Over the past year, there have been substantial changes in international climate policy. The negotiations on the Kyoto treaty have coincided with firms shifting their positions, both individually and at the sector level. An increasing number of large firms now support climate measures. In...

The stabilisation of GHG atmospheric concentrations at levels expected to prevent dangerous climate change has become an important, global, long-term objective. It is therefore crucial to identify a cost-effective way to achieve this objective. In this paper we use WITCH, a hybrid...

Die Einführung neuartiger Energietechnologien wird allgemein als der Schlüssel zur Senkung klimaschädlicher Treibhausgase angesehen. Allerdings ist die Abbildung derartiger Technologien in numerischen Modellen zur Simulation und ökonomischen Analyse von energie- und klimaschutzpolitischen...

This paper is a first attempt to empirically measure transaction costs – a composite of administrativecosts and trading costs – of firms in the European Union's CO2 Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS)during its trial phase (2005-2007). This analysis provides some evidence that transaction...

Using a stylized theoretical model, we argue that current economic analyses of climate policy tend to over-estimate the degree of carbon leakage, as they abstract from the effects of induced technological change. We analyse carbon leakage in a two-country model with directed technical change,...

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol offers developing countries the opportunity to participate in the effort to reduce global greenhouse gas levels while also benefitting from sustainable development opportunities. To date, the majority of CDM investments have gone to...

Public policy supports biofuels for their benefits to agricultural economies, energy security and the environment. The environmental rationale is premised on greenhouse gas (GHG, "carbon") emissions reduction, which is a matter of contention. This issue is challenging to resolve because of...

Costs and benefits in the distant future-such as those associated with global warming, long-lived infrastructure, hazardous and radioactive waste, and biodiversity-often have little value today when measured with conventional discount rates. We demonstrate that when the future path of this...

The most cost-effective policies for achieving CO2 abatement (e.g., carbon taxes) are considered politically unacceptable because of distributional consequences. This paper explores policies designed to address distributional concerns. Using an intertemporal, numerical general equilibrium model...

The development of renewable energy sources is of prime interest to many countries seeking to pursue greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations. The increased use of renewables offers the possibility of not only contributing to emission reduction, but at the same time improving energy supply...