The theoretical justification for a greenhouse gas (GHG) cap and trade system is that participants will trade emission permits until their marginal costs of abatement equal the equilibrium price of emission permits. Abatement is then globally cost efficient. We demonstrate, however, that when...

Norway has abundant gas resources in the North Sea. The Norwegian gas production accounts for 2 percent of the world production and 17 percent of the European gas production. Despite huge gas production and resources, gas is not used for electricity generation in Norway. Excess capacity, cheap...

Cost-effective environmental policy generally requires that all emission sources are faced with the same tax. In this paper I discuss how the existence of induced technological change may alter this result, if at least some of the effect is external to the firm. Focusing on learning by doing...

We investigate whether the future relationships between several pollutants and per capita income in rich countries may assume the inverted U-forms of Environmental Kuznets Curves (EKC). The emission-augmenting effect of scaling up aggregate economic activity may be counteracted by greener...

According to the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) literature, several mechanisms within rich economies, including increased willingness to conduct abatement policies, contribute to reduce environmental problems. Unilateral environmental policies in open economies may affect other countries...

This article discusses how different climate policy instruments such as CO2 taxes and renewable energy subsidies affect the profitability of fossil fuel production, given that a fixed global climate target shall be achieved in the long term. Within an intertemporal framework, the model analyses...

Pollution intensive production can be avoided domestically by increased imports and less exports of dirty products. Such trade effects may imply more emissions abroad, or pollution leakages. We study whether such leakages may contribute to the observed inverted relationship between emissions and...

The clean development mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol may induce technological change in developing countries. As an alternative to the clean development mechanism regime, developing countries may accept a (generous) cap on their own emissions, allow domestic producers to invest in new efficient...

Many European politicians argue that since technological development is needed to solve the climate problem, the EU should take the lead and set tougher emission targets than what is required by the Kyoto protocol. Moreover, emission trading with other countries outside EU should be limited so...

This paper examines how ambitious climate policies and subsidies to carbon capture may affect international energy prices and market shares in the power market. A detailed numerical model of the international energy markets is used. We first conclude that an ambitious climate policy alone will...