&D to cut the costs of dealing with climate change. In Ulph and Ulph (1996) [Ulph A, Ulph D (1996) In: Carraro C, Katsoulacos Y, Xepapadeas A (eds) Environmental policy and market structure. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp 181–208] we presented a model to analyse these issues, but considered only environmental policies. In this paper we extend that analysis to allow for both a richer set of policy instruments (environmental and technology policies) and a richer strategic context.