Without tangible prospects for a global deal on climate protection the EU is under domestic policy pressure to justify stringent unilateral emissions reduction targets. Cost effectiveness of EU-wide emission abatement becomes increasingly important in order to sustain EU leadership in climate...

We analyze how different ways of allocating emission quotas may influence the electricity market. Using a large-scale numerical model of the Western European energy market with heterogeneous electricity producers, we show that different allocation mechanisms can have very different effects on...