We analyze the price dynamics of European allowances and international carbon credits in the second phase of the European carbon market. We develop and use a model combining fundamental drivers associated with the demand for quotas by installations and risk-return considerations related to the...

In the absence of significant greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, many analysts project that atmospheric concentrations of species identified for control in the Kyoto protocol could exceed 1000 ppm (carbon-dioxide-equivalent) by 2100 from the current levels of about 435 ppm. This could lead to...

The abatement of non-CO2 greenhouse gases (OGHG) has proved to be of paramount importance for reaching global mitigation targets. The modeling of their abatement is normally carried out referring to marginal abatement cost (MAC) curves, which by now represent a standard approach for such an...

Decision makers facing abatement targets need to decide which abatement measures to implement, and in which order. Measure-explicit marginal abatement cost curves depict the cost and abating potential of available mitigation options. Using a simple intertemporal optimization model, we...

After twenty years of global negotiations, the world is still far from a comprehensive climate agreement. The "top-down" approach embodied by the Kyoto Protocol has all but stalled, chiefly due to disagreements over levels of ambition and objections to financial transfers. To avoid those...

International carbon offsets have been promoted since the Kyoto Protocol and an increasing number of countries have implemented or proposed cap-and-trade schemes with international trading, even though with quantitative or qualitative restrictions. Those limits reflect the trade-off between...

Deforestation is a major source of CO2 emissions, accounting for around 17% of total annual anthropogenic carbon release. While the cost estimates of reducing deforestation rates vary considerably depending on model assumptions, it is widely accepted that emissions reductions from avoided...

The European Union Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS) has aimed to encourage the development of low-carbon technologies by putting a price on carbon emissions. Using a newly constructed data set that links 8.5 million European companies with their patenting history and their regulatory status...

Climate change economics mostly neglects sizeable interactions of carbon pricing with other fiscal policy instruments. Conversely, public finance typically overlooks the effects of future decarbonization efforts when devising instruments for the major goals of fiscal policy. We argue that such a...