The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has set legally binding emissions targets for a basket of six greenhouse gases and timetables for industrialised countries. It has also incorporated three international flexibility mechanisms. However, the...

This paper investigates the implications of EU climate change policy for energy intensive industries. Specifically, it calculates, for a range of energy-intensive processes and products, the product price increases that would be required to maintain unit profits at present levels, based on...

Recently, many countries have introduced systems of tradable green certificates (TGCs) in order to increase the proportion of their electricity supply obtained from renewable sources. The main objective of this paper is to investigate the analytics of a TGC system of the Nordic type when...

The inclusion of emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol reflects an important decision to address climate change issues through flexible market mechanisms. This Article addresses a number of policy issues that must be considered in designing and implementing an international greenhouse gases...

The inclusion of emissions trading in the Kyoto Protocol reflects an important decision to address climate change issues through flexible market mechanisms. In this paper, we address a number of policy issues that must be considered in designing and implementing an international greenhouse gas...

This is an invited discussion on the Manne and Richels’ paper “The Kyoto Protocol: A Cost-Effective Strategy for Meeting Environmental Objective”. It focuses on four issues or questions: distributional realities of the international climate change negotiations, correspondence between...

This BEEP explains the mechanism of the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and explore into its likely sustainability impact on European industry. In doing so, it focuses on energy-intensive indus-tries like cement, steel and aluminium production as well as...

The first half of the paper provides a brief overview of the European Union’s Emission Trading System (EU ETS), and discusses how emission allowances have been allocated during the first two phases of the trading scheme. I then discuss the effects of auctioning off more emission allowances...

Emission allowances are often distributed for free in an early phase of a cap-and-trade scheme (grandfathering) to reduce adverse effects on the profitability of firms. If the grandfathering scheme is phased out over time, firms may nevertheless relocate to countries with a lower carbon price...

The combination of emissions trading and emissions taxes is usually rejected as redundant or inefficient. This conclusion is based on the restrictive assumption that both policies are exclusively meant to control pollution. However, particularly taxes may pursue a variety of other policy...