Trade-offs in sulfur emission trading in Europe

How to implement emission trading is one question in the current negotiations on a new sulfur protocol in Europe. Whereas the current protocol stipulates a 30 percent uniform reduction, national emission ceilings included in the proposed new protocol imply differentiated reductions. In addition, emission and fuel standards are proposed. This paper examines the costs and environmental impacts of emission trading. Emission trading combined with regulations is a new element in the paper. Calculations using the RAINS (Regional Acidification INformation and Simulation) model suggest that overlaying emission trading on regulations not only reduces the cost savings but has beneficial impacts as well: ecosystem protection is not changed and significant decreases in environmental benefits for countries are largely avoided. Emission trading can also be used to decrease emissions and increase ecosystem protection. If combined with existing legislation, emission trading minimizes losses in expected environmental benefits for some countries, and most countries gain. However, the initial distribution of emission ceilings has to be used so that some countries are not confronted with higher costs. Trade-offs appear to exist between the use of emission trading to achieve cost savings on the one hand, and ecosystem protection and distributional equity on the other.     

Domestic and international strategic interactions in environment policy formation

Summary. In this paper, we establish the most possilbe general formulation of the technology governing carbon-gas emission, giving rise to global external diseconomies, and ty to explore into the strategic interactions,both domestic and international, when an individual country decides on the environmental policies. Through the comparison among emission taxes, quotas, and standard in the perfectly competitive private economies, we find that the first two policies are equivalent but they are different in effects by virtue of what we may call the tax-exemption effect of emission standards. Such a difference in the policy effect further affects the other country's welfare through the global externalities, amplified through whether the government can precommit to either the emission tax or the emission standard. Received: January 16, 2001; revised version: April 16, 2002 RID="*" ID="*" The authors thank the valuable comments by an anonymous referee. Ministry of Education and Science for its financial support is also greatly acknowledged. Correspondence to:K. Kiyono     

Optimal combination of innovation and environmental policies under technology licensing

Under what conditions will a carbon tax encourage environmental innovation? Can a regulator design an optimal environmental policy to reduce emissions and to promote clean technologies? This paper studies optimal environmental policy in the situation where a monopoly innovator develops and licenses clean production technologies to downstream polluting firms. We find that (i) a higher emission tax will encourage innovation when the burden of the tax payment in the polluters' costs and/or the price-elasticity of the demand for polluting goods are small, (ii) the innovation-inducing effects of emission tax are inversely related to the emission-reduction (Pigouvian) effects of the tax, and (iii) the social optimum can be achieved by the mix of tax and subsidy. We also show that if the policy instrument is limited to the tax, the second-best tax rate would lie between the marginal damage and the first-best rate. By performing numerical simulations, we also demonstrate that the optimal mix of the emission tax and R&D subsidy can have “double dividend” benefits.     

环境与就业维度下出口商品结构优化——以江苏为例

利用计量方法从环境和就业这两个指标来考察江苏出口商品结构优化,其中环境指标主要是通过碳排放指标来体现的。通过研究发现江苏九大类出口商品在环境和就业指标上都无此消彼长现象,其中对两指标都具显著影响力的为机械及运输设备,化学品及有关产品和按原料分类的制成品这两类出口商品仅对环境有着显著影响力,对就业不具显著影响力,至于其他种类的出口商品则对环境和就业这两个指标都不具显著影响力,最后得出江苏出口商品结构优化的最明确方向,即大力促进机械及运输设备的出口,抑制化学品及有关产品和按原料分类的制成品这两类出口商品的出口。     

中国能源消费、碳排放与工业经济增长——一个脱钩理论视角的实证分析

本文利用相对“脱钩”、“复钩”的理论与测度模型,对2000—2009年我国工业经济增长与能源消费和碳排放之间的脱钩关系进行研究。在此基础上,对脱钩评价模型进行扩展,构建了脱钩指数分解模型,对脱钩关系的影响因素作出了更为深入的分析,并指出未来工业脱钩发展措施的重点方向是在进一步提升能效技术的基础上,着力推进工业产业结构升级的步伐,提升新型低碳能源的结构比重,改善能源的生产和消费结构。     

二氧化碳排放强度下降目标的动态分解研究——基于“十二五”规划目标的分析

针对十二五规划中二氧化碳排放强度下降17%的目标,设定两种分解路径——等比路径和等差路径,采用数理经济学理论,将之分别对应到二氧化碳排放强度和人均国内生产总值两项指标的幂函数路径和对数函数路径。根据1990~2007年全球主要地区和中国的历史经验数据,对上述两个函数的参数进行模拟,并对二氧化碳排放量路径进行预测。研究发现,幂函数最优路径比国际经验对应的最优路径更为激进;幂函数最优路径比对数函数最优路径更为灵活,但后者减排潜力更大。若走对数函数路径,在远期保持国内生产总值年均7%增长速度的前提下,到2038年我国将达到二氧化碳排放量的峰值,之后便逐步下降。     

日本全球变暖对策基本法案解析——解读日本减排25%

2010年3月,日本政府在内阁会议上决议了将温室气体排放量在2020年较1990年减少25%为核心内容的<全球变暖对策基本法案>,提交至国会审议.该法案无论是减排目标还是具体政策措施,与过去相比激进和果断许多,在日本国内引起了轩然大波.由于反对和猜疑的声音一直不绝于耳,该法案能否获准尚不明朗.本文就该法案的主要争论点及背景做全面阐述,并对其前景做一展望,以期有助于了解日本围绕减排的各种主张.     

日本发展低碳产品出口贸易的经验及启示

后经济危机时代,低碳产品贸易将成为国际贸易新的增长点。作为较早地实践低碳经济的国家,日本近年来采取了一系列措施发展低碳产品出口贸易,如政府积极地提供财政、信息和外交支持;企业自动地调整出口结构、减少流通环节的碳排放、促进低碳系统的出口以及开展碳足迹认证等;政府和企业之间建立起良好的协力合作机制。中国也应抓住这一机遇,努力促进出口产品向低碳方向转型。但是目前中国发展低碳产品出口贸易仍面临许多障碍,如低碳产品出口的可持续发展能力差,国际低碳产品贸易自由化困难重重等。在克服这些障碍的过程中,可以借鉴日本的经验选择适合本国国情的低碳产品出口贸易发展之路。     

城市化对资源消耗和污染排放的影响分析

本文选取黑龙江、上海、河南、广东和甘肃等5个省份,采用1985-2009年平衡面板数据,利用STIRPAT模型,研究了不同发展水平下的城市化对资源消耗和污染排放的影响.主要结论为:人口规模、人均收入和经济结构都是影响环境的重要因素;总体上,城市化与资源消耗和污染排放都呈正相关关系,但从5个不同发展水平的省份来看,城市化...     

The implications of fossil fuel supply constraints on climate change projections: A supply-side analysis

Climate projections are based on emission scenarios. The emission scenarios used by the IPCC and by mainstream climate scientists are largely derived from the predicted demand for fossil fuels, and in our view take insufficient consideration of the constrained emissions that are likely due to the depletion of these fuels. This paper, by contrast, takes a supply-side view of CO₂ emission, and generates two supply-driven emission scenarios based on a comprehensive investigation of likely long-term pathways of fossil fuel production drawn from peer-reviewed literature published since 2000. The potential rapid increases in the supply of the non-conventional fossil fuels are also investigated. Climate projections calculated in this paper indicate that the future atmospheric CO₂ concentration will not exceed 610 ppm in this century; and that the increase in global surface temperature will be lower than 2.6 °C compared to pre-industrial level even if there is a significant increase in the production of non-conventional fossil fuels. Our results indicate therefore that the IPCC’s climate projections overestimate the upper-bound of climate change. Furthermore, this paper shows that different production pathways of fossil fuels use, and different climate models, are the two main reasons for the significant differences in current literature on the topic.