We investigate how irreversibility in "dirty" and "clean" capital stocks affects optimal climate policy, from both theoretical and numerical perspectives. An increasing carbon tax will reduce investments in assets that pollute, and so reduce emissions in the short term: our "irreversibility...

In June 2018, an agreement between key EU institutions - the Commission, the European Parliament, and the European Council - was reached after a long-lasting discourse over the 2030 EU climate and energy policy package. This paper offers a comprehensive assessment of the EU package, with its...

We study clean energy subsidies in a quantitative climate-economy model. Clean en-ergy subsidies decrease carbon emissions if and only if they lower the marginal product of dirty energy. The constrained-efficient subsidy equals the marginal external cost of dirty energy multiplied by the...

Despite ambitious climate goals and already substantial stocks of developed fossil energy reserves, development of new fossil energy reserves continues to be high. This raises concerns, as it reinforces the fossil industry’s opportunities and incentives to continue extraction, and may...

Subsidies to renewable energy are costly and contentious. We estimate the reduction in prices that follows from the subsidized entry of wind power in the Nordic electricity market. A relatively small-scale entry of renewables leads to a large-scale transfer of surplus from the incumbent...

This paper provides ex-post empirical evidence on the effects of green technology support policies, in comparison with other climate policies, on carbon dioxide emissions at the aggregate national level. The paper uses cross-country dynamic panel estimation for a sample of 38 countries over the...

We study the effectiveness of climate change mitigation policies in reducing carbon emissions, focusing on the channel of economy-wide energy efficiency. Using U.S. data, we estimate impulse response functions (IRFs) that characterize how energy efficiency responds to energy price shocks....

To decarbonize the power sector policy-makers need to commit to long-term credible rules for climate and energy policy. Otherwise, time-inconsistent policy-making will impair investments into low-carbon technologies. However, the future benefits and costs of decarbonization are subject to...

Myriad policy measures aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the electricity sector, promote generation from renewable sources, and encourage energy conservation. To what extent do innovation and energy efficiency (EE) market failures justify additional interventions when a carbon price is...

Instruments chosen to pursue climate related targets are not always efficient. In this paper we consider an economy with three climate related targets for its electricity generation: a given share of "green" electricity, a given expansion of "green" electricity, and a given reduction of "black"...